Carolyn and I are back from another evening at the theater. The Reprise! group, which stages classic musicals in low budget productions for runs of three or so weeks at a time, also occasionally does one-nighters. Tonight, they had a one-performance-only "concert" version of It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman, the 1966 musical comedy that lasted but 129 performances on Broadway...and no, this post is not a rerun. I attended a different staged reading of this show, done by a different group, last November.
This one was also quite enjoyable. Superman/Clark Kent was/were played by Cheyenne Jackson. Lois Lane was played by Jean Louisa Kelly. The Mad Scientist was played by Richard Kind. And Max Mencken — the gossip columnist played on Broadway by Jack Cassidy — was played by his son, Patrick Cassidy. The four of them were supported by a cast of eight, plus Charles Strouse, who hosted the first part of the evening and played the small part of Perry White. Mr. Strouse, of course, wrote the music for this show...as well as Bye Bye Birdie, Applause, Annie and many others.
Everyone was quite splendid...especially Mr. Kind, who was hilarious as Dr. Abner Sedgwick, the villain who is repeatedly denied the Nobel Prize he believes he deserves and so plots revenge against the world — and for some reason, Superman. Patrick Cassidy did a great, crowd-pleasing job of imitating his father, right down to the handsome twinkle in his eyes and voice. And yes, his mother Shirley Jones was in the audience, cheering him on.
This production was staged by Stuart Ross, who is best known for creating Forever Plaid, a terrific little musical that now seems to have more branches than Starbucks. I'm guessing Stuart did the rather substantial rewrite on the show's book, which has always needed a major redo. Whoever was responsible, they made it a lot funnier but did not change — perhaps because it would have been too great a change — the big problem with the storyline, which is that Superman turns into a neurotic wimp for most of Act II. I never saw the original version on Broadway but I've always assumed that was a big reason the show didn't work. Via an unconvincing scenario that involves a lot of psychobabble, The Man of Steel loses his nerve and self-esteem. I can't think of a successful musical comedy that so mocks its leading man, and it's worse that it's Superman.
Nevertheless, Ross (or whoever did the rewrite) improved a lot of the other things. Among the villains in the original script were a troupe of Chinese tumblers played as broad racial stereotypes. In tonight's version, they'd turned into French acrobats from a show not unlike Cirque du Soleil. There were also other adjustments to remove things that don't seem as funny since 9/11, as well as a lot of new lines that made the second act much more amusing. I still thought the storyline was silly and forced but at least it was funnier.
A musical about Spider-Man is reportedly headed for Broadway and a Batman musical was, and may still resurface. One of these days, someone's going to give Superman another shot. Before tonight, I would have thought the only way to do that would be to toss It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman and start fresh. Now, I think maybe someone could make it work. It might not be worth the effort but it's not impossible.
The video link I had up the other day to a Jon Gnagy drawing lesson prompted a lot of folks to write their recollections of his show. Here's Buzz Dixon...
Thanx for the link to another blast from the past. I remember Jon Gnagy's shows -- and I, too, bugged my parents to buy me one of his instruction kits.
Not saying this was Gnagy's m.o., but a lot of on-air artists would first layout the art they were going to do in a very light pencil that was virtually invisible on camera; this way there were no missteps or misjudgments where certain lines and shadings should go. Couple that with the fact Gnagy doubtless had already done a preliminary sketch of what he was going to do on the air to test how it would read visually on camera, plus the fact that he knew what he was going to do next and was already reaching for/had a particular item in his hand as he began telling his audience what it was he was going to do, plus years and years of practice and small wonder he was as fast as he was.
On the whole, I would say Gnagy did far more good than Burne Hogarth would give him credit for. Yes, he doubtlessly discouraged a lot of amateurs, but he at least made them aware that art wasn't as easy as it looked. And for a few -- you, me, Andy Warhol -- he did awaken an interest in art even if our professional creative endeavors didn't involve actual drawing or painting.
Actually, the clip I posted omitted the opening of the show in which Gnagy showed the finished drawing he was going to do. I assume he did have it lightly roughed-in on his drawing surface and/or that he was looking at the finished drawing just off-camera as a kind of cue card. What I wonder about is how many of those segments he filmed in a day.
Here's a message from Alan Kupperberg — who unlike some, did go on to a career in art after watching Mr. Gnagy...
I loved Jon Gnagy when I was a kid. Don't think I've seen one of these since the early sixties, maybe. His theme song was "The Blue
Danube." Which I think of as "The Jon Gnagy Theme Song," to this day. Of course, I've got the IQ of a chimp.
In New York his show was paid for by the Art Brown & Co. Art Supply store.
Well into the seventies, I recall the Art Brown store selling "Jon Gnagy Learn To Draw" kits, just as they had back in the year gimmel. But they weren't "remainders." The cover of the box touted a Jon Gnagy VHS within. I always regretted not buying one at that time, just to get the VHS.
I suspect that Gnagy had the entire composition lightly penciled in all along. Or blue penciled.
I also feel the clip available to you is a bit misleading. As presented in this clip, Gnagy is leading us up a blind alley. I feel certain that as originally presented, we were shown the finished piece, and then instructed how to arrive at a similar result.
That's true...though I don't think it helped much since you couldn't see it while he was drawing and you hadn't seen it (and hadn't seen it for very long) since before the first commercial.
