Hair: stage vs screen

Milos Forman's 1979 film of Hair stars John Savage as Claude, Treat Williams as Berger, and Beverly D'Angelo as Sheila. The stage show opened on Broadway in 1968, with a book and lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado and music by Galt MacDermot. Michael Weller's screenplay keeps the tribe, the draft, and much of the score, but it rebuilds the story around different people. Here are the biggest changes.

Stage

Broadway musical (1968)

Screen

Hair (1979), directed by Milos Forman

1. Claude is an Oklahoma draftee, not a New Yorker

On stage, Claude is a member of the tribe who pretends to be from Manchester, England, and rebels against his parents and the draft. In the film, John Savage plays Claude Hooper Bukowski, an innocent draftee from Oklahoma who arrives in New York to be inducted and meets the hippies by chance. The film turns the story into an outsider's first look at the tribe.

2. Sheila becomes a debutante

The stage Sheila is a New York University student and political activist who lives with the tribe, leads its protest chants, and is hung up on Berger. In the film, Beverly D'Angelo plays Sheila Franklin, a wealthy debutante from Short Hills, New Jersey, who catches Claude's eye. Later the tribe plays a prank on her, taking her clothes while she is skinny-dipping, and Claude falls out with Berger over it.

3. Berger, not Claude, goes to Vietnam

On stage, Claude is drafted and appears at the end in uniform, an invisible figure the tribe cannot see. In the film, Claude reports to the draft board and is sent to basic training in Nevada. The tribe drives west to visit him, and Berger cuts his hair and puts on a uniform so he can stand in for Claude at a headcount. The base suddenly ships out, Berger is flown to Vietnam in Claude's place, and he is killed there.

4. The ending moves to Arlington

The stage show ends with the tribe singing "The Flesh Failures" and "Let the Sun Shine In" while Claude, now an invisible spirit in uniform, is left lying at center stage. At the curtain call the cast brings audience members up to dance. The film ends months later at Berger's grave in Arlington National Cemetery, where Claude, Sheila, and the tribe gather as "Let the Sunshine In" plays, followed by footage of a mass peace protest in Washington, D.C.

5. Songs move to new singers

On stage, Claude leads the tribe in "I Got Life" after his parents hand him his draft notice. In the film, Treat Williams's Berger sings it while the tribe crashes Sheila's debutante party. "Easy to Be Hard," Sheila's lament about Berger on stage, goes to Cheryl Barnes as Hud's fiancee, a character the film adds along with Hud's young son, LaFayette Jr. Beverly D'Angelo's Sheila sings "Good Morning Starshine."

6. Songs shortened, cut, and added

Ten stage songs are left out of the film, including "The Bed," "Oh Great God of Power," "Dead End," "Air," and "Frank Mills." Five of them, among them "Abie Baby" and "What a Piece of Work Is Man," were recorded for the film and then cut, though they appear on the soundtrack album. Verses of "Manchester, England" and part of "Walking in Space" were trimmed. MacDermot wrote "Somebody to Love" for the film, where it plays as background music at the army base.

7. Bigger orchestrations and Twyla Tharp's dances

The stage score was played by a jazz combo. The film gives many numbers fuller horn and string arrangements, and Twyla Tharp choreographed the dance scenes with her own dancers. Filming took place in October 1977 across New York City, including Central Park and Washington Square Park, as well as in the Mojave Desert, Barstow, and Washington, D.C.

8. A lighter, more comic tone

The stage show centers on the peace movement and the tribe's tangled relationships, and Act I ends with a Be-In, burning draft cards, and a brief nude scene. The film keeps a Central Park Be-In, but it leans toward the hippies' carefree antics and a more conventional romance. Ragni and Rado disliked the result, saying it made the hippies look like oddballs cut off from the peace movement.

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