Guess I'm in a New York mood today. Here's a profile of Utopia Bagels, a firm which claims to make 100,000 bagels by hand each week. I'm a little skeptical of the numbers but their bagels sure look good in this video.
Alas, I'll probably never taste a freshly-made Utopia bagel. I never have any other reason to visit Queens and I sure ain't making a special trip there just for a bagel, no matter how wonderful it might be. They presumably have them in some Manhattan shops and I can order them shipped out this way…but notice I said "freshly-made." It has been my observation that a great bagel is only a great bagel for about 18 hours, 24 at most. Any older than that and they're all about the same.
Right now, the Goldbelly company will ship me a baker's dozen for $59.95, which works out to…well, you can do the math. They'll take 72 hours to get here and by the time I eat the last few, they'll be indistinguishable from any bagel I can buy in L.A.
So I shall just gaze longingly at this video. And I'll marvel at how if you were making a movie and casting someone to play the guy in charge of this place, you couldn't do any better than Scott…
A person who has been sending me anti-vaxx propaganda throughout The Pandemic sent me an utterly unsourced claim that Britain's Queen Elizabeth II died because she was given a COVID vaccination. Yes, because why else would a 96-year-old woman die? I mean, it's not like anyone else of advanced age has died from getting the disease.
I have no idea if she even got a shot but it seems to me that it might be a good idea for anyone of any age whose job description basically was to go around and meet people.
And the eight minutes I spent reading his message, thinking about it and writing this may be the longest span of my life I've spent thinking about royalty in this modern era. I don't get why it exists apart from sheer tradition. I don't get why Brits go along with it or keep the custom afloat. I understand that is possible to have respect and affection for certain people but I felt that way about my grandmother.
The Internet Era has created people who were famous for being famous. It's also created people who were famous for being famous for being famous and even a few who were famous for being famous for being famous for being famous for…well, I've lost track. The point is there are human beings who are celebrities because someone just decided they'd be regarded as celebrities. And in these times, that's all "royalty" is.
I wish no one ill. I cheer no one's passing. I just don't get why this exists in the world today.
Here's our current favorite song here at newsfromme.com…and don't bother telling me Rod Stewart doesn't sing it as well as Neil Diamond. Nobody sings it as well as Neil Diamond. But here's Rod singing it at the Platinum Party at the Palace, a concert held the other night outside Buckingham Palace in celebration of Queen Elizabeth II being Queen as long as the mineral platinum. Thanks to buddy Tom Galloway for alerting me to this. Some members of the royal family don't seem to be too enthused about it all…
Okay, first thing: This video will be taken offline in a week or so…so if you want to watch it, watch it soon.
Theater in London's West End reopened yesterday with a live concert featuring numbers from everything that's reopening there. It's a little over two and a half hours of magnificent performances. If you don't have time to watch it all, pick out your favorites from the list below.
ACT ONE:9:35 The Show Must Go On (Original Song) • 20:00 It's My Life (& Juliet) • 24:50 Heart of Stone (Six – the Musical) • 31:57 Can You Feel the Love Tonight (Disney's The Lion King) • 34:37 Practically Perfect (Mary Poppins) • 41:10 You'll Be Back (Hamilton) • 44:53 For Forever (Dear Evan Hansen) • 53:25 I Can't Go Back (Pretty Woman – The Musical) • 58:16 We Don't Need Another Hero (Tina – The Tina Turner Musical) • 1:02:23 The Winner Takes it All (Mamma Mia!)
ACT TWO:1:29:50 The Power of Love (Back to the Future – The Musical) • 1:35:50 You and Me – but Mostly Me (The Book of Mormon) • 1:38:40 Me and the Sky (Come From Away) • 1:46:00 When I Grow Up (Matilda – The Musical) • 1:49:42 Beautiful/Spotlight (Everybody's Talking About Jamie) • 1:57:01 Bring Him Home (Les Misérables) • 2:01:15 All I Ask of You (The Phantom of the Opera) • 2:08:30 The Wizard & I (Wicked) • 2:13:11 When You Believe (The Prince of Egypt) • 2:28:18 The Show Must Go On (by Queen)
The online video starts with a long title card so I have this video configured to begin at 8:45. Enjoy. But enjoy before they take it down. And if you enjoy it, please consider a donation to Theatre Support Fund+, which you can make at this link…
When I was a kid, I bought every record album I could find that featured characters from my favorite cartoons. Often, I'd get burned because I'd buy a Huckleberry Hound record, get it home, put it on my record player and discover to my youthful horror that Daws Butler, who did Huck's voice on the cartoons, wasn't on it. Some hapless mimic was doing his best to replicate Daws as Huck…and doing a very poor job of it. (Actually, I'm not sure if there was or has ever been any Daws Impersonator who could have satisfied me at that age.)
