Watching last night’s telecast of the Kennedy Center Honors on CBS, Glenn Close sang a beautiful ballad as part of a tribute to honoree Barbara Cook and was soon followed by Patti LuPone, observes Greg in Hollywood!
Flash back to the mid-90s when Close got to be Norma Desmond in the very first Broadway production of Sunset Boulevard – at LuPone’s expense.
It was a major triumph for Close who went on to win the Tony Award for lead actress in a musical. For LuPone who was supposed to be the first Norma on Broadway, it was the most disappointing experience of her career.
LuPone debuted the role in London and was contracted to take it to Broadway but Andrew Lloyd Webber very publicly fired her and put Close on Broadway after she triumphed in the LA production.
But the experience left LuPone not a fan of Webber or Close as we learned in the “two whole raged-filled chapters” she gives the experience in her memoir which came out last year.
Of Close she wrote: “Do I think Glenn Close was complicit in what happened to me? … What I do know is that from the time she was announced, I never heard from her.”
But there they were, just feet from each other during the finale of the Cook tribute. You wonder if they spoke during the rehearsal or after the show. Did Patti turn to Glenn and say: “You should have called” or something like that?
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