To many moviegoers watching Freakier Friday this weekend, the ‘original’ was the 2003 Freaky Friday with Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis.
But long before, there was a 1976 movie led by stage actress Barbara Harris and child star Jodie Foster – which itself was based on a novel by a showbiz legacy.
The 1972 book Freaky Friday was a smash bestseller by Mary Rodgers, the daughter of beloved Broadway composer Richard Rodgers.
With lyricist Lorenz Hart, he wrote a string of enduring jazz standards like My Funny Valentine, The Lady Is a Tramp and It Never Entered My Mind – and with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein, he reinvented the American musical with such shows as Oklahoma!, Carousel, The King and I, South Pacific and their swan song The Sound of Music.
Mary wryly accepted living in her father’s shadow, picking up the check whenever she was out to eat with friends and waving off anyone’s objections by quipping: ‘When your father writes Oklahoma! you can pay for dinner.’
She herself had a successful life in showbiz, making a star out of one of America’s comedy greats and being best friends with one of Broadway’s leading lights – and even being tangentially connected to a recent celebrity scandal.
To many moviegoers watching Freakier Friday this weekend, the ‘original’ was the 2003 Freaky Friday with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan
The 1972 book Freaky Friday was a smash bestseller by Mary Rodgers, the daughter of the beloved Broadway composer Richard Rodgers; pictured 2022
Mary Rodgers made a splash as a composer in her own right with the 1959 musical Once Upon a Mattress, which catapulted Carol Burnett to fame.
Based on The Princess and the Pea, the Broadway show emerged as an instant hit not only because of Carol’s winning lead performance but also the effervescent score by Mary and lyricist Marshall Barer, plus the giddy book by Jay Thompson.
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The musical also has a link to a recent controversy – namely the rumors that Sutton Foster and Hugh Jackman conducted an extramarital affair that led to his split from his wife Deborra-Lee Furness in September 2023.
Sutton and Hugh had previously starred in The Music Man together on Broadway, but kept their current romance private amid a blizzard of speculation until they were glimpsed this January kissing in the parking lot of an In-N-Out in Los Angeles.
Days before the kiss, though, Hugh was spotted in the audience watching Sutton in a revival of Once Upon a Mattress, pouring fuel on the fan rumors that the pair had become an item.
Mary was also the lifelong best pal of Broadway titan Stephen Sondheim, who wrote the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy as well as both lyrics and music for shows like Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, Company and A Little Night Music.
She even at one point fell in love with Steve despite knowing he was homosexual, and the pair embarked on a brief, disastrous trial marriage in the era before public gay acceptance, as recounted in her posthumously published memoir Shy.
They never legally wed or consummated the relationship, simply laying in bed next to each other ‘frozen with fear,’ before realizing the arrangement was doomed to failure.
Richard Rodgers is pictured at the piano with his daughters Mary and Linda in 1947
Mary Rodgers made a splash as a composer in her own right with the 1959 musical Once Upon a Mattress, which catapulted Carol Burnett to fame; she is pictured in the show
The musical served as the backdrop to a recent controversy – namely the rumors that Sutton Foster and Hugh Jackman conducted an affair; the pair are pictured in 2022
Their friendship managed to survive the misadventure, of which she reflected later: ‘I can’t believe either of us put ourselves through that.’
Mary developed the idea for Freaky Friday while raising her own teenage daughters and realizing to her shock that ‘despite my nutso liberal ways,’ she had become an ‘authority figure’ along the lines of her own exacting mother Dorothy Rodgers.
She was also inspired by Thorne Smith’s ‘vicious and hilarious’ 1931 novel Turnabout, ‘in which a husband and wife switch bodies and the husband gets pregnant.’
Mary wrote her own book about a teenage girl and her mother switching bodies, settling on the title Freaky Friday after toying with the name Funky Friday but deciding against the idea because it sounded too similar to F***y Friday.
The novel was a resounding success and resulted in a 1976 movie adaptation with the daughter played by Jodie Foster, fresh off her breakthrough in Taxi Driver.
Although Mary did a pass on the screenplay of that film and received sole credit, she was mortified at the final result after a claque of Hollywood ‘hacks’ rewrote her script and filled it with what she regarded as ‘sexism’ and ‘sitcommery.’
‘When I finally read the hacks’ polish, I threw it across the room, just like in a movie,’ she recalled. ‘And then they had the nerve to appeal to the Writers Guild for full credit, which I fought for and won. But what did I win? Full credit for the blame. Even though the movie was a hit, I moped around embarrassed about it for years’
However she thought the 2003 version starring Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis was ‘swell,’ and she had particularly warm words for Jamie Lee.
Stage actress Barbara Harris starred in the original 1976 movie of Freaky Friday with child star Jodie Foster, who had broken through earlier that year in Taxi Driver
Mary settled on the title Freaky Friday after mulling the idea of Funky Friday but deciding otherwise because it sounded too similar to F***y Friday; the 1972 first edition is pictured
She remarked that ‘for the first time on film the characters seemed real despite the unreal goings-on, and plucky instead of whiny. A lot of that comes from Curtis.’
Mary added: ‘Have you ever met someone who, after one minute together, you somehow know that anyone who likes you would also like her? And if not, why not? She was one of those people for me.’
In a tantalizing peek at what might have been, Mary also dished that Jamie Lee and Lindsay were playing ‘roles turned down by Annette Bening and Kelly Osbourne.’
Mary died of heart failure in 2014 at the age of 83 with survivors including five children, one of whom – her son Adam Guettel – is also a Broadway composer.