Download - Stop the World Tony Newley Biography
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STOP THE WORLD
and personal schedule back in London, Tony immediately felli11' After three
days of nursing him better, the four began to explore the city, Polaroid cameras
in hand. Collins and Brickman shared a similar belief in that what one can
cram into a day is the measure of what one's life is about: Joan and I could
organise orr.r"l.r", to death,' revealed Bricusse, 'and one thing I do know is
thlt I've always had more fun than Tory. He was a strangely old man as a
young man, he had eye masks and blankets; it was like travelling with your
grunJfuther.'Joan calied him 'old crusty'. A visit to Las Vegas found them
Injoying the hospitality of Sammy DavisJr who was continuing to spread the
*ori o{ Strp the Wrld's imminent arrival in New York and was confident thatNewley would knock'em dead on Broadway'
They returned to London andJoan left Tony in no doubt of her intentions:
she loved him, she wanted to marry him and she wanted to have children'
To.y was uncertain. He wasn't keen about having children or getting married
again and did he really loveJoan? He contented himself with the thought
thatthe divorce would take an age to go through so no hasty decisions needed
to be made.AsJuly approached, Tony Thnner was rehearsed into the role of uttlechap.
Newle"y haillittle to do with the process, only working with his replacement
on one or two occasions, leading Thnner to believe that The Young Master
was caught in the 'I want him to be good so the show will go on, but not too
good in case some people say he was better than me' syndrome' This did not
ing true with Anna Q;rayle. She knew that Newley would always recognise
the worth of another artist and that there was nothing in his body that was
jealous. Tanner was encouraged by the one reviewer who saw his first show
und ,rggested that what the audience might lose on the swings, they would
urrrr"Jly gain on the roundabouts. The show ran for a further six months and
finally .ior"d after 556 performances. Newley would later say, 'There have
been three major revelations in my life. The first was in 1949 when I went
into the Army and I fell to pieces. The second was in 1956 when I went to
prison and didn't fall to pieces. The third was the success of Stop the Worldand
hnding myself accepted. I learned a lot about myself from those experiences''
Beiore Newley Lft th" show, he, Bricusse and Ian Fraser paid a weekend
visit to New York to hold auditions for the Broadway cast. In the two and a
half days between their arrival one Sunday moming and their return to London
for the following Tuesday's performance, they saw almost seven hundred
grrls. During the group auditions, Fraser kept a mental tally of who sang
what. Of the r".r"rr-hrrrdred hopefuls, two hundred sang'I Enjoy Being a Girl'
from Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song.Pity the lass who opened
her mouth last.
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