Something for Everyone (1970) Queer Film C-

DIRECTOR: Harold Prince.

Was Harold Prince—legendary Broadway director, producer, and impresario—gay? The question surfaces now and then, usually with a wink, because Prince’s long and apparently happy heterosexual marriage (two children, decades of stability) doesn’t quite match the queer sensibility that permeated his artistic life. Could the marriage have been lavender? Perhaps. But the truth is that it hardly matters. For nearly seventy years, Hal Prince, as he was known, collaborated with, championed, and mentored the crème de la crème of America’s gay artistic community. His legacy is inseparable from queer theatrical history.

This is the man who directed the original Broadway productions of Sondheim’s Company and Follies, staged the first version of Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret, and co‑produced West Side Story. Whether or not he identified as gay, Prince occupies a permanent, cherished corner of queer cultural memory. His instincts, collaborators, and artistic daring aligned him—intentionally or not—with the community that embraced him.

Why he never set his sights on Hollywood remains a mystery. Perhaps he sensed that cinema, with its rigid hierarchies and studio politics, wasn’t his natural habitat. His filmography suggests as much: he made only two movies, and neither fulfilled the promise of his theatrical genius.

The first, a 1977 adaptation of Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, is a wan translation of the stage production he had directed so brilliantly. The other—his debut, Something for Everyone (1970)—should have been a deliciously queer romp and a showcase for its star, gay icon Angela Lansbury. Instead, it fizzles after a tantalizing opening act.

Adapted by gay writer Hugh Wheeler (who later wrote the books for A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd, the screenplays for Cukor’s Travels with My Aunt and Ross’s Nijinsky and was credited as “Research Consultant” on Bob Fosse’s Cabaret) from Harry Kressing’s novel The Cook, the film begins with a flourish: a pre‑Cabaret Michael York, all legs and short pants, bicycling through the Bavarian countryside. He plays Konrad Ludwig, a Tom Ripley in Lederhosen—ambitious, amoral, and determined to insinuate himself into the castle of the widowed Countess Herthe von Ornstein (Lansbury). The countess has both a vacancy in her kitchen and a brooding gay son, Helmuth (gay actor Anthony Higgins, billed as Anthony Corlan), who is ripe for seduction.

It’s a terrific setup. But after thirty minutes, the bloom fades, and with ninety minutes still ahead, it never returns. Not even Lansbury’s regal mischief or York’s beauty can revive it. Only Jane Carr, as Helmuth’s pesky younger sister Lotte—who also falls for Konrad—manages to keep her character lively to the end.

The gay community turned out in force, eager to see their Broadway idol fresh from her triumph in Mame. The disappointment must have been palpable. What should have been a sly, sexy, queer‑inflected black comedy instead feels oddly flat, as though Prince’s theatrical instincts evaporated the moment the camera rolled.

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