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- I, Don Quixote is a non-musical play written for television and directed by . It was broadcast in season 3 of the CBS anthology series DuPont Show of the Month on the evening of November 9, 1959. Written by Dale Wasserman, the play was converted by him ca. 1964 into the libretto for the stage musical Man of La Mancha, with songs by Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion. After a tryout at Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut, Man of La Mancha opened in New York on November 22, 1965, at the ANTA Washington Square Theatre. The title of the 1959 teleplay was originally Man of La Mancha, but sponsor DuPont Corp. objected and producer David Susskind changed it to the more specific I, Don Quixote, fearing that the TV audience would not know who Wasserman was referring to if the original title was used. Wasserman reported that he disliked this title "to this very day". When the teleplay was made into the famous stage musical, the original title Man of La Mancha was restored. I, Don Quixote has almost exactly the same plot and even much of the same dialogue as Man of La Mancha. Even the famous opening two lines of La Mancha's hit song The Impossible Dream appeared in this teleplay. According to academic research by Cervantes scholar Howard Mancing, these lines and a few others were originally written for the now-forgotten 1908 play Don Quixote by Paul Kester. Wasserman, however, always claimed that the lines were his own, despite the allegation that they appeared in print six years before he was born. Wasserman himself noted that he had tried to cut the impossible dream speech from the teleplay due to a need to fit the performance into the 90 minute slot, but that Lee J. Cobb, who played both Miguel de Cervantes and Don Quixote, had insisted it go back in. I, Don Quixote starred, in addition to Cobb, Colleen Dewhurst (in her first major role) as Aldonza/Dulcinea, Eli Wallach as Cervantes' manservant as well as Sancho Panza, and Hurd Hatfield as Sanson Carrasco as well as a character called The Duke. (en)
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- I, Don Quixote is a non-musical play written for television and directed by . It was broadcast in season 3 of the CBS anthology series DuPont Show of the Month on the evening of November 9, 1959. Written by Dale Wasserman, the play was converted by him ca. 1964 into the libretto for the stage musical Man of La Mancha, with songs by Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion. After a tryout at Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut, Man of La Mancha opened in New York on November 22, 1965, at the ANTA Washington Square Theatre. (en)
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