Rebecca Paller, The Paley Center for Media

TV in 1960: Farewell to Howdy Doody, Hello to The Flintstones and Andy Griffith

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 00:00:00 CDT

Fifty years ago this month, network television was unveiling the new fall season—including 56 debuting programs spread fairly evenly among CBS, NBC, and ABC.

In the midst of all the premieres the beloved children’s program Howdy Doody was going off the air, ending its thirteen-year run on NBC on September 24 as Clarabell the Clown broke his self-imposed silence and spoke for the first time (lips aquiver, with a tear in his eye): “Goodbye, kids.”

Fortunately Howdy’s Saturday morning timeslot was taken over the following week by Shari Lewis and her menagerie of animal puppets (Lamb Chop, Charlie Horse, etc.)—so we kids didn’t feel sad for too long.

A mere two days after the Howdy Doody finale, one of the most defining media events of the twentieth century got underway as Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon met for the first of four televised debates. (Did you know that Howdy Doody also ran for president, twice: in 1948 when—no kidding!—he had plastic surgery so he could compete with the better looking candidates like Thomas Dewey, and again in 1952.)

Looking back at the programs that premiered fifty years ago, it’s not too difficult to see some parallels with our present-day lineup. In 1960 the new ABC drama The Roaring Twenties revolved around two newspaper reporters who hung out alongside mobsters (and a charming chanteuse named Pinky Pinkham, played by Dorothy Provine) at the Charleston Club. Thanks in large part to careful casting and fine direction by Robert Altman and others, The Roaring Twenties successfully evoked the frenetic mood and colorful personalities of the Flapper Age, and ran for two seasons.

The 1920s are being revisited again this season on the eagerly anticipated new HBO series Boardwalk Empire, a gangster drama set in Atlantic City during the Prohibition era. The first episode, which airs on September 19, has been directed by Martin Scorsese, who is also one of the producers of the series.

The 1960-61 season also had its share of sitcoms about relationships—including NBC’s Peter Loves Mary, where a showbiz couple (played by real life couple Peter Lind Hayes and Mary Healy) moved from Manhattan to Connecticut to raise their kids; and Pete and Gladys on CBS—a December Bride spin-off about a sarcastic husband (Harry Morgan) and his well-meaning but ditzy wife (Cara Williams). Fast forward to this year’s “two-name-relationship-sitcom” Mike and Molly, about a big-hearted, overweight cop who meets a plump school teacher at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting. It will be interesting to see if Mike and Molly gets a second season like Pete and Gladys, or if it disappears after a single season a la Peter Loves Mary. If I were a betting person…

The three breakout hits of the ’60-’61 season were The Andy Griffith Show, My Three Sons, and The Flintstones. The first two were the likely heirs to Father Knows Best—minus mother since both dads were widowers.

The Andy Griffith Show had its roots on The Danny Thomas Show the previous season—when Griffith played a small-town sheriff who pulled over Thomas and his family for a traffic violation and put them in jail. On the series Andy Taylor (Griffth) had a young son named Opie (the adorable Ron Howard) and a high-strung, bungling deputy named Barney Fife (the hilarious Don Knotts, who won five Emmys for the role). Though the critics were dead wrong about this show—the New York Times dismissed it, writing that its “homespun humor” was only mildly entertaining—audiences embraced The Andy Griffith Show, which had a healthy eight-year run and is still popular today on TVLand.

My Three Sons, about an aviation engineer raising his boys in Middle America (later relocating to California)—though more sitcom-y and less beautifully crafted than The Andy Griffith Show—was a vehicle for film star Fred MacMurray that resonated with viewers, staying on the air for 12 seasons (five on ABC, seven on CBS).

My Three Sons is light years away from this season’s new show about parent-child relationships: $#*! My Dad Says (CBS), adapted from Justin Halpern’s popular Twitter feed, with William Shatner as a highly opinionated and outspoken father given to politically incorrect rants. One thing’s for certain: Bill Shatner won’t be wearing a cardigan.

A hundred years from now, cultural historians will no doubt be hard-pressed to understand why that modern Stone Age phenomenon known as The Flintstones captured our attention in 1960—and has continued to do so ever since. For starters, 1960 was a simpler time—a time when it seemed funny that Fred sped through town in his Flintmobile or that a new-fangled garbage disposer consisted of a hungry buzzard hidden under the kitchen sink. Those were the days when we used to gather around the TV set as a family—and take our Flintstones One-A-Day vitamins.

