Sweet Charity

Sweet Charity
Original Broadway cast recording cover (1966)
Music	Cy Coleman
Lyrics	Dorothy Fields
Book	Neil Simon
Basis	Nights of Cabiria by Federico Fellini Ennio Flaiano Tullio Pinelli Pier Paolo Pasolini
Productions	1966 Broadway 1967 West End 1986 Broadway revival 2005 Broadway revival 2006 US tour 2009 West End revival
Awards	1986 Tony Award for Best Revival

Sweet Charity is a musical with music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Dorothy Fields and book by Neil Simon. It was directed and choreographed for Broadway by Bob Fosse starring his wife and muse Gwen Verdon alongside John McMartin. It is based on the screenplay for the 1957 Italian film Nights of Cabiria. However, whereas Federico Fellini's black-and-white film concerns the romantic ups-and-downs of an ever-hopeful prostitute, in the musical the central character is a dancer-for-hire at a Times Square dance hall. The musical premiered on Broadway in 1966, where it was nominated for nine Tony Awards, winning the Tony Award for Best Choreography. The production also ran in the West End as well as having revivals and international productions.

The musical was adapted for the screen in 1969 with Shirley MacLaine as Charity and John McMartin recreating his Broadway role as Oscar Lindquist in Sweet Charity: The Adventures of a Girl Who Wanted to Be Loved. For Bob Fosse, who directed and choreographed, the film was his feature-film directorial debut.