To me, it was like if you bought a Frank Sinatra record, took it home and found out it was some guy imitating Ol' Blue Eyes. That was the kind of unhappiness I experienced when I ordered a set of two Movie-Wheels, which as far as I know were the only ones produced.
A Movie-Wheel had a cardboard sleeve the size of an LP record but the actual record in it was a smaller flexi-disc made out of bendable plastic or rubber or some amalgam. In the cardboard sleeve, there was a little window with a dial as as you played the record, you would advance the dial when you heard a certain sound effect. Each time you advanced it, you'd see a different image in the little window, illustrating what was happening in the record at that moment. Since records and record sleeves have two sides, there would be two short stories on each wheel. You'll understand all this better if/when you watch the video below.
The two Movie-Wheels were sold as a set on local kids' TV shows. I think I saw the commercial on Skipper Frank's show on KTLA Channel 5. This was 1960 and I think it was something like $4.00 for the pair. One was Felix the Cat and it was faithful to the Felix cartoons that were then running on local TV. The voices were all done by Jack Mercer, who did almost all the voices in the cartoons, including Felix. The drawings were credited to Joe Oriolo, who was the main designer of those cartoons as well as the owner of the studio that did them.
The other record was Huckleberry Hound on one side, Yogi Bear on the other. As mentioned above, Daws Butler was not on the record. The voices were done by — amazingly — Jack Mercer along with an announcer-type gent named Jim Sparks. I know nothing about Mr. Sparks. The drawings were done by Frank Little and I don't know anything about him either except that he obviously never worked on the cartoons. I was disappointed in the art as I was by the absence of Daws.
And both records were written, produced and directed by Paul White and Ruth Roche. Mr. White is unknown to me but Ruth Roche was active in the comic book field as a writer and editor. Starting around 1940, she worked for the Eisner-Iger Studio, mainly on comics published by Fiction House like Phantom Lady and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.
I still have my Movie-Wheels…somewhere. But thanks to my friend Greg Ehrbar, who assembled video versions of one side of each. Here's the Huckleberry Hound one. Jack Mercer was great as the voice of Felix and the voice of Popeye but I don't think Huck and Yogi were in his wheelhouse. I'll post the Felix one tomorrow and you'll hear him being more properly cast…
This is a scene from the 1944 movie, Hollywood Canteen. The Canteen was a club during war where soldiers could go to eat, drink and be entertained by some pretty big movie and radio stars and they made a movie about it.
Your admission ticket to the place was your uniform and you never knew who you were going to see performing there. The list included Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, Iris Adrian, Fred Allen, June Allyson, Brian Aherne, Don Ameche, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, The Andrews Sisters, Dana Andrews, Eve Arden, Louis Armstrong, Jean Arthur, Fred Astaire, Mary Astor, Roscoe Ates, Lauren Bacall, Lucille Ball, Tallulah Bankhead, Theda Bara, Lynn Bari, Jess Barker, Binnie Barnes, Diana Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Count Basie, Anne Baxter, Warner Baxter, Louise Beavers, Wallace Beery, William Bendix, Constance Bennett, Joan Bennett, Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen, Ingrid Bergman, Milton Berle, Julie Bishop, Mel Blanc, Joan Blondell, Ann Blyth, Humphrey Bogart, Mary Boland, Ray Bolger, Beulah Bondi, William Boyd, Charles Boyer, Clara Bow, Eddie Bracken, El Brendel, Walter Brennan, Fanny Brice, Joe E. Brown, Les Brown, Virginia Bruce, Billie Burke, George Burns & Gracie Allen, Spring Byington, James Cagney, Cab Calloway, Rod Cameron, Eddie Cantor, Judy Canova, Kitty