Will Waspe
Ethel Merman briefly in town, has been talking of the possibility of a London production, of her legendary New York success, Gypsy. The odds, I fear, are against it — and not only because Miss Merman declines to contract for more than a four-month run. Another reason, not talked about in the lady's presence but much in the minds of impresarios who wonder whether they could count on even four months of full houses, is that fourteen years have slipped by since the Broadway opening and Miss Merman will be sixty-four years old this month.
Nominal lapse
After the trouble they had getting the Giuseppe Verdi opera, Macbeth, on ITV screens at Christmas (collapse of Rupert Murdoch), it was bad luck that cultureaspiring Southern Television had to misspell the composer's name.
Lo! Ben Adhem's name
l'he hardest-bargaining showbiz agents zouldn't break LWT's resolve to list everyone alphabetically in announcing their Big Names for 1973: Baxter before Bernstein. Finlay before Frost, Varney before Zeffirelli. Everyone? Well, no, not quite everyone. True, the best way could do for the Earl Marshal was to put him under ' D' for Duke rather than 'N ' for Norfolk; but listed under neither ' H ' nor ' P' and right at the top of the bill was . . . the Prime Minister.
Leg slip
I hear that a reference to Bennett's accident in these notes on December 9 might have been taken to mean that Miss Bennett put forward a false reason for not playing at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs. My paragraph, 1 had thought, conveyed precisely the opposite impression. Miss Bennett, as is well known, broke bones in both her feet as a result of an accident and it was to her great regret, I am assured and do not doubt, that she had, on that account, to withdraw from the Theatre Upstairs production. Miss Jill
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