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1996, with Nathan Lane, who also won a Tony award for the role, later
Whoopi Goldberg, and finally David Alan Grier, starring as the wily
Pseudolus.
Making the Movie
The screen version of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,
directed by Richard Lester (1932–), is a hilarious appropriation of the
most entertaining elements of several different comic and musical traditions,
while also offering a vigorous and pointed parody of the classic
Roman epic spectacular of the previous decade. Based on Sondheim’s
multi-Tony award-winning stage musical, Lester’s film preserves the
ebullience and merriment of the Broadway play in its use of most of the
original songs, such as “Comedy Tonight,” “I’m Lovely,” and “Everybody
Ought to Have a Maid,” and earned the film’s only Oscar for composer
Ken Thorne for Best Adapted Score (Solomon, 2001a, 285–7). The film
maintains the rambunctious feel of the ancient Roman comic stage, with a
wild plot full of mistaken identities, disguises, cross-dressing, domestic
and sexual entanglements, and several humorous characters familiar from
both the Roman and Broadway comic stages. The poor, henpecked husband
Senex (“Old Man”), played with weary detachment by British character
actor Michael Hordern, is constantly criticized by his dictatorial wife
Domina (“Boss Lady”), played by Tony award-winning actress Patricia
Jessel. With a jaded sigh, Senex tells his wife’s household slave, the sycophantic
Hysterium (“Crybaby”), played by comedian Jack Gilford: “A lesson
to remember – never fall in love during a total eclipse.”
Gilford, reprising his Broadway role for the film, had many successes
on the stage before turning to the screen, despite being blacklisted in the
1950s; he is familiar to audiences from his long-running 1960s television
commercial for Cracker Jack and such popular films as Cocoon (1988).
The couple’s lovesick son Hero is played by young British singer Michael
Crawford, who would go on to win a Tony award in 1988 for his role in
Phantom of the Opera, and his heart’s desire is the virgin-courtesan Philia
(“Lovey”), played by Australian ingénue Annette Andre. As the swaggering
captain Miles Gloriosus (“Arrogant Soldier”), Australian actor Leon
Greene fills his first film role with his deep voice and towering masculinity:
“Stand aside everyone – I take large steps.” Phil Silvers takes the role of
the entrepreneurial pimp Marcus Lycus (“Wolf ”), after a long career on
stage and in films.
168 A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM (1966)