Carlisle, Jack Carson, Adriana Caselotti, Charlie Chaplin, Marguerite Chapman, Cyd Charisse, Charles Coburn, Claudette Colbert, Jerry Colonna, Ronald Colman, Betty Compson, Perry Como, Chester Conklin, Gary Cooper, Joseph Cotten, Noël Coward, James Craig, Bing Crosby, Joan Crawford, George Cukor, Xavier Cugat, Cass Daley, Dorothy Dandridge, Linda Darnell, Harry Davenport, Bette Davis, Dennis Day, Doris Day, Yvonne De Carlo, Gloria DeHaven, Dolores del Río, William Demarest, Olivia de Havilland, Cecil B. DeMille, Andy Devine, Marlene Dietrich, Walt Disney, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Irene Dunne, Jimmy Durante, Deanna Durbin, Ann Dvorak, Nelson Eddy, Duke Ellington, Faye Emerson, Dale Evans, Jinx Falkenburg, Glenda Farrell, Alice Faye, Louise Fazenda, Stepin Fetchit, Gracie Fields, Barry Fitzgerald, Ella Fitzgerald, Errol Flynn, Kay Francis, Jane Frazee, Joan Fontaine, Susanna Foster, Eva Gabor, Ava Gardner, Judy Garland, Greer Garson, Lillian Gish, James Gleason, Betty Grable, Cary Grant, Kathryn Grayson, Sydney Greenstreet, Paulette Goddard, Samuel Goldwyn, Benny Goodman, Leo Gorcey, Virginia Grey, Jack Haley, Margaret Hamilton, Phil Harris, Moss Hart, Helen Hayes, Dick Haymes, Susan Hayward, Rita Hayworth, Sonja Henie, Paul Henreid, Katharine Hepburn, Portland Hoffa, Darla Hood, Bob Hope, Hedda Hopper, Lena Horne, Edward Everett Horton, Marsha Hunt, Ruth Hussey, Betty Hutton, Frieda Inescort, Jose Iturbi, Harry James, Gloria Jean, Anne Jeffreys, Allen Jenkins, Van Johnson, Al Jolson, Jennifer Jones, Marcia Mae Jones, Boris Karloff, Danny Kaye, Buster Keaton, Ruby Keeler, Gene Kelly, Evelyn Keyes, Guy Kibbee, Andrea King, Gene Krupa, Kay Kyser, Alan Ladd, Bert Lahr, Elsa Lanchester, Angela Lansbury, Veronica Lake, Hedy Lamarr, Dorothy Lamour, Carole Landis, Frances Langford, Charles Laughton, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Peter Lawford, Gertrude Lawrence, Peggy Lee, Pinky Lee, Mervyn LeRoy, Vivien Leigh, Joan Leslie, Ted Lewis, Beatrice Lillie, Mary Livingston, Harold Lloyd, June Lockhart, Anita Loos, Peter Lorre, Myrna Loy, Keye Luke, Bela Lugosi, Ida Lupino, Diana Lynn, Marie McDonald, Jeanette MacDonald, Fred MacMurray, Marjorie Main, Irene Manning, Fredric March, The Marx Brothers, Herbert Marshall, Ilona Massey, Victor Mature, Elsa Maxwell, Louis B. Mayer, Hattie McDaniel, Roddy McDowall, Frank McHugh, Victor McLaglen, Butterfly McQueen, Lauritz Melchior, Adolphe Menjou, Una Merkel, Ray Milland, Ann Miller, Glenn Miller, Carmen Miranda, Robert Mitchum, Maria Montez, George Montgomery, Grace Moore, Jackie Moran, Dennis Morgan, Patricia Morison, Paul Muni, Ken Murray, The Nicholas Brothers, Ramon Novarro, Jack Oakie, Margaret O'Brien, Pat O'Brien, Virginia O'Brien, Donald O'Connor, Maureen O'Hara, Oona O'Neill, Maureen O'Sullivan, Merle Oberon, Eugene Pallette, Eleanor Parker, Harriet Parsons, Louella Parsons, John Payne, Gregory Peck, Nat Pendleton, Mary Pickford, Walter Pidgeon, Zasu Pitts, Cole Porter, Dick Powell, Eleanor Powell, Jane Powell, William Powell, Vincent Price, Anthony Quinn, George Raft, Claude Rains, Vera Ralston, Sally Rand, Basil Rathbone, Martha Raye, Donna Reed, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Edward G. Robinson, Ginger Rogers, Roy Rogers, Cesar Romero, Mickey Rooney, Jane Russell, Rosalind Russell, Ann Rutherford, Peggy Ryan, S.Z. Sakall, Olga San Juan, Ann Savage, David O. Selznick, Hazel Scott, Lizabeth Scott, Randolph Scott, Toni Seven, Norma Shearer, Ann Sheridan, Dinah Shore, Sylvia Sidney, Phil Silvers, Ginny Simms, Frank Sinatra, Red Skelton, Alexis Smith, Kate Smith, Ann Sothern, Jo Stafford, Barbara Stanwyck, Craig Stevens, Leopold Stokowski, Lewis Stone, Gloria Swanson, Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley Temple, Danny Thomas, The Three Stooges, Gene Tierney, Lawrence Tibbett, Martha Tilton, Claire Trevor, Sophie Tucker, Lana Turner, Spencer Tracy, Gloria Vanderbilt, Lupe Vélez, Beryl Wallace, Nancy Walker, Ethel Waters, John Wayne, Clifton Webb, Virginia Weidler, Johnny Weissmuller, Orson Welles, Mae West, Bert Wheeler, Alice White, Paul Whiteman, Margaret Whiting, Cornel Wilde, Esther Williams, Warren William, Chill Wills, Marie Wilson, Shelley Winters, Jane Withers, Teresa Wright, Anna May Wong, Constance Worth, Jane Wyman, Ed Wynn, Keenan Wynn, Rudy Vallee, Lupe Vélez, Loretta Young, Robert Young, Darryl F. Zanuck and Vera Zorina. Guess which one of these brought along his horse…
