Sweet Charity 60 No. 1 - The Inception

Photo by Ralph Morse for LIFE Magazine, 1966

From Life Magazine, March 25, 1966 by Thomas Thompson:

"Last year, Gwen decided she wanted to return to the stage [after a 5 year retirement], and Fosse started searching for an idea. One day they went to see a Fellini movie called Nights of Canaria. One their way home afterward, Gwen said: ‘It didn’t do a thing for me.’ But it did something for Bob. He stayed up all night working out a musical treatment for the plot. Fellini’s heroine, a heart-of-gold prostitute, became a Broadway taxi dancer—Sweet Charity. ‘He woke me up at 6 to show me what he had done, and I loved it,’ says Gwen.

"The show went into production. At rehearsals the cast never tired of watching Fosse create dancers for his wife. ‘Bob shows her the first step, said one chorus dancer. ‘Her face lights up and instinctively she will do the second step. They read each other’s minds.’ But they have never learned how to leave their work at the theater. During rehearsals, they would usually pop in for a midnight sandwich at Dinty Moore’s. Then, as waiters cleared the tables and scrubbed up, Bob and Gwen would go to Dinty’s kitchen and rehearse. Bob often took to waking up in the middle of the night, bounding out of bed and  trying out a new step. ‘He used to try to get me up, too,’ says Gwen. ‘I tried, but when I’m out, I’m out. Next morning, I had usually forgotten everything. Now he just lets me sleep.’”

Bob and Gwen during the recording of the cast album for Sweet Charity