So Proudly We Gross

Politics makes strange box office. A few years ago, the new wave in show biz was the anti-Establishment rock musical Hair and its tribe of imitators. Now comes the hyper-American backlash. George M! was a smash on the road and appeared again as an NBC-TV adaptation. The film Patton has grossed $9,000,000 in nine months. Last week the latest and most patriotic show yet, a musical revue titled So Proudly We Hail, was playing at--of all places --the Sahara Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.

It was not merely one of the supporting lounge acts; they were the "Stopless Topless Skin" and the "Va Va Va Voom" go-go shows. So Proudly was the headline attraction in the hotel's main Congo Room. The nine girls in its 18-member troupe were, of course, not topless or even braless, but all in shimmering red and white. Their show was 90 minutes of All-Americana, professionally rendered, "saluting what's good and right in America." They hymned what Choral Director Johnny Mann called "purty stuff, sentimental stuff and nostalgia," including Roaring Twenties tunes, a historical recitative, an armed-forces medley, and (two black members of the company notwithstanding) Dixie.

Mann and Co-Producer Jerry Frank, who previously worked together on ABC's Joey Bishop Show, always knew that they would someday hit big casino. Frank says he was inspired by football crowds that "went bananas" during flag-waving numbers at half time and by the emergence of Middle America. "When that man said 'Silent Majority,' he was right. They are silent. Someone has got to make them jump out of their shells and start screamin', because they're just waiting for someone to give them the spark." Mann's inspiration was more personal. "I'm a hamburger," he confesses. "My greatest joy in the world is to sit home on a Sunday afternoon, listen to a patriotic album or album of alma mater songs, maybe have a drink and just cry."

While the show was in rehearsal, the producers offered it to the Nixon Administration. Their premiere took place at a White House luncheon, and their next gig was a Memphis fund-raising banquet where they played opposite the va-va-va-voom rhetoric of Spiro Agnew. A follow-up Tennessee State Fair appearance was taped for presentation on the Ed Sullivan Show. All that will ultimately lead, Mann hopes, to an original-cast album, a cross-country tour and a weekly TV series. The whole prospect, he says, gives him goose pimples.

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