Welcome back to Broadway School. And today I am so excited to bring you one of my favorite feuds ever. A feud that puts the drama in drama. Andrew Lloyd Webber versus Patti Lupone and the historic mess that was Sunset Boulevard. Let’s take things back to the 1960s. In the early 60s, Steven Sondheim actually outlined a musical adaptation for the film Sunset Boulevard. And he even went on to compose the first scene. He was excited about it, but then he went to a party, and he met the director and the co screenwriter of the original film Sunset Boulevard. And this guy was not down for a musical adaptation of Sunset Boulevard. He said, Sunset Boulevard should never be adapted into a musical. It should be adapted into an opera. Steven Sondheim, he’s a good man. He listened. He just abandoned the project and walked away. Ten years later, Hal Prince hits up Sondheim and he’s like, let’s redo the movie. Let’s make it a musical, and it will star Angela Lansbury, and you’ll write the music. And Sondheim was like, no. He still remembered what that director said, and he listened to him. And it’s so unfortunate. It really is. Andrew Lloyd Webber watches the film Sunset Boulevard in the 70s. And in the late 70s, he has a conversation with Hal Prince, who has the rights to sunset. Eventually, in the 90s, Andrew Lloyd Webber gets the rights. He’s going to write Sunset Boulevard. The Musical. It was interesting because in 1990, Andrew Lloyd Webber was like, I’m done with the stage. I’m gonna work on movies now. It’s like, we all wish that you did. But a premiere on Sunset Boulevard, the musical. In the early 90s, a festival created by Andrew Lloyd Webber, hosted at his own estate. This is also where Avida, Cats, and Phantom of the opera all premiered. It transfers to the West End. Patti Lupone played Norma Desmond in the festival production, and she transferred to the West End production. They open on the West End and there are murmurs of a Broadway transfer. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Patti Lupone have history already. Patti was Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Avida. The experience was not great for her. She felt as though Lloyd Webber’s experience was writing for male voices, and he didn’t understand how to properly write for female voices. And the role of Evita was nearly impossible for her to sing. She really struggled through it. However, she did win a Tony Award, and she sort of became a household name because of Evita. So they have a bit of a fraud history. But Lloyd Webber promises Patti Lupone in writing, in contract, also verbally, when they transfer to Broadway. She will be transferring to Broadway with the production. Show is getting mixed reviews on the West End. One of the major through lines of these critiques, that Patti Lupone is too young to play Norma Desmond, and it’s not working, starts to Be rumors in gossip columns that Glenn Close has been hired to replace Patti Lupone in the Los Angeles production that’s going to open in between the West End production closing and the Broadway production opening. Patti Lupone addresses this with Andrew Lloyd Webber and the producers, and everybody assures her it is not true. She’s onto them. In early 1994, she finds out via scoop from a gossip columnist that she has indeed been replaced by Glen Close, officially meaning Glen Close will play the role in Los Angeles and likely then transferred to Broadway. Patti Lupone is backstage in her dressing room when she finds this out. She absolutely goes ballistic. Trashes her entire dressing room, freaks the fuck out. She goes ahead and sues him for breach of contract. By the way, she’s also mega pissed because it has been announced that Madonna will play Ava Perona in the Avita film musical adaptation. And they have lowered the register and they have lowered all the songs to fit Madonna’s voice and they refused to do that for Patti Lupone. She went through the ringer playing Avita and it’s kind of just seeming like Andrew Lloyd Webber doesn’t like her. But this isn’t all. The show opens in LA with Glen Close playing Norma Desmond. They decide that they’re actually going to replace Glen Close with Faye Dunaway, who had never sang in a musical on stage before. But they think she has it and they think that she’s the right Fit. And they want Faye Dunaway to then transfer to Broadway. As Faye’s opening night is approaching, they start to feel like she’s not ready and she’s not up to snuff vocally. It has been announced that Faye Dunaway will be doing this. She’s been in rehearsals for months with several vocal coaches. Literally puts her whole life in film on pause to focus on this. Juliet Weber and the team show up at one of her rehearsals just weeks before she’s meant to go on and play Norma Desmond. Not only does he fire her, he also decides to close the entire LA production several months early. Sells all the scenery to a production opening in Toronto and is just like, see you guys in New York. A. Dunaway sues them for her damaged reputation because she believes this experience damaged her reputation. And Glen Close ends up being the one to transfer to Broadway. After the Patti Lupone lawsuit, Patti Lupone sues Andrew Lloyd Webber for $1 million for breach of contract. And she wins. She walks away with the money. She puts a huge pool in the backyard of her Connecticut home, and she names it the Andrew Lloyd Webber Memorial Pool. Iconic. We don’t know how much Faye Dunaway made from her lawsuit. It has never been revealed. But we do know that Sunset Boulevard is considered to be one of the musicals that’s lost the most money in the history of musical theater. It was costing around $800,000 for them to run per week. Their marketing budget was 40K, and they were spending like one 50. And they lost almost $20 million. That being said, they do call it a flop hit because it did play almost 1,000 performances. It weren’t up against anybody at the Tony’s. Like, I’m talking two musicals, them and one other musical. They did win a variety of Tony’s, even though. Doesn’t really count. The musical ends up closing much earlier than it would have. They didn’t get involved in a bunch of nasty lawsuits because Andrew Lloyd Webber just can’t seem to do anything professional, ever. Come back for next time and I’ll tell you what he did during Bad Cinderella.