f ‘The world belongs to the young?’: Age and the golden age diva in Coco (1969) and Applause (1970)

Among the most pervasive mythologies of the Broadway diva is her evocation of indomitable agelessness. This article considers two musicals that both affirm and complicate the myth of the invincible Broadway diva by focusing explicitly on the ageing of their female protagonists: 1969’s Coco, a bio-musical about the life of Coco Chanel, starring Katharine Hepburn; and 1970’s Applause, based on All About Eve, starring Lauren Bacall as Margo Channing. Engaging with the cultural contexts of the women’s liberation movement and the Vietnam-era Broadway nostalgia boom, both Coco and Applause appeared as glamorous comeback vehicles for their late-middle-aged, Old Hollywood stars. In the musicals’ frank obsession with age, and with the ageing body of the diva, Coco and Applause both anticipated Sondheim’s Follies (1971), and channelled their creators’ anxieties about the fading cultural status of the Broadway musical (and its Old Hollywood counterparts) in the face of the youthful counterculture.