Dance Of Death: Bob Fosse, Hugh Hefner And The Slaying Of A Playboy Playmate
How the driven Oscar-winning director of Lenny, All That Jazz and Cabaret came to close out his movie career with Star 80, a picture about the doomed centrefold Dorothy Stratten.
A version of this article appeared in The New European.
That the FX drama Fosse/Verdon won four Emmys and a Golden Globe will come as no surprise to anyone who's seen any one of its eight parts. The story of the relationship between meticulous dancer, director and choreographer Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon, the celebrated dancer/actress who was both his muse and his wife, the show charts the pair's triumphant assault on Broadway, a feat that made Verdon but ultimately broke her husband.
Featuring a sensational performance from Michelle Williams as the indomitable Verdon, the programme also showcases career-best work from Sam Rockwell as the compelling, compulsive, sometimes even repulsive Fosse. A martinet in leather boots, Rockwell's Fosse drinks, smokes, drugs and fucks like all four things are about to go out of style. A dead-ringer for the director with his wispy facial hair and evaporating hairline, it was no surprise that the actor added a SAG award to the Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA he won for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
Of course, there's an irony attached to any Fosse memoir since the man dedicated much of his time in Hollywood to putting his life up on the big screen. Transferring from Broadway to Tinsel Town with an ease unseen since Elia Kazan, Fosse's movie career might have begun with a well-executed but unwanted adaptation of his hit stage show Sweet Charity (1967) but he soon became the cock of the walk courtesy of Cabaret (1972).
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