DIRECTOR: Harold Prince.
BOTTOM LINE: Was legendary Broadway director and impresario Harold Prince gay? He had a long and supposedly happy heterosexual marriage, which resulted in two children. Of course, the marriage could have been of the lavender variety. Does it matter? As he was more commonly known, Hal Prince collaborated with and mentored the creme de la creme of America’s artistic gay community for an astonishing seven decades. The man who directed the original Broadway productions of Stephen Sondheim’s “Company” and “Follies,” directed the original stage version of Kander and Ebb’s masterpiece “Cabaret,” and co-produced the original staging of “West Side Story,” will always have a very special place in the hearts of the Queer community. Why he never set his sights on Hollywood is a mystery. Maybe he knew that the world of Cinema was not for him.
He only made two films. One was a weak translation of Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music,” from 1977, which he had directed on Broadway. The other, “Something for Everyone,” his cinematic debut, was made seven years earlier. Unfortunately, what should have been a gay romp and a fabulous showcase for its star, gay icon Angela Lansbury, fizzles out after a promising opening chapter.
Adapted by gay writer Hugh Wheeler (billed as a “research consultant” on Bob Fosse’s ‘Cabaret,” Wheeler wrote the books for “A Little Night Music” and “Sweeny Todd” and wrote the screenplays for George Cukor’s “Travels with My Aunt” and Herbert Ross’ “Nijinsky”) from the novel “The Cook” by Harry Kressing, the film opens with a strapping pre-“Cabaret” Michael York in short pants bicycling across the Bavarian countryside. York plays the aptly named Konrad Ludwig, a Tom Ripley in Lederhosen who, like his namesake, wants to live in a castle and will go to any lengths to do so. It just so happens that the widowed Countess Herthe von Ornstein (Lansbury) has an opening in her kitchen and a brooding gay son, Helmuth (gay actor Anthony Higgins, billed as Anthony Corlan, a long way from “The Draughtman’s Contract”), who is just waiting to be seduced by Konrad.
It’s a promising beginning. Sadly, after about thirty minutes, you begin to feel the bloom fade from the rose, and with ninety minutes to go, it never returns. Neither Lansbury nor York nor an exceedingly boring and miscast Higgins can save it. Only Jane Carr, as Lotte, Helmuth’s annoying little sister who also has the hots for Konrad, manages to keep her character interesting until the end. Although the gay community turned out in droves to see their idol, who had just caused a sensation on Broadway in “Mame,” the disappointment must have been palpable.
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