Audrey is back for the 40th anniversary of Little Shop of Horrors

Nearly four decades after she first slipped into Audrey's breathy, squeaky, distinctly-New-York voice, Ellen Greene is heading back on tour to mark the 40th anniversary of Little Shop of Horrors – and she can still do the voice on command.

The musical's roots stretch back further still. It began life as a scrappy 1960 B-movie directed by Roger Corman on a shoestring budget, before Alan Menken and Howard Ashman turned the cult curiosity into a stage musical that opened off-Broadway in 1982. Frank Oz adapted it for the screen in 1986, with Greene reprising her stage role opposite Rick Moranis. Starting this weekend, Greene sets off on a run of anniversary screenings across the US, from Seattle (Aug. 18) to Atlanta (Nov. 13), with performances of "Somewhere That's Green" promised along the way.

Greene, 75, told the Associated Press she landed on Audrey's now-iconic voice almost by accident.

“I didn't think about it,” she said. 

“It was weird, I mean, I don't know where half of this stuff came from.”

She first heard "Somewhere That's Green" while waiting in the unemployment line, and carried that feeling into her audition, where composer Alan Menken played piano while lyricist Howard Ashman – already a close friend – looked on. By the end, everyone in the room was in tears. It wasn't an easy road to success, though: rehearsals at New York's WPA Theatre paid just $50 a week, though the show became a hit, once drawing Steve Martin and Mary Tyler Moore to the audience.

The path to the film was bumpier still. John Landis and briefly Martin Scorsese were attached before Oz took over, and producer David Geffen initially wanted a bigger name, like Cyndi Lauper, in the lead.

“I never thought I would have gotten the film,” Greene said.

Test audiences ended up loving her Audrey so much they rejected an ending in which she dies, forcing Oz to shoot a happier conclusion – though Greene says she's glad both versions exist, with the original surviving in a director's cut.

“I love that death scene, personally,” she said. “But I had an inkling, you see, because Frank directed the Audrey for the screen more heroine-like.”

Remembering Little Shop is also a way of remembering Ashman, who died of complications related to AIDS in 1991. He and Greene were close friends – he once took her on her first trip to Paris – and, unbeknownst to her, quietly wrote her half a point of the show's profits into her contract “because I created Audrey,” she said.

“That's how generous and kind he was and how much he loved me,” Greene said. “Everybody loves Audrey because we, I, loved her first … when they love ‘Little Shop', they keep it alive, and they keep Howard Ashman alive.”

Source: Associated Press (Lindsay Bahr).