Curley McDimple & Jimmy
(Bayn Johnson & Paul Cahill)
It is the earnest contention of Robert Dahdah, who conceived Curley, wrote its music and lyrics, co-authored the book and then produced and directed it, that producers have forgotten the man who just wants clean, cheerful, lovable entertainmenet.
Dahdah numbers himself among the forgotten. An off-off Broadway director on no special fame, he was led to the creation of Curley by a pair of rather nasty experiences with the avant-garde. First, he went to see something called Gorilla Queen, in the course of which a great ape turns his back to the audience, urinates in a bottle, then sprinkles the audience and makes the sign of the cross. Dahdah had taken a cup of coffee into the theater and was seated near the stage. A little later he attended an experimental theater and was spat upon by six actors on stage apron. "Sick, sick, sick," Dahdah cries as he recounts these traumas. "This is art? This horror? This is what I dedicated my life to?". It's time to bring back Shirley Temple," he recalls saying to himself, and he immediately set about doing so.
Mr. Dahdah had picked Bayn from more than a thousand little girls he had audtioned. But it is perhaps also worth noting that according to Bob Johnson, Bayn's father :
"Bayn became Curley McDimple purely by accident. It all started last summer when a mutual friend of ours and the producer, Robert Dahdah, suggested we have her try out for the part. Just fo a lark, we let her."
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