Exactly one year after the opening of Sweet Charity on Broadway. And, as Bob Fosse approached his first day of filming the movie version of the show, he knew he had something to prove. After all, Sweet Charity was his baby. Around five years earlier, he'd had the idea of making a Broadway musical of Nights of Cabiria, the 1957 Federico Fellini film in which an Italian prostitute still hopes to find true love, no matter how many times it's eluded her. And what a great role for his wife, Gwen Verdon. She'd already played a shady lady on Broadway in Can-Can, Damn Yankees, and New Girl in Town.
   When Fosse began working on the libretto, he knew that "the oldest profession" might keep some theatergoers from embracing Charity, so he l smartly gave her a new one - that of a Times Square dance hall "hostess."  He paired youngish jazz and theater composer, Cy Coleman with of pro lyricist Dorothy Fields. And look what they came up with! "Big Spender," the mantra for the other dance hall hostesses. (Even before the show opened, Peggy Lee recorded that one.) "There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This," in which Charity and her pals Nickie and Helene dance up a storm as they vow to find new jobs. (Sylvia Syms - Frank Sinatra's favorite singer - chose that one.) Barbra Streisand decided to do not only "Where Am I Going?" - Charity's cry of woe - but also "You Wanna Bet?" And Tony Bennett had success with his recording of "Baby, Dream Your Dream."
   The libretto didn't come as easily to Fosse, so he replaced himself with the dependable Neil Simon, who had just opened The Odd Couple on Broadway while his Barefoot in the Park was still packing them in. Three veteran producers - Robert Fryer, Lawrence Carr, and Sylvia Harris - decided to make Sweet Charity their first-ever co-production. But the cherry on the sundae was that the Palace Theatre, the legendary vaudeville mecca that had been booking films and hadn't seen a live performer in years, would be refurbished to host Sweet Charity, its first-ever book musical. No question: this was the show to beat for the 1965-66 Broadway season. And beaten it was. During its Detroit tryout in November 1965, a show with no expectations, Man of La Mancha, sneaked into New York and overwhelmed most everyone. Charity pulled in good notices out-of-town, but on the morning of January 30, 1966, Fosse read decent if unexceptional reviews from the six New York critics.                  
   When the Tony nominations were announced, Sweet Charity received eight, as did Mame, while La Mancha, nabbed seven. But La Mancha won five, including Best Musical, and Mame got three - including one for Angela Lansbury as Best Actress in a Musical - sending Verdon to her first-ever Tony defeat. Fosse could be assuaged that he won for Best Choreography but by this point one win was little consolation. Two important people, though, still had faith in Sweet Charity. Joseph E. Levine paid $2 million for the film rights. Shirley MacLaine wanted to star - and even chose Fosse, who'd never directed a movie, to helm it. Part of that, Fosse knew, was MacLaine's returning a favor. Back in 1954, Fosse, in his first choreographic assignment on Broadway, cast MacLaine in the chorus of The Pajama Game. MacLaine also understudied the heralded Carol Haney, who sang and danced "Steam Heat" and "Hernando's Hideaway." The night that Hollywood producer Hal Wallis came to see Haney, she was unable to perform. MacLaine was able to, however, and she got the five-year contract with Wallis that Haney had envisioned.
   But there was another problem. How could Fosse even consider filming Sweet Charity without the woman for whom he created it? But Verdon bowed out, and was even gracious enough to work with MacLaine on the film's dance routines. Neil Simon begged off from writing the screenplay so Fosse hired Peter Stone - an Oscar-winner for Father Goose and Edgar-winner for Charade - to take time off from writing his new Broadway musical, 1776. Stone added a fascinating, if heartbreaking scene in which Charity goes to an employment agency in hopes of getting something better than what she has - and is humiliated by the office interviewer, who's stunned that she has no skills at all. When he suspects that this just has to be a practical joke played by a co-worker, Charity bravely pretends that he's right just to get out of there with some face saved.
