The British composer Leslie Bricusse was known for his movie themes (Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice), film scores (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Scrooge) and stage musicals (Stop the World – I Want to Get Off.)
Following his death in 2021, Leslie’s archive has been donated to the US Library of Congress by his widow – including notes for a musical based on Norman Mailer’s ‘factoid biography’, Marilyn, as Fine Books & Collectors reports.
“This collection includes recordings, scripts, photographs, sheet music and songbooks, and approximately 225 detailed and comprehensive notebooks. These include lyric sketches, music sketches, drafts of scripts, ideas for casting and directors, ideas for shows, notes from meetings, questions he poses to himself and the answers he gives.
The items are all handwritten in beautiful calligraphy, pencil and variously colored pens. Most pages are not only numbered and dated but also include a note on where he was geographically at the time. Single lyric sketches run to more than 30 pages, with music sketches in the margins using a unique system for notating melodies.”
Although this 1979 project was quickly shelved, Mailer’s controversial bestseller was adapted for television a year later – while his daughter, Kate Mailer, would star in Strawhead, his non-musical play about Marilyn, in 1986.
Marilyn made it to Broadway in 1983, but without Bricusse or Mailer’s involvement. Wally Harper’s Marilyn: An American Fable opened at the Minskoff Theatre in mid-November, but folded after just 17 performances.
Meanwhile, Mort Garson’s Marilyn! The Musical opened in London’s West End in March 1983. That production was also panned, but its talented leading lady Stephanie Lawrence helped to draw in theatregoers for several months.
The Marilyn Report 