Tonight on the CW is the season finale of Black Lightning. My friend Amber loves this show and was excited when I told her who has a cameo role in this episode…none other than Black Lightning creator Tony Isabella. Tony is my friend of more than half a century and her friend since we all had lunch together about two years ago.
Only good thoughts go out to Mr. Allen Bellman, the veteran comic book artist who was "found" a few years ago after too long away from the comic art community. Allen worked for Timely Comics and Atlas — earlier names for the company you now know as Marvel — from 1942 until the early fifties. The last decade or so, he became a treasured guest at comic conventions everywhere but now he's not well. We would like to not have to write an obit for this lovely man any time soon.
Hey, folks who live in or near Hollywood! The afternoon of March 29, the American Cinematheque is running a 35mm print of one of my favorite movies at the Egyptian Theater up on Hollywood Boulevard.
It's the 1951 Ace in the Hole, directed by Billy Wilder and starring Kirk Douglas in what was, for me, his greatest performance. And no, he wasn't even nominated for an Oscar for it. (They gave it that year instead to someone named Humphrey Bogart for some movie called The African Queen.) I've seen it a dozen times but never on a movie screen and I intend to try and be there. If you want to be there, tickets are here.
Since the Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle was canceled, people are writing me to ask if WonderCon (in Anaheim, Aoril 10-12) will be canceled or if, God forbid, Comic-Con International will not happen in San Diego this July. Given the panic about the coronavirus, some of it probably justified, and the way our putative president keeps projecting the concept that no one is steering the bus, I understand. But I seriously doubt those events will not take place on schedule. If there's the slightest chance of a change, you'll hear about it promptly from the folks who operate both gatherings. Truly.
My pal Tom Galloway was at the San Diego Comic Fest this past weekend and he reported that in lieu of shaking hands, he was exchanging Mr. Spock's "Live long and prosper" gesture from Star Trek. Upon reading my suggestion that we all cosplay as Spider-Man, Tom sent several suggestions for other super-heroes whose costumes might not only strike terror into the hearts of evildoers but also keep you safe from the coronavirus. If the threat got a lot worse and I had to pick one, I think I'd go with the Golden Age Sandman. And the gun would be a squirt pistol filled with hand sanitizer with at least a 60% alcohol content…
As I've mentioned here, I'm a Magician member of the Magic Castle, the famous private club in Hollywood for folks who pester you to pick a card, any card. I joined in 1980 and have spent many wondrous hours dining there, watching magic there, studying magic there, etc. It's in a beautiful old mansion built in 1909 by Rollin Lane, a prominent lawyer, banker and real estate investor.
It became the Magic Castle in the early sixties. A TV writer named Milt Larsen, who was then working on the game show Truth or Consequences had an office with a great view of the old Rollin mansion. It had then fallen into disrepair, carved up into a building full of shabby apartments. Milt had the idea that it might be the realization of a dream his late father had talked about. William W. Larsen Sr. was a popular magician who thought it would be great if there was a fancy private clubhouse for magicians.
