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New York Times

Just Before It Was a Cult Film, ‘Rocky Horror Show' Was a Broadway Flop

Fifty years have passed, but the actor Tim Curry isn't sure he has ever forgiven the reception that 'The Rocky Horror Show' received in its original Broadway production, which was also his Broadway debut. 'I try not to think about it,' he said the other day by phone from Los Angeles. 'There's not much point in paddling through old failures.' Curry was back on Broadway the fall after 'Rocky Horror,' in Tom Stoppard's 'Travesties.' But, wanting not to be reminded, he has never returned to the Belasco Theater on West 44th Street, where the musical spoof that would soon become a cult-film phenomenon started previews on March 7, 1975, opened on March 10 and lasted just a month. On the heels of the show's successes in London, where it began in 1973 in the tiny upstairs theater at the Royal Court, and then in Los Angeles, at the Roxy nightclub, it was the kind of Broadway fizzle that seems baffling in retrospect — not least because some of its cast overlapped with the movie's. Arriving on Broadway after 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' was shot but several months before it was released, the musical starred Curry in the role he had originated in London, as the sexually omnivorous, corset-clad, extraterrestrial mad scientist Frank-N-Furter. Richard O'Brien, who wrote the musical, played the disquieting butler Riff-Raff, and Meat Loaf doubled as the doomed delivery boy, Eddie, and the scientist Dr. Scott. Jim Sharman, who directed the film, restaged his Los Angeles production for Broadway. Lou Adler — the record executive, an owner of the Roxy and producer of the 'Rocky Horror' film — produced. The Broadway reviews reflected a peculiar mix of chip-on-the-shoulder indignation: about sitting at the cabaret tables that had replaced the theater's orchestra seats; about enduring yet another British import; about being subjected to what some critics called 'trash.' (Roundabout Theater Company plans a second Broadway revival next spring at Studio 54.) Clive Barnes, who had enjoyed Sharman's production in London, argued in The New York Times that it had lost some vital craziness en route to Broadway and should have been staged in 'a filthy old cinema in the East Village.' Curry, now 78; O'Brien, 82; Sharman, 79; and Adler, 91, recently spoke in separate interviews about that Broadway production, which came only a year before late-night movie screenings started turning 'Rocky Horror' into a goth-camp classic. These are edited excerpts from those conversations. JIM SHARMAN It was a very unusual show. It was kind of immersive and subversive in its original form. [In London] we played it in what appeared to be, with Brian Thomson's design, demolished cinemas. Then Lou wanted to do it in the Roxy in L.A., and so it became a bit more of a rock 'n' roll horror show there. A touch of a Weimar cabaret to it. TIM CURRY A huge part of its charm was the small, insignificant places that we played in. That we made them hip. RICHARD O'BRIEN We had a lovely time. It was a commitment to fun. SHARMAN After the movie, I thought we were done, and I was getting ready to go back to Australia and do other things. And then it was kind of, 'No, we're doing Broadway.' It was certainly spoken of that they wanted to do Broadway prior to releasing the film. LOU ADLER It was more a personal thing than anything else, feeling like I'd like to have it be successful in New York. I wasn't looking for a traditional theater on Broadway. I was looking in the boroughs, something outside of Manhattan. I found a place that I really liked. A local theater that had bar mitzvahs and weddings and those kinds of things. And the guy, first he said I could have it, then he said he had to change the date because he had a bar mitzvah that was scheduled. So I started looking for another theater. I liked the history of the Belasco. But I wanted to make it into a theater similar to what I had done at the Roxy. CURRY I wasn't sure at all about Lou Adler's idea that, because when we played it at the Roxy there were tables and chairs and drinks, it should be the same kind of ambience. I didn't know whether that would work. And it didn't. O'BRIEN That was a fatal mistake. So many people had to sit sideways-on. And you can't ask people to watch a show sideways-on. CURRY Some of the highlights of the show were dangerous, because there was a sort of