Hollywood spent a decade trying to film A Chorus Line, then critics shrugged
Richard Attenborough's 1985 screen version of the Broadway hit about auditioning dancers came after years of rights sales, refusals and studio infighting. Producers put in twenty-four million dollars, the finale packed 8 kicklines of 17 dancers, and the film still earned only $14.2 million and a lukewarm critical verdict.
The source was the 1975 stage musical with a book by James Kirkwood Jr. and Nicholas Dante and songs by Marvin Hamlisch and Edward Kleban. Arnold Schulman adapted it, and Michael Douglas played Zach, a director judging hopefuls from the dark of an empty theatre. Sixteen remain after the first cuts; he needs four men and four women, and he draws out their childhoods, families and struggles. His former lover Cassie, jobless for over a year, turns up late wanting a place in the chorus.
Getting to the screen was a slog. Universal paid $5.5 million for the rights and promised royalties of 20 percent of rentals above $30 million, a term that made the project look like a money pit to many directors. Michael Bennett, who had staged the original, walked away when his idea of framing the film as an audition was turned down. Universal sold to PolyGram for $7.8 million in 1982, Embassy joined in 1983, and Attenborough signed in 1984 amid doubts about a British director handling such an American story. Madonna, auditioning under the name Ciccone that February, was turned away.
Studio churn followed. Coca-Cola, owner of Columbia, bought Embassy six months before release, then Dino DeLaurentiis took Embassy without its 20 percent stake in the financing partnership, muddying who would distribute. Schulman later said Attenborough discarded his surreal script and effectively photographed the play.
Fans disliked the score changes: two new songs replaced numbers such as The Music and the Mirror, and What I Did for Love moved from Diana's tribute to dancers into Cassie's lament about Zach. The film also toned down the stage show's frank treatment of gay performers. It opened on December 9, 1985, on 15 New York screens. Roger Ebert admired it as a grown-up musical; Vincent Canby found it fatally halfhearted, and Kelly Bishop, the first stage Sheila, faulted Attenborough for misreading its veteran dancers as kids breaking in. Rotten Tomatoes lists 48 percent.
Source: A Chorus Line (film)