Milt and his brother, Bill Jr., leased the property, rallied the local magic community, and on January 2, 1963, the Magic Castle opened its doors. To visit, you must be a member or a guest of a member and it's a great place to dine and see the best practitioners of the art from around the world.
It's especially mobbed the week of Halloween. Each year, the Magic Castle is transformed. A crew of dedicated redressers install an overlay to change the architecture for ten days or so. They put up new walls, decorate, install special effects and in a way, the Castle puts on a costume for Halloween. Last year, they made it look like a spaceship overtaken by an alien invasion. This year, it's the "Cursed Temple," resembling a tomb in which Indiana Jones or someone like him might unlock secrets to find mystical treasures.
I went up to see it on Monday and took along my trusty aide, John Plunkett, and a scream queen, the lovely Brinke Stevens. It was an amazing creation…especially impressive to those of us who know what the Castle looks like when it isn't dressed like this. Here's a quick tour of the Cursed Temple…
Here's another video from the revival of My Fair Lady currently playing in New York. This is the "Get Me To The Church On Time" number as shot by a GoPro hidden on the hat of one of the performers — a very interesting angle. Danny Burstein is playing Alfred P. Doolittle in this…and if he's still in the show now, he'll be leaving soon because he's scheduled to star in the new musical Moulin Rouge, which opens June 28.
When I saw this show last year, Norbert Leo Butz was playing Doolittle and this number was one of the best musical moments I ever saw on a Broadway stage. They gimmicked it up with a lot of acrobatic choreography and scenery changes and steps that the older men who usually play the role could never have done…and I really don't think adding in drag queens was appropriate but the whole thing worked. Here's what it would look like if you were in the midst of it…
A happy today to Dick Van Dyke who's 93 today — which in Dick Van Dyke Years, means he looks and moves about like he's 77. Has anyone else ever been as fine an actor as this man? Or as beloved? I hope he and his lovely Arlene are out celebrating all day and all night. And this may be an unrealistic fantasy but I'm kinda hoping they have something else soon to celebrate.
In 1988, Judi Dench won the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress in 1998 for her role as Queen Elisabeth in Shakespeare In Love. She was on the screen for eight minutes. The runner-up for the least amount of camera time for an Oscar winner was in 1976 when Beatrice Straight won in the same category for Network. Her entire part was ten minutes. See where I'm going with this?
I didn't clock how long Dick was on screen in Mary Poppins Returns. I'm guessing about five, maybe a bit less. But I can't recall an actor making such an impact to a movie…and I can't imagine anyone else in that part having that impact. It was a moment that moviegoers will not forget.
Maybe that's a silly dream on my part. Maybe Disney plans to push Lin-Manual Miranda as Best Supporting Actor because — and this is often what they consider in these situations — they feel the competition for Best Actor will be too formidable (Bradley Cooper, Viggo Mortensen, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carrell, Robert Redford, Ethan Hawke, Joaquin Phoenix, et al). But maybe there's also a shot for Dick to take home a Special Award.
And yeah, I know he doesn't need one. The world has already given him that far-better award of unconditional love. Still, it would be nice, wouldn't it?
Hey, it's the next installment of our play-by-play coverage of the eleven-day trip that I took recently with my fabulous friend Amber to Las Vegas, Philadelphia and New York. Before you read about Day 8, you really oughta read the chapters on Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, my Philadelphia Addenda and Day 7.
Tuesday, May 29, 2018
Let me warn you at the top: This is a real long post. I mean real long.
Dick Cavett once said that when he first moved to New York, he realized an amazing thing about it. You could go to bed there and in the morning when you woke up, you'd think, "Hey, if I walk outside, I'll be in New York!" I still sometimes feel that way when I'm in the city.
On those visits, Breakfast always seems elusive and gets supplanted by Early Lunch. Amber and I met my pals Jim Brochu and Steve Schalchlin at Sardi's, where Jim's prominence as a theatrical performer is noted with a caricature on the wall. Jim and Steve are a splendid union of two very talented people who seem to know absolutely everyone in their profession, their profession being The Theatre.
The great thing about knowing performers is that I usually don't have to tell you about them. I can show them to you by embedding a YouTube video. Here's nine minutes of Jim and Steve singing about their relationship…
I knew Jim before he met Steve and now cannot imagine him without his longtime partner. The four of us sat and dined and talked and talked and talked and had a very good time.
