Memories of "Oh, Calcutta!"

1971, but it took another forty years before people were comfortable with nudity onstage.

How did this run so long? The skits were terrible except for "Jack and Jill".

Bill Macy from "Maude" is in "Oh, Calcutta!" He is the gentleman on the far left.

[quote]1971, but it took another forty years before people were comfortable with nudity onstage.

When did that moment happen do you think?

All the men were Jewish. Not a foreskin in sight.

So I take it one of those pesky millennials started this thread.

The guy in the Mickey Mouse t shirt is handsome. Does anyone know who he is?

Saw it when I was 14 with my parents, I was very confused.

R8 Why would your parents take you to that?

[quote]All the men were Jewish. Not a foreskin in sight.

No one had a foreskin then in America.

There was a sign on W. 46th Street advertising this show up until about 5 years ago. It was so high I guess nobody bothered to take it down.

"Sketches were written by, amongst others, Nobel prize winner Samuel Beckett, John Lennon, Sam Shepard, Leonard Melfi, Edna O'Brien, Jules Feiffer, and Tynan himself, and featured the cast naked."

I forgot that Beckett's "Breath" was written as the prologue, and then he withdrew it.

The original cast included Alan Rachins from "La law" and "Dharma & Greg," and Bill Macy from "Maude."

My father and mother went to see it. Years later I asked her if she thought it was sexy at the time, and she said, "No, that really wasn't the point of it... it was that we middle-class middle-aged people felt so left out by the Baby Boomers and the Sexual Revolution when it started... we wanted to see what it was like." I'm not sure if my dad would have said the same thing.

It's OH Kolkata now

[quote]How did this run so long?

1.5 Billion Indians

Oh Kalkata oh don't you cry for me

I come from Californy with the washbowl on my knee

It rained all day the day I left

I yelled and screamed tirades

I fuck him raw, a virgin theft

And now he's got the AIDS

Oh Calcutta, oh don't you cry for me

I've given him all my love and an STD

I saw the San Francisco production. Yes, it turned me on; the guys were better poking than average. Again, the free-wheeling sexual revolution of the 70's gave way to the Thermidorian Reaction of the 80'e and 90's.

There was talk of Burt Reynolds making the movie, but apparently he chickened out. Who would be ideally cast in it today?

Only memory I have is of it being mentioned on a sitcom, I'm thinking either There's Company or Too Close for Comfort.

[quote] Who would be ideally cast in it today?

No one, because it is ridiculously dated and would never get made.

[quote] "Oh, Calcutta!"

It's "Oh! Calcutta!"

I wonder why it's never done at dinner theaters ...

The paperback book had full-frontal photos of the original cast. Alan Rachins (very hairy) and the other guys were hot. Bill Macy looked fine, too - nice bush. They are on the internet if you search.

I saw the long-running revival. Some stupid sketches, but the pas deux had fine choreography, though I didn't care for the music it went with. One of the guys was the standby, and boy was he happy to be performing, and boy, was he beaming! :)

pas de deux, I meant. One sketch was like a Marx Brothers sketch with a volunteer naked guy being monitored as he had sex with a naked girl and being poked with different doctors and nurses all about. That was kind of funny. Lots of famous writers were involved with this.

[quote] Lots of famous writers were involved with this.

So I posted upthread.

and a few famous penises, too! :)

You get some peeks at Bill Macy's schlong up at the video at the top of the thread. I can say honestly that is someone I never once fantasized about seeing nude.

[quote]All the men were Jewish. Not a foreskin in sight.

IIRC, there's a line in the show about this -- there's a number where they intersperse some dancing with audience comments that were supposedly heard at early performances -- one of them was something like,

Person 1: "All the men are circumcised-- must be a Jewish show."

Person 2: "Then let's go to Ratner's for dinner."

No one trimmed back then either. Or, thank heavens, shaved their pubes.

[copied from what might be a competing new Broadway thread, which might not survive:]

More "Oh! Calcutta" memories please! Anyone know guys who did the show and what they did afterwards? Only ones beside Alan Rachins and Bill Macy I've heard of with interesting resumes were Steven Keats (from "Hester Street") and Eddie Phillips, Jr., who had originated "Who's Got the Pain" opposite Gwen Verdon in the original "Damn Yankees" on Broadway.

Here's the original cast off-Broadway.

Some of the original cast did the movie version as well.

Bill Macy is 94 and is married to Samantha Harper, who co-starred in the movie version with him.

The movie is on YouTube.

Here's what I remember reading. Oh Calvitta! is from the French for Oh what a nice ass you have!

R36 It's from a painting, the title of which is "Oh, quel cul t'as." It's a play on words.

[quote]Towards the end of his life, Clovis Trouille experienced a certain success with his painting Oh! Calcutta! Calcutta! (below) which gave its title to the famous comedy musical that had sex as the main topic. Created in Broadway in 1969 by Kenneth Tynan, it starred Samuel Beckett as one of its librettists and John Lennon among its musicians. In Oh! Calcutta! Calcutta! (The French phrase "oh quel cul t'as" translates roughly as "oh what a lovely backside you have"), "the ass forms a perfect circle designed to suggest the conquest of the moon", Trouille explained.

My parents had bought us the Encyclopedia Britannica, and also subscribed to the yearbooks that came out every year. There was a nude photo of George Welbes and some woman, posed in such a way that you could see their butts and chests, but not their genitals. I used that photo for my teen jacking off until I broke the spine on that damn book.

I still have those Britannica yearbooks. I'm going to look that up!

So what was the plot?

I saw it 10 years into its run. Tired, sad and totally unerotic. The only thing I remember is that the only hot guy in the cast had a band-aid on his rather largish dick.

R40 No plot -- it was a series of unrelated sketches.

That's it. Thanks R37

I remember that a DL regular was one of the musical directors for the Broadway revival. I remember him saying that the show was not bad, it was boring.

Also, there was a famous murder/suicide of someone connected with show, I think it was a producer or investor.

No, OP; but it did make feel ripped off! When contributing sketch writers ask to be removed from Playbill's credits, it's a clue!

Margo Sappington (part of the Turkey Lurkey trio in Promises Promises) did the choreography.

Japanese tourists kept the show running. In Japan, nudity on stage was not available. Those horny Japanese businessmen could buy tickets to a Broadway show and see American titties at the same time.

Oh Calcutta oh don't you cry for me

I know spell the name of it, completely diff'rently

Richard Monette, who went on to be Hosanna and the artistic director at the Shakespearean festival at Stratford, Ontario, was in the London cast. Does anyone have pictures of them? Or him?

Trust me. Calcutta was never like that!

Did they ever have any non-white performers? Someone should've presented the black hole of Calcutta.

[quote]Did they ever have any non-white performers?

I wonder if casting was according to penis size? I mean, you really wouldn't want any big-dicked men because nobody would pay any attention to the other performers.

Gawd, I saw that video production. IIRC, it was first broadcast around the country on closed-circuit television. Later, it got some sort of distribution to theaters. It was a mess. Start to finish.

I had wanted to see this show forever. Then when Kim's Video got the videotape of it, I rented it. What a boring piece of shit. I mean there's not one good song in the whole damn thing. It's not even worth being revived by Encores it's so bad.

Bump