   Stone also decided to change the ending from the stage show, which few had liked. For after Oscar, the boyfriend, dumped Charity her fairy godmother appeared. At least that's what Charity thought when she saw a gold-caped, silver-slippered lady carrying a wand. But then the lady turned around, and on her back was a sign saying, "Watch `The Good Fairy' tonight on CBS" - before a sign over the action told us, "And she lived hopefully ever after." Stone suggested having Oscar return so that Charity could live happily ever after, but that wasn't Fosse's style at all. Real life wasn't that neat. The two hadn't resolved the matter when shooting started. Still, Fosse was happy he'd landed two other Hollywood stars in small roles. Ricardo Montalban would be Italian movie star Vittorio Vidal, with whom Charity enjoys a chance meeting. Better still, to play Big Daddy Johan Sebastian Brubeck. the head of The Rhythm of Life Church, he had Sammy Davis, Jr. Granted, Davis would only be on screen for a bit more than seven minutes, but his scene would count. (His appearance would certainly count in the billing department, too. His type-size was exactly the same as MacLaine's.) In a nod to Broadway, Fosse cast John McMartin to recreate his original stage role as Oscar, and hired theatre veteran Chita Rivera to play the part of Nickie, Charity's dance-hall hostess friend.
   As is Hollywood's wont, the Broadway score underwent changes. Dorothy Fields wrote two new lyrics. "My Personal Property" was Charity's goodnatured tune to Charlie, a man she loved - before he pushed her into a Central Park lake. (It replaced "You Should See Yourself.") Later, when Charity meets Oscar in an elevator, she decides "It's a Nice Face." (It subbed for "I'm the Bravest Individual.") Cy Coleman took the existing song "Sweet Charity" and then devised a completely new melody for it - thus changing a standard ballad into a jaunty and joyous up-tempo tune. Fosse had seen how the film versions of musicals on which he'd been choreographer - The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees - had been awfully stage-bound. He wasn't going to let that happen to his Sweet Charity. The film is chock-a-block with cinematic devices - zoom-ins, zoom-outs, freeze frames of grainy photos, slo-mo shots, and even an underwater sequence when Charlie throws Charity into the lake. Fosse filmed Stone's ending in which Oscar returns to a distraught Charity in the park, falls into that lake, and has to be rescued by her. But Fosse didn't like it. With filming nearing completion, Stone wrote a scene in which Charity, dumped by Oscar, meets some flower children, accepts their platitudes of love, and does live hopefully ever after. That's the bittersweet scene that Fosse chose for final release.
   Sweet Charity got the full Hollywood treatment: A "hard-ticket," reserved-seat engagement. An overture before the credits came on the screen. An intermission. An entr'acte. And while the picture would be released in February, 1969, the ads boasted that it was "The Musical Motion Picture of the '70s." Wishful thinking. Critics felt "there's gotta be something better than this," and audiences agreed. The reserved seat engagement was soon changed to a drop-in-any-time schedule. Just as Sweet Charity didn't have a happy ending for its heroine, it didn't have one for its director, either. Part of the problem was that Sweet Charity was released shortly after audiences decided that they'd had quite enough of Big Movie Musicals, thank you. Camelot, Star!, Finian's Rainbow, Paint Your Wagon, and Dr. Doolittle did little business. Sweet Charity would follow in their wake - and funeral.              
   Studio executives were so desperate that they ordered a new ad campaign - which resulted in one of the strangest about-faces in Hollywood history. The artwork in which MacLaine, Davis, and the dancehall girls dominated a Manhattan skyline was replaced with a picture of the tough-looking women in their "Big Spender" poses. And what did the copy on the ads state? "Men Called Her Sweet Charity" and "Meet The Professionals" - an attempt to make the musical appear to be a hard-hitting expose of a prostitute. The bait-and-switch did not work. Fosse had gone $3 million over his $7 million budget, and the picture lost all $10 million. It would be three years before Bob Fosse directed another film, 1972's Cabaret. As Cy Feuer, producer of that film remembers, "[Fosse] knew that I was producing the movie and he wanted to direct it. He was kinda desperate.. .and was considered unemployable by the studios."
   Feuer's taking a chance on him revitalized Fosse's film career. The highly regarded Lenny and All That Jazz would follow. As a result, cineastes took another look at Sweet Charity and realized that Fosse had worked some wonders with the camera. Now, in most books that rank movies the film routinely gets three stars. Not just the film, but the fate of Sweet Charity turned out to have two endings, too - first a bad one, now a better one. So here it is, your personal property for fun, laughs, good time: the original soundtrack album of Sweet Charity.