Because lunch ran so late. I wasn't all that hungry as it neared time to head uptown for our evening's entertainment. Neither was Amber so we decided to each get a slice of pizza to tide us over until after the show. We went to Joe's Pizza on Broadway in Times Square, which many will tell you sells the best individual slices in town. She had pepperoni and I had plain cheese and they were pretty good. Then we took the subway to Lincoln Center and got there with enough time to spare that Amber asked, "Is there somewhere around here where we could get two more slices?"
I had Yelp! show me what was nearby and most of the pizza spots seemed like places where it's a whole pie or nothing. But a restaurant called Francesco Pizzeria on Columbus Avenue was described as a "slice joint" and I thought I recalled it getting a good review from Dave Portnoy, who does those YouTube pizza reviews that I occasionally post.
I was right. He gave it an 8.1 out of 10 and I trust Dave. Unfortunately, his guest reviewer was Dr. Oz who gave it an 8 and I wouldn't trust Dr. Oz to tell me where to buy aspirin. The slices we got there were good — Amber liked hers more than the one she had at Joe's but we got pie that was a lot greasier than what Dave and the alleged Doctor sampled. Mine required two napkins' worth of blotting.
Full of cheese 'n' dough, we strode back to Lincoln Center to see the new revival of My Fair Lady. Dividing line, please…
I was really looking forward to this. The national touring company of the original production of My Fair Lady was the first real Broadway-type show I ever saw. I had the songs memorized by age ten…but that was the last time I saw it performed on stage. It is not a cheap show to do, requiring as it does a very big cast and very lavish sets and costumes. Most local groups simply cannot afford to do it, or at least to do it right.
[CORRECTION ADDED YEARS LATER: I read what I wrote again and realized I'd seen it performed on stage in the eighties. Rex Harrison was doing a "farewell tour" in it so everyone could say they saw him in it…and cringe a bit when he forgot lyrics.]
I enjoyed 97% of this new production tremendously. The costumes and sets were superb. The cast was excellent. Harry Hadden-Paton is good enough as Higgins to make you forget Rex Harrison. Lauren Ambrose is good enough as Eliza Doolittle to make you forget either Julie Andrews or Audrey Hepburn, depending on which Eliza you have embedded in your brain. The orchestra does full justice to the score.
And it has Diana Rigg as Higgins' mother. I am just the right age to have loved her as Mrs. Peel on The Avengers — the *real* Avengers, not those usurpers of the name led by Captain America. Mrs. Higgins has never been a large part and Ms. Rigg probably learned all her lines in about twenty minutes. But she also scored with every damned one of them and the applause at her entrance made me quite happy.
The show also has Norbert Leo Butz as Eliza's father, the role Stanley Holloway played on the stage and on the screen. Alfred P. Doolittle has two show-stopping numbers — "A Little Bit of Luck" and "Get Me To The Church on Time." The first was fairly routine this time out…charming but nothing spectacular. The "Church" number, though…oh, my goodness. The "Church" number.
This is kind of interesting. The original Broadway version of My Fair Lady in 1956 had no trouble securing a top director, a top production designer, a top costume designer, etc. But it took a while to find a choreographer. Several of the best ones turned it down because it wasn't a real dance show. It was mostly ballroom-style and a little of the English Music Hall style dancing in which Stanley Holloway excelled. There was no number where a choreographer could show off or be particularly innovative.
There is now. I suppose some would quibble that what they did with "Get Me To The Church" is out of character with the show itself, adding in acrobatics and rotating sets and drag queens (yes, drag queens) and extra, extra choruses. They might be right on some level but boy, was that number spectacular. Norbert Leo Butz is an actor first and a dancer second so he doesn't turn into a Fred Astaire wanna-be when he dances. He dances in character and at the end of the song, the place exploded. It was maybe the most exciting dance number I ever saw on a stage and Amber and I were on our feet along with the general consensus.
Everyone in the show is so perfect that you're probably wondering when I'm going to get to the 3% I didn't love. That's now but first I need to insert one of these…
Remember: You've been warned.
They changed the ending. At the end of Pygmalion, the George Bernard Shaw play on which My Fair Lady was based, Eliza and Higgins do not fall in love. She leaves him, though not as an act of defiance or anger. She leaves for a reason that has been valid for any woman at any time in our history: She simply has not gotten any affection from the man.
