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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