Patti LuPone in lockdown reprises Norma Desmond role she was FIRED from for Glenn Close

Patti LuPone was feeling nostalgic this Wednesday as she hunkered down at home amid the coronavirus lockdowns.

The 70-year-old Broadway legend delighted her fans by reprising her Sunset Boulevard role as the deranged ex-movie star Norma Desmond.

Wandering madly around her basement in full costume, Patti sang a stretch of one of the character’s big songs With One Look.

At the end of the video Patti delivered the iconic line in which Norma denies her star power has dwindled saying: ‘I am big! It’s the pictures that got small.’

The original 1950 movie Sunset Boulevard, starring the real faded silent movie star Gloria Swanson as Norma, was adapted into the stage musical in the 1990s. 

Two years ago Patti finally ended her decades-long feud with the musical’s composer and producer Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Although Patti played Norma in the original London production and was signed to reprise the role in New York, she was replaced for Broadway by Glenn Close. 

Before Patti’s firing, Glenn played the role in Los Angeles to considerable critical acclaim while Patti was still performing in Sunset Boulevard in London.

In her memoir Patti was acidic about Glenn’s Los Angeles run, writing: ‘Glenn Close received rave reviews, but then, she didn’t have to sing the same high notes that I did. Andrew lowered the keys for Glenn.’

Patti revealed that after months of rumors she learned of her firing in Liz Smith’s gossip column – and responded by trashing her London dressing room.

‘I took batting practice in my dressing room with a floor lamp. I swung at everything in sight – mirrors, wig stands, makeup, wardrobe, furniture, everything. Then I heaved the lamp out the second-floor window,’ she wrote.

‘Do I think Glenn Close was  complicit in what happened to me? Hard to say. But what I do know is that from the time she was announced in April, I never heard from her,’ wrote Patti, who became a star in Andrew’s show Evita. 

Her public comment on Andrew in the wake of her dismissal was: ‘I have nothing nice to say about the man, so I choose to say nothing at all.’

His spokesman cited the ‘expense of the production’ and a ‘vocal’ push from investors while justifying the decision, according to the New York Times.

Patti had to continue playing the show in London after learning of her replacement and wrote later: ‘Paradoxically, I think I was a better Norma after I got fired.’

She quipped: ‘The Philadelphia Inquirer had said I wasn’t crazy enough. They should have seen me during that last month.’ 

Glenn earned praise as Norma on Broadway, winning a Tony in 1995, but the show was so costly to put up that it still lost money even after running over two years.

Patti fought Andrew in court and spent her $1 million payout to install what she called the Andrew Lloyd Webber Memorial Pool at her country house. 

However she agreed to sing Don’t Cry For Me Argentina from Evita for a tribute to Andrew and fellow composer Leonard Bernstein at the 2018 Grammy Awards.

‘This is detente, ladies and gentleman,’ she said at a rehearsal for the gig before hugging Andrew, according to Michael Riedel’s New York Post gossip column.

A year prior Glenn had returned to Broadway as Norma in a limited run of Sunset Boulevard from February to June 2017.