Shaw wrote the play for a prominent actress of the day, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who as her name would suggest was not a woman of great independence. She did however have a keen sense of what pleased audiences and she decided it would please audiences if Eliza and Higgins wound up together. That was how the first English-language stage performances of Pygmalion went, much to Shaw's surprise.
He does not seem to have stopped this, though he did pen a note that was added to the published version of the play that said that Eliza wound up marrying Freddy Eynsford-Hill (the silly fop who in M.F.L. sings "On The Street Where You Live") and they moved in with Higgins for a time before she opened her own flower shop, a possibility mentioned earlier in the play. Higgins remained a mentor to her and also the "confirmed old bachelor" that he said he was.
Shaw also suggested that Eliza stayed interested in Higgins and had some fantasies about dragging him "off his pedestal" and seeing him "making love like any common man." He also wrote that while her instinct told her not to marry Higgins, it also told her not to give him up and that he would remain "one of the strongest personal interests in her life."
Pygmalion was performed then with many variant endings, some honoring Shaw's views, some not. Shavian scholars have debated for years just what is the proper ending and indeed, the published text of the play was changed at least once during Shaw's lifetime. The 1938 British film starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller had an ambiguous ending, also not approved (but not stopped) by Shaw. Eliza flees Higgins' home to be with Freddy but then returns to Higgins and it is suggested she cannot or will not leave him.
The screenplay, probably more so than Shaw's original play, was the basis for Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady and it ends of course with Higgins realizing he has grown "accustomed to her face," getting off that pedestal as much as any "confirmed old bachelor" can…and Eliza deciding her future is with him. In the new version, she returns to him and it does seem to be leading up to them being a couple, as every audience member who knows My Fair Lady from any venue expects.
But then she runs away from him. In fact, she runs off the set and up an aisle of the audience, the suggestion being that she is running as far from him as is humanly possible. The End.
Advance word on this revival suggested that the traditional ending had to go because it did not match with current attitudes about women and Me Too and such. If you didn't know that was a concern, it's announced clearly when in one scene — and remember this show is set a long time ago in Edwardian London — a completely gratuitous band of women march through a public square with signs demanding the vote for women, which is of course never again mentioned in the show.
There is a separate argument as to whether plays set well in the past should reflect society then or now. Assuming we decide a play should not contain sensibilities we have outgrown, I would argue that the change in My Fair Lady is still wrong and unnecessary. My friend Shelly Goldstein wrote on her Facebook page this morning…
OK, let's really take a deep breath here. My Fair Lady is not sexist. Henry Higgins is supercilious & chauvinistic but he's no worse to Liza than he is to anyone else. The show isn't a romance and it isn't about sexism. It's about language, class and the choices one makes to rise above the station some would insist is your only option.
Professor Higgins in any version of this musical is about as far from a Harvey Weinstein as you could get and still be an asshole. He insists that Eliza be properly chaperoned when living in his home, doesn't show the slightest interest in wanting to touch her and is outraged at the suggestion of her father who is more than willing to pimp her out for money. There are those who have even argued that Higgins and Pickering are "confirmed old bachelors" because they're both gay. That's how total Higgins' disinterest is in molesting his fair lady but there's nothing in the text to indicate that either.
He treats her like a lower class person only because she talks like one and he argues that that alone is the reason she is but one half-notch above a beggar woman. He is anti-female only in the sense that he personally does not want one in his life, which even the most avowed advocate of women's equality would concede is his right. His song, "Why Can't A Woman Be More Like A Man?" is a parody of how foolish some men — most notably, a man who's never really had a woman in his life — can be about the opposite gender…and also about their own.
He makes a deal to pay her for participating in his little wager that he can pass her off as duchess by giving her the elocution lessons which she came to him to get. He could have made the exact same bet to pass her father or any lower-caste male off as a duke.
Her learning to talk like a proper lady was her idea, remember. He keeps his part of their bargain in every way. And in the traditional text of My Fair Lady, the climax is that this arrogant, I-don't-need-anyone person comes to realize that he needs her…and while she could leave him at that point — and has once — she chooses not to. Even in the year 2018, what is wrong with that story?