The odd thing though about his instruction was that the idea was not to create a drawing from your imagination but to replicate Gnagy's. Obviously, there's a value to learning the techniques involved in aping what he did...but it was really a show about copying, as opposed to creating. And even then, it's kind of like, "Put a line here, put another line there," with little explanation of how the lines relate or what kind of perspective they're supposed to denote. I suppose there were episodes where he explained some of the underlying principles but all of that was secondary to this mad sprint to draw an entire composition from start to finish in ten minutes.
Katheryn Saunders writes...
If I may play devil's advocate for a moment, Mr. Gnagy was probably just a bit ahead of his time (as many pioneers are). In this modern age of VCRs, Tivo, DVD-Rs, YouTube, etc., etc., it would probably be a lot easier to follow along at home. Not only could you pause the program to make it easier to keep up, but you could rewatch it to practice again and again. It's unfortunate that this wasn't an option when you were nine. (I get the feeling that Sergio could keep up, though, and probably outpace him.)
I can't say that I agree with your friend. I can only hope that people who were really passionate about drawing saw the program as a challenge, something to aspire to, rather than a dream-crusher.
And from Simon Agree...
Count me as one who grew up with Los Angeles television in the 1960s -- I was born in 1956 and lived in LA from late '60 until mid-'70.
I don't recall ever trying to follow along with John Gnagy's art instruction on TV, but I can still recall watching it with interest -- along with Colonel Bleep (thanks for reminding me!), Crusader Rabbit, Andy Devine, Sheriff John, Jack LaLanne, Winchell/Mahoney and Hobo Kelly... among others.
By circuitous routes, however, I became an artist, and still recommend Gnagy's ball-box-pyramid ideas when instructing beginning artists. It's pretty clear to me that Gnagy enjoyed the benefit of a powerful visual memory (either that, or blue-screen technique far ahead of his time!), but his methods could still work if you could slow them down with some sort of digital recording technology.
Nothing in this email, of course, should be construed as excusing the awfulness of the art materials that were included in the John Gnagy drawing kit. I suspect that Gnagy's rationalisation of the drawing kits involved an early destruction of these kits, then replacing them with sticks from the fireplace.
From Duane Hanson...
Thanks for the Jon Gnagy item. It brought back a flood of memories. Like you, I watched Gnagy's show and tried to follow along -- and I also badgered my parents into getting me his Learn to Draw kit. I think there was a kneaded eraser in the kit too, which I thought was pretty cool. The charcoal mostly wound up all over my hands and then on anything else I touched.
Despite being discouraged by my inability to mimic Gnagy, I stuck with the whole artist idea, and became a graphic designer/cartoonist. I'm no Jon Gnagy (or Burne Hogarth -- whose drawing books I also bought), but I've managed to scratch out a living all these years and get to do some things I like along the way. I still get envious of more talented people like Gnagy who can make it all seem so easy though.
Lastly, someone named Yoga51 sent me this link to a site where you can see some Jon Gnagy paintings...and even order the current editions of Jon Gnagy art sets. Yes, they still make them. I hope they contain better charcoal than they did when I was eight.
At long last, Vincent Bugliosi's book, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, is coming out tomorrow. It's 1,612 pages explaining — and in Bugliosi's mind, proving conclusively — that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin in Dallas on 11/22/63. Bugliosi is an egomaniac and a man with odd ideas about the role of women in society...but regarding matters of law and crime, I have never known him to be anything but dead-on correct.
Once upon a time, I did not feel as he does about the Kennedy Assassination. I tumbled — a bit too deeply, I later realized — into the world of the Conspiracy Buffs for whom all possibilities are credible except the official one. I even met people who had ten or more mutually exclusive theories of how J.F.K. was killed and who somehow wanted to believe them all. Eventually, I came around to the view that while there were a few anomalies and suspicious things about the "Lone Nut" hypothesis, any other explanation involved fifty times as many. (I also came to the view that it was an act of masochism to try and discuss this with some people. So don't bother sending me your Grassy Knoll musings. I shan't be discussing the assassination on this page or in e-mail.)
I met Bugliosi a few years ago, back when he was originally working on this book, which he stopped and started. The man's a great talker and as others have suggested, if he'd prosecuted O.J. Simpson, that first trial would probably have had a somewhat different outcome. I look forward to the book (which you can order here, by the way) but I think what I really look forward is to the book tour, with him defending his conclusions. If you hear he's going to be on any particular talk or news show, let me know.
In the meantime, in this article, the man lays out some of his thoughts. Over on the book's website, you can download two chapters in PDF form — the Introduction and this chapter about the conspiracy theorists. Lastly, our video link today is a half-hour monologue by Mr. Bugliosi explaining what he believes and how his book proves it. You may or may not want to wade into all this and I could certainly understand if you didn't. But it's there for those of us who are interested...
Firefox is a free browser for the PC and many who've tried it like it better than Internet Explorer. I have both on my computer and use both but I have to say I use I.E. more often. Firefox is fine and — mostly because of specific plug-ins I've plugged-in — it does some things Internet Explorer doesn't. I think it's a close competition and that many of the folks out there who insist Firefox is way superior are just trying to stick it to Microsoft.
Like I said, Firefox is free. So I was astounded to learn that it generates $55 million a year or so for its makers. How is such a thing possible? Read here and find out.
May 15, 2007
