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“Alright Mr DeMille, I’m ready for my close up.”
From the silent era to the talkies, get to know the story that defined Hollywood fame forever, and the stars that made it along the way. Stephen A Russell uncovers Sunset Boulevard's long road to the Joan Sutherland Theatre stage from its origins in Billy Wilder's classic 1950 film.
It’s a heck of a bold move, asking any great woman to step into the shoes of faded star Norma Desmond, the tragi-comic figure at the heart of Billy Wilder’s 1950 Hollywood classic film Sunset Boulevard, adapted for the stage by musical theatre legend Andrew Lloyd Webber and now presented by Opera Australia and GWB Entertainment at the Sydney Opera House. Sarah Brightman, the original Christine Daaé from The Phantom of the Opera, returns to the stage to lead this lavish production, directed by Paul Warwick Griffin.
On the one hand, it’s the role of a lifetime. A truly iconic turn depicting a goddess of the silent movie era still living in the lap of luxury. On the other, it’s a loaded gun. Norma, a once-towering figure, has fallen from the public eye and can’t let go of her past glory, enlisting reluctant writer Joe Gillis (Tim Draxl) to rework her garbled attempt at a film adaptation of Salome so that she can step into the spotlight once more. But in so doing, she becomes increasingly, obsessively unhinged, falling hard for him and her impossible dream.
“She was the greatest of them all! You wouldn’t know, you’re too young. In one week she received 17,000 fan letters. Men bribed her hairdresser to get a lock of her hair. There was a Maharaja who came all the way from India to beg one of her silk stockings. Later he strangled himself with it.”
“I am big! It’s the pictures that got small.”
Norma Desmond, Sunset Boulevard
Sarah Brightman’s starring role
“Sarah Brightman has been offered opportunities to come back to the stage more times than I could contemplate, and she’s turned them down every time. On this occasion, it felt to her to be the right thing to do at the right time, and I’m very, very grateful for that.”
Paul Warwick Griffin, director of Sunset Boulevard at the Sydney Opera House
Sarah Brightman as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard
Sarah Brightman as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard
“The reality is that the role [of Norma Desmond] is somebody who knows what it is to have been extraordinary,” Paul Warwick Griffin, director of Sunset Boulevard, says. “And that is true of both Sarah and Andrew, not that either of them are lacking in fame now. Sarah went on, post-Phantom of the Opera, to this extraordinary crossover career where she was the top-selling soprano in the world. She created a performance identity like nothing that had been seen before. She is undeniable.”
Anyone who has heard ‘Time to Say Goodbye’, Brightman’s chart-topping duet with revered Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, or seen her two Olympic Games ceremony performances, would agree — undeniable. The ideal star to tackle the fame and complicated grandeur of Norma Desmond then.
“Something I’ve learned about Sarah is that she’s a very brave woman who isn’t scared to push the boundaries of her comfort zone,” Griffin says. “It’s not so easy to find a great star who hasn’t been on this kind of stage for 30 years, though she has excelled in a different arena. And it’s a musical, so you do need somebody who has been singing, otherwise you’re in trouble.”
And what a way to mark her return to musical theatre. “She’s playing an iconic role at the Sydney Opera House, arguably one of the world’s most iconic theatres,” Griffin says. “It was a mad idea that I don’t think anyone really thought would get across the finish line, or even out the front door, but she’s incredibly excited to return to Australia.”
The original Phantom cast: Michael Crawford as Phantom and Sarah Brightman as Christine in The Phantom of the Opera, 1986.
The original Phantom cast: Michael Crawford as Phantom and Sarah Brightman as Christine in The Phantom of the Opera, 1986.
By the numbers:
7 Tonys won
4 years on West End, 3 years on Broadway, with 2 revivals in each
32 men's ties
12 Norma Desmond costume changes
17 steps on the famous staircase
From the silent era to the talkies
Abandoning law to become a filmmaker, Austrian-born filmmaker Billy Wilder established his career in Germany before fleeing the rise of the Nazi Party in 1933, landing eventually in Hollywood via Paris.
With the world’s brightest stars orbiting Wilder’s genius, he was spoiled for choice when it came to casting Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. Looking to the silent era’s once-glorious leading ladies, Clara Bow and Pola Negri were both considered. Depending on who you believe, Talkie-upstarts Greta Garbo and Mae West were offered the role, but ultimately silent screen queen Gloria Swanson signed on the dotted line.
As Wilder notes in Ed Sikov’s sassy biography On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder, “This was a star who at one time was carried in a sedan chair from her dressing room to the soundstage”. This is an image mirrored in Sunset Boulevard when Swanson’s Norma Desmond shows up at the Paramount Pictures lot and perches regally in the director’s chair set aside for real-life titan of Hollywood Cecil B. DeMille, thoroughly enjoying his cameo.
