Bells Are Ringing
OPENING: February 20th, 2001
CLOSING: February 25th, 2001.
Seen: February 2001
LOCATION: Stamford Center for the Arts, Palace Theatre
When I started this blog, I wanted to reflect on what is what like to be in the audience of individual shows. Broadway. Community. National Tours. I wanted to talk about what the set looked like, what the atmosphere in the theater felt like, what theater it was in. I got the idea because at the time I was working as an editor for an independent publishing house and one of my authors quite literally had managed to monetize her blog where she would post daily about what she was wearing that day. If she could write a blog about her daily wardrobe choices, why couldn’t I do one about my theatergoing experiences?
To be clear – I didn’t expect to make money off the blog. It just sounded like a fun venture.
But as I started this adventure – I began to realize that while I am a very educated and well-versed Theater Kid – there is so much theater I haven’t seen. And I won’t – because the art form is 2000 years old, so we’ve had plenty of time to spread and grow it.
And that, my friends, was one of the cornerstones of my Playbill collection. And why I started buying vintage Playbills.
There’s a point to that intro. I promise. I’ll circle back to it.
After the excursion to the Westchester Broadway Theater, my grownups were keen to find theater going opportunities that were appropriate for a preteen. The problem with this was that this was 2001 – and the kid friendly options in New York were limited.
Enter regional theater.
It was at this time that the Stamford Center for the Arts was experimenting with the idea of bringing regional theater to their historical Palace Theater. And their first show? 1956’s Bells are Ringing.
To be fair, it was most definitely an experiment. The Palace had never done a full length professional production. And they probably wouldn’t have attempted it with Bells Are Ringing – a mostly fprgotten musical, if it hadn’t been led by the fierce and legendary Faith Prince.
But as far as I was concerned, the musical was absolutely amazing. My 11 year old self did not care that most people had never heard of it. It has the cute-girl-wants-the-hot-boy-no-one-thinks-she-can-get plot that was the basis of most Golden Age musicals, complete with the catchy tunes that were popular in that era. And in my brain, it was awesome.
All these years later? I still find the songs charming instead of annoying.
The story follows Ella, a young girl who works at a phone answering service. Instead of just taking the messages like a good little employee was trained to do, she becomes who her customers need and want her to be, such as Santa Claus for the kids. And her favorite client? Jeffrey Moss, for whom she passes as an old lady who he calls “Mom”. Of course – she’s madly in love with him. She holds no hope that she’ll ever be able to confess her feelings for him or even reveal her true identity…until a potential “catastrophe” forces Ella out of the office to go “save” Jeffrey.
I know. Super antique. But you have to admit that it’s a super cute plot.
The score was written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. The original 1956 production starred a young performer by the name of Judy Holliday, who, like Bells Are Ringing, has been mostly forgotten in the years since her death in 1965. She died young of cancer, but not before winning a Tony and an Oscar.
So why does a show that net it’s powerhouse leading couple (Jeffrey Moss having been played by Sydney Chaplin) matching Tonys and was choreographed by both Jerome Robbins and Bob Fosse fall victim to amnesia? I honestly don’t know. My best guess is the content of the musical itself. Bells Are Ringing left Broadway in 1959; answering machines became commercially available in 1971, therefore eliminating the need for answering services. In just over a decade, the entire concept was obsolete. There may have even been a bit of respect for Judy Holliday there – having been a budding super star’s last role, audiences may not have wanted to see anyone else play Ella. Unfortunately, this meant that it was left to the annals of theater history.
Since it made it to Stamford and then subsequently transferred to Broadway, I have not seen or even heard of another production of Bells Are Ringing being attempted. Ms. Prince went on to grab her third Tony nomination but even Power House Prince – who DID win a Tony in 1992 for her turn at Miss Adelaide, which was a very formative album of my youth – could not save it. It closed after only two months.
When I started hardcore collecting Playbills, I starting looking for vintage ones because I was fascinated in the stories they could tell. Not only do they give a glimpse in the theater goer of yore’s life, but just knowing that someone sat in the theater, holding the piece of history that I am now holding – it feels like I have a little piece of the legacy that I strive to be a part of. I was enthralled with the stories that they can tell. So when I bought of a cheap box off of Ebay – an opening month Playbill of that 1956 production was a very exciting find and truth be told, it’s one of my favorites of those I own.
It may have been a short-lived musical and just as my dad and aunt saw and fell in love with Greenwillow (Another show lost to history), Bells Are Ringing is a musical I can love and admire. I can forever wonder what happened to let the world forget about this beautiful pieces of theater.
And then I can work to make sure that the world knows about it.
CAST: ORIGINAL
TV ANNOUNCER: Shane Kirkpatrick
TELEPHONE GIRLS: Caitlin Carter, Joan Hess, Emily Hsu, Alice Rietvold
SUE: Beth Fowler
GWYNNE: Angela Robinson
ELLA: Faith Prince
ELLA’S DREAM JEFF’S: Roy Harcourt, Shane Kirkpatrick, Greg Reuter, Josh Rhodes
INSPECTOR BARNES: Robert An
FRANCIS: Jeffrey Bean
SANDOR: David Garrison
JEFFREY MOSS: Marc Kudisch
LARRY HASTINGS: David Brummel
LOUIE: Greg Reuter
PADIE, THE STREET SWEEPER: Roy Harcourt
LUDWIG SMILEY: Lawrence Clayton
CHARLIE BESSEMER: Josh Rhodes
DR. KITCHELL: Martin Moran
BLAKE BARTON: Darren Ritchie
JOEY: Shane Kirkpatrick
OLGA: Caitlin Carter
CARVELLO MOB MEN: David Brummel, Greg Reuter
MAID: Linda Romoff
PAUL ARNOLD: Lawrence Clayton
BRIDGETTE: Joan Hess
WAITER: Josh Rhodes
MAN ON STREET: Josh Rhodes
MADAME GRIMALDI: Joanne Baum
MRS. MALLET: Joan Hess
ENSEMBLE: Julio Augustin, Joanne Blum, David Brummel, Caitlin Carter, Lawrence Clayton, Roy Harcourt, Joan Hess, Emily Hsu, Shane Kirkpatrick, Greg Reuter, Josh Rhodes, Alice Rietveld, Darren Ritchie, Angela Robinson, Linda Romoff
DANCERS: Caitlin Carter, Roy Harcourt, Joan Hess, Emily Hsu, Shane Kirkpatrick, Greg Reuter, Josh Rhodes
SWINGS: James Hadley, Stacey Harris, Kelly Harrison
Bellis, Mary. “The History of Answering Machines” ThoughtCo; February 24, 2019. https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-answering-machines-1991223
“Judy Holiday, 42, Is Dead of Cancer”. The New York Times, June 8, 1965. https://www.nytimes.com/1965/06/08/archives/judy-holliday-42-is-dead-of-cancer-judy-holliday-actress-is-dead-of.html