Check out our Perspectives on Media feature on the history of the creators of the Flintstones, Hanna-Barbera. And here's The Flintstones original opening in 1960, sans the rousing theme song that came along two years later… 

How I Spent My Summer Vacation: Channel Surfing on the Sly

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 00:00:00 CDT

Yesterday I returned from a two-week vacation. Actually it was a "non-vacation" since I spent nearly the entire time working on a freelance project.

Because I needed to focus on the assignment at hand, I made a vow not to check emails, text messages, or voicemails. In addition I swore off television with a few exceptions: the nightly news, Mad Men, and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

I made good on my pledge not to retrieve electronic messages. That was the easy part. But staying away from TV was well nigh impossible. After working at the computer for three or four hours at a stretch, I simply had to take a break. In the afternoons I would walk around the block and get a bit of sun or go to the gym and work out. But there were other times when I simply wanted to—no, needed to!—watch TV.

For some unknown reason, I ended up catching bits and pieces of programs I had never seen before—though I seemed to have a knack for tuning in at "off" moments: Angie Harmon in a fitting room being forced by her overbearing mother (Lorraine Bracco) to try on "girlie dresses" on Rizzoli & Isles; Kathy Griffin crying over the death of her dog Chance on Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List; and Covert Affairs' third episode, "South Bound Suarez," which focused on CIA agent Piper Perabo solving a case in Venezuela. (Huh? I had hoped to see the home office in Washington, where Peter Gallagher plays a CIA bigwig.)

I also watched a bit of America's Got Talent—turning on the TV at the exact moment when a very large guy with the intriguing name of Hannibal Means (clad in an orange flowing gown) was singing "The Circle of Life" from The Lion King. His intonation was iffy and his articulation was affected but he was so self-assured (in a frightening way) that I actually tuned in the following night to see if he made it to the next round. He didn't.

I also, for the first and last time, saw a few minutes of Jersey Shore. It was the Season Premiere, and I turned it off after "The Situation" said he was going to "pimp it." (At least I think that's what he said.) Ronnie was in jail and Snooki had explained to somebody what a "juice head" is and then danced around on the boardwalk while calling out to an old boyfriend—not a pretty sight.

The most intriguing of all the programs was The Pillars of the Earth on Starz. Late last Friday night I saw the final 15 minutes of episode two (or was it episode three?), just as Prior Philip and the downtrodden parishioners were awaiting the visit of crazy King Stephen. Having already missed a substantial chunk of the eight-hour miniseries, I nevertheless was attracted by the look of the series (painstakingly researched and presented, like Zeffirelli's 1977 epic Jesus of Nazareth) and the believability of the performances by some of my favorite British actors: Matthew Macfadyen, Rufus Sewell, and Eddie Redmayne (who just won a Tony Award for his sensitive portrayal of young artist in Red). I don't know if Sewell and company will ever get that twelfth-century cathedral built but I'll be tuning in next Friday night after catching up on the previous episodes on the Starz website. (At this moment I'm trying to restrain myself from buying the thousand-page Ken Follett novel on which the series is based.)

What else did I do on my summer non-vacation? One morning I went to The View—not, alas, to the President Obama interview but to a business-as-usual show on Monday with lots of "Hot Topics," but no exciting guests. All of us in the audience that day were offered the opportunity to go to the Obama taping on Wednesday at 6 but we were also warned that—because of tight security, etc.—we'd have to queue up on 66th Street outside ABC for the better part of Wednesday before they'd let us into the studio. It was tempting but—discouraged by the 90-degree-plus temperatures forecast for that day along with my looming freelance deadline—I turned down the offer and watched the interview on Thursday morning with the rest of America.

I'm still on the fence as to whether or not The View was the best public forum for the president to appear on. One thing I can say with certainty is that if he had been on a bona fide news program he would not have been asked about Snooki, Lindsay Lohan, Chelsea Clinton's wedding, or what he listens to on his iPod.

Jay-Z, Frank Sinatra, and Maria Callas—who woulda thunk it?

Soccer and Theater: It's a Small World After All

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 00:00:00 CDT

On Monday, as soccer fans around the world were gathered at their local pubs watching Brazil and the Netherlands advance to the quarterfinals of the World Cup, another group of equally passionate fans were gathered in 270 movie houses in 22 countries across the globe.

I’m talking about theater lovers who were watching a live HD transmission of a 159-year-old play from the Royal National Theatre in London.