George Cukor, who directed Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in Holiday, helped Wilder secure Swanson, with Paramount so happy at her return to the fold they popped her likeness on a giant billboard on the studio façade. While there was talk of casting Montgomery Clift as Joe, ultimately Wilder went with William Holden, saving Paramount a pretty penny. Holden nails the role of an unreliable narrator, leaning into the film’s noir beats, right down to tragedy in a swimming pool.
Barbara Stanwyck is said to have kissed the hem of Swanson’s dress at the film’s first preview screening in Hollywood. Nominated in all four Academy Award acting categories but taking home none, Swanson lost out to wildcard Judy Holiday for Born Yesterday – the vote was likely split with Bette Davis’ All About Eve. Sunset Boulevard did take home a hat trick of Oscars, however: Best Art Direction for its lavish sets, Best Music for Bride of Frankenstein composer Franz Waxman, and Best Screenplay for Wilder, Brackett and their co-writer D.M. Marshman Jr.
Ashleigh Rubenach and Tim Draxl in Sunset Boulevard.
Ashleigh Rubenach and Tim Draxl in Sunset Boulevard.
“I didn’t know you were planning a comeback.”
Joe Gillis, Sunset Boulevard
“I hate that word. It’s a return, a return to the millions of people who have never forgiven me for deserting the screen.”
Norma Desmond, Sunset Boulevard
Rocky road to the stage
You might think that the film’s lasting critical and popular success would have eased Sunset Boulevard’s transition to the stage, but the road to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s glory is littered with failed attempts. Starting, somewhat spookily, with Swanson in 1953.
In a blurring of fact and fiction, Swanson had hoped to get a Broadway show up and running with her in the lead role, naturally, recruiting younger writers Dickson Hughes, a cabaret star, and actor Richard Stapley. She promptly fell head over heels for Stapley, but much like Joe Gillis only had eyes for the script reader Betty, Stapley was hot for Hughes.
That wasn’t the only strange reflection of reality. Just as Paramount had no intention of green-lighting Norma’s Salome, the real-life studio bosses knew they had a glittering prize in Sunset Boulevard and didn’t want a stage show competing with any re-release. Paramount’s recalcitrance thwarted many along the way, including Webber’s initial interest.
Another titan of musical theatre, the late, great Stephen Sondheim also considered flinging his hat in the ring during the ‘60s at the urging of kingmaker Hal Prince. But it’s said he was dissuaded by none other than Wilder himself, who insisted the only way to tackle it on stage was as an opera [Opera Australia was clearly listening]. Sondheim also turned down an opportunity to remake the film with Angela Lansbury in the lead.
Thank goodness Webber persisted, conjuring the grand score we adore today with a book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton. The musical first opened in London’s West End with the magnificent mezzo-soprano Patti LuPone in the lead role. Fellow Tony Award-winner Glenn Close stepped in for the Los Angeles and Broadway runs. Close has been tipped to star in a remake of the movie for many years now, but this production appears to be stuck in limbo.
Other incredible stars who have inhabited Norma include local legend Debra Byrne in the first Australian production – alongside Hugh Jackman’s Joe – British pop star Petula Clark, Webber regular Elaine Paige and West Side Story queen Rita Moreno. Nicole Scherzinger, the former lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls nominated for an Olivier Award for her role in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 2015 production of Cats, appeared from 2023 in an award-winning season on the West End, bound for Broadway this September.
Hitting the high notes
Griffin first saw Elaine Paige and then Tony-winner Betty Buckley in the Webber musical at the Adelphi in London and was overwhelmed. “It’s arguably one of Andrew’s best scores, it’s so extraordinary and sweeping, and that grandeur is perfectly met by the story’s emotional arc. I find it fascinating when you take human beings and put them in a grape press, really ratcheting up the stakes.”
The musical ramps up the tension by keeping the players in Norma’s palatial but smothering mansion until her ill-fated appearance at the Paramount lot. “Chris Hampton was the one who decided that would be more effective,” Griffin says. “In the film, when she goes shopping for Joe, they drive out into the streets of LA, but in the stage version, she’s still potent and wealthy enough as an individual to actually summon everyone to the house. But the film is still so much a part of the DNA of the show, and in my psyche, they cross-pollinate.”
That includes Joe’s narration, and that spectacular underwater pool shot opener that was a ground-breaking camera effect back in 1950, recreated by set and costume designer Morgan Large, who also ensures Brightman looks sublime as Norma.
“You can’t put Sarah Brightman on the stage and not costume the hell out of her,” Griffin says. “Sarah alone has an eye-watering amount of costume changes, to the point that the superstructure of the house is having to be built with quick change areas upstairs and downstairs. We’re talking the full package, from a design point of view, and we’re having a lot of fun.”
When Brightman takes the Sydney Opera House stage, backed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, you know it will be spectacular. “The brief was always to create something that felt opulent of scale, that would feel very much at home in a venue as iconic as the Opera House,” Griffin says. “I can’t help but be excited by the challenge.”
The iconic Sarah Brightman stars as the immortal Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical masterpiece Sunset Boulevard at the Sydney Opera House now playing until 1 November 2024.
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