Orson Welles launched an ill-fated lavish Broadway musical based on Jules Verne’s classic novel Around The World in 80 Days with songs by Cole Porter on May 31, 1946.
Around The World followed Phineas Fogg, who makes a bet he can travel around the globe in just 80 days.
Welles’ madcap script showed off his incredible showmanship and comedic sense of fun, while Porter’s score-including “Pipe Dreaming,” “There He Goes, Mr. Phineas Fogg,” “Whenever They Fly The Flag Of Old England,” “Should I Tell You I Love You,” and “Look What I Found,” featuring his usual lyrical wit and melodic panache.
Here is a sample of the Porter score, a tune called “Pipe Dreaming.”
It was to have been produced by Mike Todd, but when the famed producer pulled out, Welles financed it. When he ran out of money and needed $55,000 to release costumes which were being held, he convinced Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn to send him the needed money, In returned, Welles agreed to write, produce and direct a film for Columbia (The Lady From Shanghai).
The play premiered on Broadway at the Adelphi Theatre after tryouts at the Boston Opera House and the Shubert theaters in New Haven and Philadelphia.
With a cast and crew of 150 people, Welles billed the show as a “Musical Extravaganza.” Indeed, the spectacular production boasted a giant mechanical elephant, an onstage train crash, fireworks, magic tricks, and an entire three-ring circus. As he had done with Too Much Johnson, Welles shot filmed several silent movie scenes, which were included in the three-hour Broadway production.
The New York Post called Around The World “the most exciting musical in years,” while The New Yorker wrote, “It’s a damn good show, like nothing you’ve ever seen before.”
Sadly, the expensive production could not survive the slow summer months and it closed on August 3, 1946 after only 75 performances.
Welles lost $320,000 on the production. and due to bad legal advice, he was unable to claim the loss on his taxes, and it took him years to pay off the debt.
In 2013, a bare bones revival was staged in London and New York by Lost Musicals. In a review for Wellesnet, Seth Alexander Thévoz wrote:
“The most striking thing is the musical’s breathless, breezy pace – for admirers of Welles’s radio work, this is familiar territory, with the rapid jumping from one scene to the next. But more surprising to admirers of Welles’s films is the musical’s lightweight tone. The director often complained that people associated him with sober, serious films because those were the ones which he was successful in getting financed; yet many of his unproduced scripts were broad comedies, satires and farces, like The Unthinking Lobster (published in France as Miracle à Hollywood, 1952); and a glimpse of the playful, tongue-in-cheek Welles onscreen can be found in his remarkable TV pilot, The Fountain of Youth (1956). Around the World was very much in this vein, and to those who do not see Welles as a popular director, this show presents a strong counter-argument, forgoing art-house imagery in favour of sheer entertainment. But being a Welles musical, nobody could call it uncomplicated.
Orson Welles’s script took considerable liberties with Jules Verne’s often clinical tale, and many changes transformed Around the World into a consummate populist musical. Passepartout becomes an American (of French descent), Pat Passepartout. He acquires a love interest, Fogg’s Irish maid Molly Muggins, who discreetly follows the travellers around the world, using money that fell out of Fogg’s bag. The production ends with a musical number over a dual wedding of Passepartout & Molly, and Fogg & Aouda. If these things seem overly contrived, it’s because the genre is contrived, and the whole thing works beautifully because it’s carried out so shamelessly.”
For many of us, the closest we can come to reliving Welles’ Around the World is a condensed 30-minute version aired on CBS’ Mercury Summer Theatre on June 7, 1946.
The cast included: Arthur Margetson (Phileas Fogg), Mary Healy (Mrs. Aouda), Julie Warren (Molly Muggins), Larry Laurence (Pat Passepartout), Victoria Cordova (Lola), Stefan Schnabel (Avery Jevity), Brainerd Duffield (Benjamin Cruett-Spew), Dorothy Bird (Meerahlah), Guy Spaull (Ralph Runcbile), Bernard Savage as Sir Charles Mandiboy) and Welles as (Dick Fix).
The two-act play ran as follows:
ACT I
Scene 1. Movies.
Scene 2. Interior of Jevit’s Bank, London, England.
Scene 3. Movies.
Scene 4. Hyde Park.
Scene 5. A London Street.
Scene 6. Mr. Fogg’s Flat in London.
Scene 7. A Street before the Whist Club.
Scene 8. The Card Room of the Whist Club.
Scene 9. Fogg’s Flat.
Scene 10. The Charing Cross Railroad Station.
Scene 11. Suez, Egypt.
Scene 12. The End of Railway Tracks in British India.
Scene 13. The Great Indian Forest.
Scene 14. The Pagoda of Pilagi.
Scene 15. A Jungle Encampment in the Himalayas.
Scene 16. About the S.S. Tankadere on the China Sea.
Scene 17. Movies.
Scene 18. A Street of Evil Reputd in Hong-Kong.
Scene 19. Interior of an Opium Hell in the Same City.
Scene 20. The Oka Saka Circus, Yokohama, Japan.
ACT II
Scene 1. Movies.
Scene 2. Lola’s, a low place in Lower California.
Scene 3. The Railroad Station in San Francisco.
Scene 4. Movies.
Scene 5. A Passenger Car on the Central Pacific Railway—Somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.
Scene 6. A Perilous Pass at Medicine Bow.
Scene 7. A Water Stop on the Banks of the Republican River.
Scene 8. The Peak of Bald Mountain.
Scene 9. The Harbor, Liverpool, England.
Scene 10. The Gaol in Liverpool.
Scene 11. A Cell in the Liverpool Gaol.
Scene 12. A Street in London.
Scene 13. Outside the London Whist Club.
Scene 14. Grand Table
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