“Even before she died in 1971, Chanel had to witness her life turned into a Broadway musical. At first, she was thrilled that Hepburn would star in ‘Coco.’ When she learned it was Katharine and not Audrey, she was horrified.”
Heh. We were wondering why Coco Chanel is so high on our Who Popular? list this weekend. Turns out that Lifetime is running a new movie about her life, with Shirley MacLaine as the aging Chanel.
Which, as The San Francisco Chronicle points out above, isn’t the first time the Chanel role has been weirdly cast.
The Chronicle piece is a gleeful pan. “Every time you find yourself getting pleasantly lost in the melodrama of the younger Coco’s loves and losses, along comes Shirley with her big, husky Virginia-bred voice to utter idiotic lines of dialogue culled from Chanel sayings.” Ouch!
Turns out the Broadway version of Coco, with Kate Hepburn as Chanel, ran for a respectable 329 performances in 1969-70. (It was a musical!)