Lorelei (musical)

Lorelei
2003 Decca combined cast recordings release
Music	Jule Styne
Lyrics	Adolph Green and Betty Comden (new songs) Leo Robin (songs from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes)
Book	Kenny Solms and Gail Parent
Basis	Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Productions	1974 Broadway

Adolph Green and Betty Comden (new songs)

Lorelei is a musical with a book by Kenny Solms and Gail Parent, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and music by Jule Styne. It is a revision of the Joseph Fields-Anita Loos book for the 1949 production Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and includes many of the Jule Styne-Leo Robin songs written for the original.

The 1974 Broadway production of Lorelei, directed by Robert Moore and starring Carol Channing, ran for 320 performances.

Subtitled Gentlemen Still Prefer Blondes, it opens with the title character, a heavily-bejeweled, very wealthy widow, about to set sail on the SS Ile de France. The moment reminds her of a past voyage she took with her best friend and fellow showgirl Dorothy Shaw, and in a flashback we relive their madcap adventures after Lorelei's plans to marry Gus Esmond are derailed by his father and the two women sail from New York City to Paris and settle in at the Hôtel Ritz.

In 1973 Carol Channing, who had originated the role of Lorelei Lee in 1949, reprised her role when Lorelei premiered in Oklahoma City at the (6000 seat) Civic Center Music Hall and broke box office records after six straight days of performances sold out within 24 hours. Lorelei then toured the country for nearly a year and earned a tidy profit. According to Steven Suskin, writing in Playbill, "Channing did great business in some places, and only so-so in others; the star pleased audiences, by and large, but the show didn't. If the show had impressive grosses along the way, it also had outsized costs as they added songs and threw out songs along the way."