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With very big sparkly shoes that were first filled by Ethel Merman back in 1959 on Broadway, then Rosalind Russell on the big screen in 1962, plus Angela Lansbury winning a Tony in 1974 …. followed by Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters, Imelda Staunton etc etc 32-year-old Chris Colfer is the one whose performance of Rose’s Turn actually made the Billboard Charts .
In case you are not a showtune fan (!) we are talking about Gypsy, “the mother of all musicals,” with book by Arthur Laurents, music by Jule Styne, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, that opened at the Broadway Theatre on May 21, 1959 The show had two superb roles for women singers… the younger being Gypsy Rose Lee a famous stripper…..and her dominating mother Rose who pushed her into stardom.
Rose’s big ‘number’ in the show is when she sings about her regret for making Gypsy the star she thought she should have been. Rose’s Turn is a powerful show-stopping number that always brings the house down.
To our knowledge, this is the first time a male has stolen the limelight and made Rose’s Turn his very own.
He is Chris Colfer who appeared on the TV show Glee as Kurt Hummel, a gay McKinley High School student, and member of the New Directions. Colfer appeared in all six seasons of the show which ran from 2009 to 2015. Towards the end of the first season Kurt, who is out to everyone at this point, tries to bond with his father Burt (Mike O’Malley) by acting more like him (re straight). However, things don’t go well for Kurt leading to him singing ‘Rose’s Turn’
Now some 14 years later it really is Kurt’s Turn and his version of the song entered the TikTok Billboard Top 50 chart at the end of February. Currently, it occupies the number 3 spot on the chart, one spot higher than Beyoncé’s ‘Texas Hold’Em’. Take a look/listen
Labels: 2024, Billboard Chart, Chris Colfer, Glee, Gypsy, Rose's Turn
