Bob Fosse - Later Career

Later Career

Fosse directed five feature films. His first, Sweet Charity in 1969, starring Shirley MacLaine, is an adaptation of the Broadway musical he had directed and choreographed. Fosse shot the film largely on location in Manhattan. His second film, Cabaret, won eight Academy Awards, including Best Director, for which he won over Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather starring Marlon Brando. The film was shot on location in Berlin; Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey both won Oscars for their roles.

Fosse went on to direct Lenny in 1974, a biopic of comic Lenny Bruce starring Dustin Hoffman. The film was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director Oscars, among other awards. But just as Fosse picked up his Oscar for Cabaret, his Tony for Pippin, and an Emmy for directing Liza Minnelli's television concert, Liza with a Z, his health suffered and he underwent open-heart surgery.

In 1979, Fosse co-wrote and directed a semi-autobiographical film All That Jazz, which portrayed the life of a womanizing, drug-addicted choreographer-director in the midst of triumph and failure. All That Jazz won four Academy Awards and earned Fosse his third Oscar nomination for Best Director. It also won the Palme d'Or at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival. In the summer and fall of 1980, working with All That Jazz executive producer Daniel Melnick, Fosse commissioned documentary research for a follow-up feature having to do with the motivations that compel people to become performers, but he found the results uninspiring and abandoned the project.

In All That Jazz, Fosse not only toyed with the notion of his own death, but immortalized the two people who would perpetuate the Fosse legacy, Gwen Verdon and Ann Reinking. Reinking appears in the film as the protagonist's lover/protégé/domestic-partner. She, like Verdon, would be responsible for keeping Fosse's trademark choreography alive after Fosse's death. Reinking played the role of Roxie Hart in the highly successful New York revival of Chicago, which opened in 1996. She choreographed the dances "in the style of Bob Fosse" for that revival, which is still running on Broadway as of November 2012. In 1999, Verdon served as artistic consultant on a plotless Broadway musical designed to showcase examples of classic Fosse choreography. Called simply Fosse, the three-act musical revue was conceived and directed by Richard Maltby, Jr. and Ann Reinking and choreographed by Reinking and Chet Walker. Verdon and Fosse's daughter, Nicole, received a "special thanks" credit. The show won a Tony for best musical. Many credit him with being the sole engineer of Michael Jackson's career for his work on The Little Prince (1974). Many say Michael Jackson may have copied Bob Fosse's choreography and the wardrobe Bob's character had on The Little Prince. In many ways Fosse is credited as the indirect innovator of the careers of many dancers around the world.

His final film, 1983's Star 80, was a controversial biopic about slain Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten. The film is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning article on the same topic. The film was nominated for several awards, and was screened out of competition at the 34th Berlin International Film Festival. In 1986 he directed and choreographed the unsuccessful Broadway production of Big Deal, which he also wrote.