In my "Hairspray" review on Friday, I wrote the following: "Correct me if I'm wrong, but only 'The Producers' has followed the same movie-to-musical-to-movie path, and that one was a high-spirited embalming."
Never throw down the gauntlet to readers, at least in the internet era. I've received easily 40 e-mails since the piece ran reminding me that, yes, there's at least one other property that has traveled this route -- started as a non-musical movie, turned into a stage musical, put back on film.
That movie is, of course, "Little Shop of Horrors," which began life as a cheesy 1960 Roger Corman horror movie (starring a young Jack Nicholson), became a 1982 off-Broadway sensation as a musical, then was filmed by Frank Oz in 1986.
Thanks to all who wrote in (too many to note individually). Other correspondents staked claims for "Phantom of the Opera," "Mame," "Cabaret," "My Fair Lady," "La Cage Aux Folles," "Peter Pan," and "Hello Dolly." Good suggestions all, but I'm not buying. In most cases, the original property was a book or a play ("Phantom" was both before it was a silent film starring Lon Chaney), which was subsequently turned into a straight movie and then musicalized. The exception is "Cage," which was a 1973 film, a 1983 musical, and a 1996 American non-musical remake.
So the math holds: The only three properties to have originated as a movie, been turned into stage musicals, then seen that same musical version put onto film are "Little Shop of Horrors," "The Producers," and "Hairspray." Possibly to be joined in the near future by "Sunset Boulevard," and, who knows, "Xanadu."
One point brought up by reader Richard Sagotsky of Canton: "It's interesting how the three movies that went that way all started as films that didn't make a tremendous amount of money." Perhaps the fact that the originals aren't considered sacred cultural cows releases the creative impulses in the people writing the musical?