Boucicault’s comedy London Assurance was the final offering of the first season of “NT Live,” theatrical transmissions in high-def that are beamed via satellite and have been seen, so far, by 120,000 people. For $25 I got to see the show from a second row center seat at the über-comfortable Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York. I arrived 20 minutes before the “curtain,” hoping for a pre-show feature about the play with rehearsal footage of the actors. The Jacob Burns was nearly full—it seems like everyone else had the same idea.

Instead of interviews with the actors or footage from the show’s rehearsals, we got images of buskers outside the National Theatre, performing for the crowd that was gathering to watch the play on a large portable screen. (London Assurance has been sold out since it opened three months ago.) Unfortunately the buskers didn’t sing Novello or Coward tunes. They juggled. And juggled. Ten minutes of juggling was quite enough for most of us.

At 2 pm EST (7 pm in the UK) we were treated to images of the audience in the Olivier Theatre—dressed casually, for the most part—and then we received an unexpected shout-out from the “NT Live” host Emma Freud, who mentioned “Pleasantville, New York” as one of the towns with participating cinemas. We roared back our approval, sounding for all the world like a bunch of rowdy soccer fans.

The play was a jolly romp—and I mean that in a good way. Once I suspended disbelief (Could a father—even one as “out there” as Simon Russell Beale’s over-the-top fop—really not recognize his son merely because the boy has put on a pair of scholarly spectacles?) and got into the spirit of the thing, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The transmission was not without its problems, including microphone “thumpings” and a couple of rough camera movements. Worst of all, about 25 minutes into the play, a storm on the East Coast knocked out our satellite feed for four minutes. Fortunately we were back in business in time for Fiona Shaw’s grand, over the top entrance—in which she exhibited every tic and strange mannerism from The Coarse Actor’s Handbook yet somehow made it work to her advantage.

If London Assurance was not quite the complete theatrical experience of the previous “NT Live” offering, Alan Bennett’s The Habit of Art (both plays were staged by RNT Director Nicholas Hytner), it still brightened my day and left me “wanting more.”

Later that night, when all was still and fair, I snuck away to my iMac and downloaded the 52-page “RNT Electronic Programme” that had been mentioned by Emma Freud. Though I balked at paying for something I couldn’t print out, I paid the two pounds (i.e. three American dollars and change) and stayed up way past my bedtime looking at rehearsal and production shots and reading a couple of articles on the life and times of Dion Boucicault—the Irish born actor/playwright/stage director/producer and innovator who for a period in the mid-nineteenth century was the most prolific playwright of the English stage (and who may have “offed” his first wife, a wealthy woman twice his age who died under mysterious circumstances).

Always on the prowl for money, Boucicault in 1857 wrote a melodrama entitled The Poor of New York—using the 1857 financial panic as background. The play was a versatile one—filled with robberies, murders, and debtors aplenty—and the title was changed to reflect whatever city it was performed in (The Poor of London, The Poor of Birmingham, or wherever…).

Interestingly, The Paley Center for Media has in its permanent collection a very early television version of that play. Called The Streets of New York or Poverty Is No Crime, it aired on W2XBS-TV (the predecessor to New York’s WNBC) on August 31, 1939.

The telecast begins with a shot of Lester Wallack’s Theatre, built in 1850, and a poster announcing: "Dion Boucicault’s sensational melodrama The Streets of New York OR Poverty Is No Crime." The names of the cast members roll by (the part of Badger—who gleefully picks the pockets of a dead man in one of the early scenes—was played by a very young Norman Lloyd).

Next up is a slate with the Rules of Etiquette: “Men and women in the audience are required not to crack peanuts during the performance.”

Substitute “Turn Off Your Cellphones” for “Don’t Crack Peanuts” and it seems that nothing much has changed in the 120 years since Boucicault’s death. Except, of course, for satellite transmissions and electronic playbills.

Joan Rivers: BFF for a Day

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 00:00:00 CDT

A new documentary, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, will be released next week, and I can’t wait to see it. “Why on earth would you want to see a movie about her?” a friend said with disdain earlier today. “Because she was the nicest person I ever interviewed,” I quickly responded.

Come again?

It was the summer of 1988, and I was an editor at Where Magazine. One of my duties was to ghostwrite a column called “My Manhattan” for a different celebrity each month. We’re talking about a wide spectrum of people, from James Earl Jones and Richard Thomas to Bobby Short and Yoko Ono (!). I would interview each of them for a few hours, and then write a 1,200 word piece about said celeb’s favorite stores, museums, hamburger haunts, Sunday brunch places, etc.