tawdry feel about it. I don't know that the new audience at the Belasco were up for that. They were just rather confused, I think. ADLER At that time, Broadway was much stiffer. It was more traditional, and they weren't really happy with anything that came from L.A. O'BRIEN Meat Loaf was great. He had a voice to die for back then. CURRY He was a force of nature. Good old boys believe in themselves. He was convinced that 'Rocky Horror' was going to make him the kind of star that he wanted to be. SHARMAN He did a very amusing Dr. Everett Scott, along the lines of Orson Welles. CURRY I used to barge about the theater down a ramp, and I think I probably got way too close to the audience for some people. Audiences, on Broadway at least, were expecting substance. And the substance they got at the Belasco was not particularly to their taste. O'BRIEN Theater in New York in those days was more precious. Those critics could make and break a show. CURRY I lost so much confidence. SHARMAN What we were doing with 'Rocky Horror' back then was trying to move the theater out of theater, in a funny kind of way. Because it was still captive to a 19th-century proscenium idea of itself, and middle-class people seeing middle-class lives in middle-class rooms. O'BRIEN It was far more stylized when we first started. The movie turned Frank-N-Furter glamorous. He wasn't. We weren't. It was much more expressionistic, you know, ghoulish, more gothic in a sense, and dirty, perhaps. But the weird thing was that this creature [Frank-N-Furter] would strut down the aisle and the women in the audience found him attractive. That was a change in social understanding, because that was a surprise to all of us as well. And not only that, the chap sitting next to the woman would go, 'I see what you mean.' CURRY I wasn't skin-deep gorgeous. I was gorgeous in attitude. And I was gorgeous, I think, in a certain kind of courage. It took a certain amount of courage to do the show in the first place, let alone translating it to New York. But then I started going to Elaine's, and that was my shelter. I used to go up to 88th Street and hide at Elaine's and eat the veal chop. O'BRIEN Recently, of course, and now with the authoritarian, far right, anti-gay, anti-rainbow brigade being loud and obnoxious, ['Rocky Horror' has] become a kind of sanctuary. It's a rainbow event in a way. SHARMAN Though the way the show's being done these days, which is a bit like an imitation of the movie, it's more like a Broadway show. It's now the show that probably they would have loved in 1975. ADLER What I learned immediately is if the critics didn't like you, you didn't have long. So at that point, not to spoil any of the excitement of coming out of London and L.A., and about the release of the film, I wanted to close as quickly as possible. If I regret it, I only regret it because I didn't give it the chance to grow. I don't know if it could have, but that might have been interesting, too. CURRY I had to go to the Algonquin Hotel, where I was staying, and tell them that I couldn't pay the bill. Because the show had been a flop. The manager was incredible and said, 'Don't worry, Mr. Curry. We know that you'll be back — on Broadway, in New York. One or the other. Probably both.' Which was super encouraging and so generous. The next time I was in New York, I went in there and counted out the money in $5 bills. O'BRIEN I remember standing with Tim outside the Algonquin — well, of the Royalton, actually, where I was staying. The Royalton was 40 bucks a night, which was fantastic. And I'm saying, 'Well, I suppose that's it.' We'd done the movie, and the show had closed. We both agreed that it had been a jolly nice ride. CURRY But I had high hopes for the movie, and I really wanted it to be wonderful. When I went back to London, there was a screening, and I was very disappointed by the movie and particularly by my performance in it. Because I thought that it could have been a bit more subtle. SHARMAN An interesting thing did happen because [the musical] lasted, what, a month? There was an audience that was still hungry for it. The film, which didn't have any names in it, kind of opened and shut like a door. But when the late-night [screenings] started, which was also in New York, at the Waverly, there was an audience that hadn't seen it that wanted to see it. And so the same city that had slightly punished it, in a way, on Broadway, became the kernel for what is still playing today, 50 years later. Karma.