516. SWEET FEET. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

Florence Lacey. (Photo: Stanley L. Franzos.)

SWEET FEET [Musical/Films/Period/Sex] B: Dan Graham; M/LY: Don Brockett; S/L: James French; C: Tom Fallon; P: Proscenium Productions, Inc.; T: New Theatre (OB); 5/25/72-5/28/72 (6)

Today’s entry, which can be swiftly disposed of, was an intimate musical set on a bare stage with just a piano for accompaniment.

Sweet Feet parodies the world of 1940s Hollywood as seen through the eyes of the eponymous starlet (Florence Lacey). All the characters are oversexed and there are various bits of heavy farce, including a drag routine. Howard Thompson described the dramatis personae thusly: “There's Sweet Feet, an ingénue clearly marked for stardom, a director with a Transylvanian accent, the greasy-looking studio owner, a cherubic‐faced prop boy and a muscular moron who plays Tarzan. Add, emphatically, the studio superstar, a tarantula vamp.” Thompson and his colleagues were turned off by the “anemic” quality of this “excruciating” experience.

Cast members included Bert Lloyd, book writer Dan Graham, Barney McKenna, Scott Burns, John Dorish, and, as the "tarantula vamp," Lenora Nemetz. The pianist was Marty Goetz.

Up next: Sylvia Plath