Usually I looked forward to these interviews but I was terrified at the prospect of interviewing Joan Rivers. Her husband had committed suicide less than a year before, and she was trying to resuscitate her career. She had just taken over the role of Kate in Neil Simon’s Broadway Bound (a role for which Linda Lavin had won a Tony), and I had an appointment to meet her in her dressing room after the Saturday matinee. I was scared she would make fun of my looks, my clothes, or even the way I spoke. I wore a new suit—with a short skirt and shoulder pads right out of Dynasty—and went to great pains to blow-dry my hair straight.

I needn’t have worried. When I entered the dressing room I saw a teeny woman with very little makeup (her character in the play was an unglamorous Brooklyn woman whose life was unraveling), wearing a bathrobe and having a cup of tea. Spike, her beloved Yorkie, was also there. Joan Rivers and her assistant complimented my suit and I complimented her performance in the show.

Next thing I knew, we were two girlfriends sharing tales about the single life. She asked if I was dating and how I met men in New York City. She told me she loved to go to plays but it was next to impossible now that she was in one herself. We talked about shopping (her favorite store was Chanel) and her hairstylist Kenneth. And somehow we got on the subject of Rudolf Nureyev and the affair he had with Michelle Phillips when they were shooting the Ken Russell film Valentino. Which led, of course, to a conversation about gay guys who date women.

A few days later, after I had written the article and sent her the galleys, Joan Rivers called me at work to say she liked it. “I have just one small change. It should be ‘dripping in Chanel’ instead of ‘dripping Chanel,’ “ she said (taking care not to make me feel like a rube). “Other than that it looks great.”

In last week’s New York magazine Jonathan Van Meter wrote an in-depth profile of Rivers—who will turn 77 on June 8. Van Meter’s piece, which captures the human being behind the wisecracks, got me thinking about my brief encounter with her all those years ago—and inspired me to watch a few of the hundred plus Rivers programs that are part of the Paley Center collection. I began with an early appearance on The Jack Paar Program in 1965 in which she talked about—what else?—the difficulty of meeting single, available men. (“I met one man in Indianapolis with a girl—a very ordinary girl, the kind of face you see a thousand times a day…on magazine covers.”)

Joan Rivers was and is a very funny woman. I feel lucky to have met the real person behind the quips.

Alan Bennett’s "The Habit of Art" Crosses the Pond

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 00:00:00 CDT

Since late last fall I’ve been dying to go to London to see Alan Bennett’s new play The Habit of Art. A play within a play, it’s about a group of actors rehearsing a drama about a late-in-life meeting of two former friends, the illustrious composer Benjamin Britten and the equally illustrious poet W. H. Auden. Unfortunately a trip to London was not to be—long gone are those footloose and fancy free days when I could book a cheap trip a week in advance (and see three plays in 36 hours).

Well, the mountain has come to Mahomet.

Late last week the National Theatre, as part of its “NT Live” series, broadcast The Habit of Art live in hi-def to movie theaters around the world. One of those theaters happened to be right in my own backyard—give or take a few miles.

I arrived at the theater 15 minutes early, just in time to catch a live interview with the play’s director, Nicholas Hytner, and a filmed segment about Britten and Auden and a movie they collaborated on in 1936—Night Mail (script by Auden, music by Britten), which became the best-known documentary of the era.

The profile ended with a scene from that film—black and white footage of a train barreling through the countryside. And at the exact moment the film ended, the actors were in their places and The Art of Habit began. Just like that, the smoothest segueway I’ve seen this year.

For the next two and half hours, I forgot who I was or where I was as I watched Ben Britten pay one final visit to Wystan Auden—seeking advice on his final opera, Death in Venice, for which Auden so desperately wanted to write the libretto. The meeting was completely fictitious, a product of Bennett’s fertile imagination. In reality, the friendship between Britten and Auden had ended decades earlier, in 1942. (Their falling out was complicated. According to Auden’s friend Lincoln Kirstein, “it was what seemed Ben’s lack of daring, his desire to be The Establishment that irritated Wystan most; the playing it safe, settling for amiability as a guard against queerity, but insisting on the innocence of adolescence as if this was a courageous attitude.”)

Though the play is not without flaws, I was impressed by its immediacy—and profoundly (and unexpectedly) moved by the final moments in the first act, when Britten (played by the peerless Alex Jennings) turned to Auden (Richard Griffiths) and said, “Wystan, I was trying to remember. What did we used to do? How did we used to start?” Blackout.

Sondheim at 80—Uncork the Champagne (and nuzzle up to your computer)

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:00:00 CDT

Composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim is 80 today—and New York City is euphoric.