What to me is particularly amiss with the changed ending is that it just plain doesn't fit. I doubt you can take any decent play ever written, invert the last 10-15 seconds and have it apply. Imagine if in the closing moments of The Music Man, Harold Hill skips town with all the money he collected for band instruments, laughing at what suckers they are in River City. Or if you have a production of Death of a Salesman and every word is the same until the last second, as his funeral is letting out, Willy Loman turns up alive. If you want your My Fair Lady to end as this revival does, you should probably drop "I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face" and everything else that starts to humanize Higgins in the end.
You should also explain why she comes back to his home at all. The way it plays, she comes back because (I guess) she still has some feelings about him and needs to explore them…or something. But then he is nicer to her than he has ever been before and she responds by, without a word of explanation, sprinting into the audience and (I guess) out of his life.
So what happens next? She left him once and came back. Does she come back again? We don't know. People defending this ending are arguing it's merely restoring Shaw's ending…but Shaw didn't have Higgins expressing anything like the change of emotions he does near the end of My Fair Lady. Shaw's Higgins never changes one bit.
Does she wed Freddy? Shaw said she did but we get no indication that that happens either and even if it did, that's not an empowering act for a woman…marrying a man for whom she has not shown the slightest ounce of affection. And oh, yes — to have a place to live, they'll have to go persuade Higgins (the guy she ran away from like he was Dracula) to take them in.
Does she make something of herself? Does she open that florist shop that Higgins and Pickering were going to help fund? That would sure be a better life for her than remaining a prisoner of the gutters, condemned by every syllable she utters. As is, we don't know she doesn't wind up back there.
This version of the play doesn't say what becomes of her. It just kind of stops…and the audience we saw it with let out a big, unheard collective "huh?" It surprised them but not, it seemed to me, in a good way. Eliza running for dear life away from the man who taught her how to speak like royalty was not what the book Alan Jay Lerner wrote led up to.
We cheered the show of course because everything before that was so splendid. The performers certainly deserved the standing ovations they received…and if they'd trotted out the designers and choreographer and arrangers, we'd have cheered for them, too. I absolutely recommend you see this show if you can…and considering how hard it was for me to get tickets, I suspect it'll be there for a long time.
If you do see it, please write and explain to me how the ending fits that play or even any concept of how women should be treated today. I'm not even sure My Fair Lady should be about how women should be treated today but if it has to be, that wasn't it.
I've gone way too long on this blog without an unusual rendition of "Bohemian Rhapsody." Here's Storm Front, a popular barbershop quartet doing some barbering of Queen's masterpiece…
If Donald Trump's main goal was to have the world pay a lot of attention to him, he's probably succeeded leagues beyond his wildest expectation. I'm weary of reading about this guy and wearier, right now at least, of writing about him. So let's see what else there is to talk about.
Stephen Colbert did well in the ratings with his convention shows, though they felt to me like he was doing two different programs at once. One was a clever comedy show with a point of view. The other was the usual infomercial for this new series or that new movie. I wish they'd decide that the latter had to go. There are about ninety things Colbert does better than Jimmy Fallon but fawning over celebrities who have a new film opening this weekend isn't one of them.
There are reports and rumors circulating that Bill Cosby is blind. Well, so is justice. In an interview in the new Playboy, Jeffrey Toobin says that he's confident that if the judge allows other women ("other" than the one this case is about) to testify about their experiences with Cosby, jail time awaits the comedian. I think he probably belongs there but I'd sure have a hard time sentencing a blind show biz legend to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
I missed mentioning the 102nd birthday of another comedy legend — Professor Irwin Corey — who hit that impressive age on July 29. This is from Wikipedia…
For an October 2011 interview, Corey invited a New York Times reporter to visit his 1840 carriage house on East 36th Street. Corey estimated its resale value at $3.5 million. He said that, when not performing, he panhandled for change from motorists exiting the Queens-Midtown Tunnel. Every few months, he told the interviewer, he donated the money to a group that purchased medical supplies for Cuban children. He said of the drivers who supplied the cash, "I don't tell them where the money's going, and I'm sure they don't care." Irvin Arthur, Corey's agent for half a century, assured the reporter that Corey did not need the money for himself. "This is not about money," Arthur said. "For Irwin, this is an extension of his performing."
I dunno if he's still doing that but if he is next time I get back to New York, I think I'll track down where he panhandles and see if I can talk to him for an hour if I keep giving him change. Very funny man.
Megan Hilty and Matthew Morrison singing bits of a few show tunes. This is from a concert with the New York Pops at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens earlier this month…
