Good morning, all! I slept late because I stayed up late reading DR Penny O's book, JEWISH THIGHS ON BROADWAY; I glossed through it to get to the Kritzer books, as I promised my good friend BK, and now I'm just enjoying her account of her protagonist's desperate climb to the middle. It's very funny and I recommend it highly. I don't know if the G&S group really is the late LOOM, warts and all, but I'm having a good tme.
TOD: oh, God, so many to acknowledge! I feel like an Oscar winner just as the exit music starts.
Movies:
Disney animation from the early 1950s: ALICE IN WONDERLAND, PETER PAN, LADY AND THE TRAMP: for years I wanted to be a Disney animator
HANSEL AND GRETEL (1954), which I still hold dear, was probably my introduction to opera and Anna Russell's witch is my first brush at age 8 with high camp; incidentally the producer of this film, Michael Myerberg, was the producer on Broadway of THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH with Tallulah Bankhead, Frederic March, and Montgomery Clift.
Film versions of stage musicals: got me thinking, why did they cut this song or why did they replace this number?
Theatre:
Middletown, Ohio, in the 1950s for a lower middleclass boy, was a wasteland.
Music:
Little Golden Records were an obsession, and one source of my reading education at age 3-4 was the record label. My favorite Little Golden Record was two excerpts from SWAN LAKE: the dance of the little swans and the main theme (I believe). My first recording passion was Khatchaturian's "Sabre Dance." Popular songs I liked the best in the 50s were the novelty numbers like "Witch Doctor" and "The Purple People Eater," but since my Mother sang a lot of novelty songs from the 30s and 40s like "Mairzy Doats" and "Three Little Fishes," it's probably genetic. I remember listening to "Kisses Sweeter than Wine" and thinking, what the fat hell does this mean?
Television:
I LOVE LUCY, a show I recall fondly but never watch today, even though I still laugh hysterically whenever I happen to catch an episode.
THE MICKEY MOUSE CLUB: I was crazy about Darlene while everyone else to my puzzlement raved about Annette. Every day was a race home from school to catch it; I loved the Hardy Boys and Spin and Marty, who had adventures and exciting lives I didn't think I'd ever have. This show had kids in my age group doing things I would have loved to do but I was this poor whitetrash kid stuck in Ohio! In 1956, I didn't know there was a way out. Yet.
LEAVE IT TO BEAVER: my first memory of anger over fraudulent tv; this family was nothing like the dysfunctional one I was in and I was pissed. Still am.
Max Liebman specials, Hallmark Hall of Fame, etc. Where else could I see The Lunts, Maurice Evans, Barbara Cook, Alfred Drake, and a host of other stars I'd never see on Broadway?
1958 televised broadcast of THE NUTCRACKER with Balanchine playing Drosselmeier.
Dear Friend BK covered this territory so well in his books, and it's amazing how many things he enjoyed that I did as well over a thousand miles away. One place he doesn't mention much in the books is the Library and the Public Library was my haven from the bullies, the family madness, and most of my adolescent angst; I had the Dewey decimal system down pat, I could race through the Reader's Guide for a magazine review of a show I'd never see, I knew where in the stacks to find the pictorial travel books to leave Ohio mentally, where to find the art books of painters I wanted to be as good as, where to find the music I wanted to play at the piano, and where to find tons of novels, from Dodie Smith's 101 DALMATIANS to Samuel Hopkins Adams' TENDERLOIN to Dorothy Macardle's THE UNINVITED. I read a lot between 1954 and 1964 when I went off to college, and some things stick with me like Meredith Willson's book BUT HE DOESN'T KNOW THE TERRITORY, about creating THE MUSIC MAN, and PRIDE AND PREJUDICE while a lot of ghost stories, inferior to THE UNINVITED, are now vague plot synopses.