The first of several major celebrations took place last week at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall (a star-studded concert with Bernadette, Mandy, Audra, Donna, et al.—and if you have to ask for last names you shouldn’t be reading this), and the party continues tonight with a gala preview performance of a new revue at Broadway’s Roundabout Theatre—Sondheim on Sondheim, starring Barbara Cook, Norm Lewis, Vanessa Williams, and Tom Wopat as well as the birthday boy himself, who is seen in a series of video interviews talking about his life and his work.

I caught the first preview of Sondheim on Sondheim this past Friday, and—though it’s not kosher to review a show that’s still a work in progress—I suppose I won’t be struck dead if I softly murmur five words: Barbara Cook Norm Lewis sublime.

Yesterday Jonathan Schwartz devoted most of his Sunday Show on WNYC, from noon to 4, to Sondheim—and I was happily “puttering all around the house” listening to, quite literally, the songs of my life. (I was but a bonnie wee lass when my father came home from a business trip to New York, singing a catchy song called “Comedy Tonight” that he had just heard in “a hilarious new show by this young guy named Stephen Sondheim”…and the first show that I saw when I moved to New York in 1983 was Sunday in the Park with George.) The most moving parts of the Sunday Show were the tracks of Sondheim playing and singing his own music including “Love Is in the Air,” “Everybody Says Don’t,” and “Marry Me a Little.” There was something especially raw and poignant in these renditions that made me understand (all over again) why no one else writing for musical theater today does a better job of illuminating the human condition.

All day today, until 11 tonight, Symphony Space is rebroadcasting their Wall to Wall Stephen Sondheim celebration from five years ago. (You just missed Elaine Stritch singing “The Ladies Who Lunch” and an interview with Sondheim, but if you’re quick on the trigger you can still catch Marin Mazzie, Patti LuPone, Angela Lansbury, and Barbara Cook. Go to symphonyspace.org.)

This Wednesday (March 24), there’s another treat in store: a performance of A Little Night Music recorded last month at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris is scheduled to be broadcast on France Music and simulcast on the web. This is the gorgeous production—-directed by Lee Blakeley and starring Greta Scacchi as Desiree Armfeldt, Leslie Caron as Madame Armfeldt, and Lambert Wilson as Fredrik Egerman—that everyone has been raving about. It’s heavenly just to think about the divine Ms. Caron making her entrance by waltzing onto the stage. Her Madame Armfeldt, you see, is remembering her youth of days gone by.

The Paley Center in New York is saluting the television work of Stephen Sondheim through April 4. Click here for a complete schedule.

Ah, rapture. Ah, Sondheim. Happy Birthday, and thank you for all the happiness you’ve given me.

Dick Button, the Grand Old Man of the Olympics

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:00:00 CST

When I was growing up in Ohio, the Winter Olympics were a big deal in my home—especially the skating competitions. I watched in awe as the elegant Peggy Fleming and the exuberant Dorothy Hamill won their gold medals, and though I was too young to have seen Carol Heiss snag her first-place award in 1960, I loved her in the 1961 movie Snow White and the Three Stooges (one of those films it’s best not to revisit when you’re an adult).

Dick Button, the kid from Englewood, New Jersey, who introduced the “triple loop” and took home gold medals for skating in 1948 and 1952, has been a commentator for the Olympics for the past five decades. His remarks have always been illuminating and insightful—and if some have criticized him for being a bit abrasive (a precursor to Simon Cowell?), he has never lost his passion for the sport or his giddy enthusiasm when praising a perfectly executed routine.

This year Button, now 80, is at it again—looking hale and hearty as ever, and adding a touch of class to the proceedings in Vancouver before or after a big night of skating. “I like to see the great skating when it happens,” he said earlier this week, when he (rightly) predicted that Shen and Zhao’s “absolutely exquisite” skating would bring them first place honors. (Ever the perfectionist, he also said in a post-show intervew that although they would go home to China with the sweet smell of success, Shen and Zhao would also never forget the glitches in their not-quite-perfect performance.) I was also impressed with Button’s diplomacy in refusing to take a potshot at Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy’s unfortunate clown outfits from the short program. (Note to all skaters: Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” is not about circus clowns!)

Button’s passions extend far beyond the skating rink. He has a law degree from Harvard, and for a time in the 1950s he studied acting with famed teacher Sandy Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse and appeared in several plays (including revivals of South Pacific and Mr. Roberts) at New York’s City Center.

He also went to producer Paul Feigay and vigorously campaigned to get a musical version of Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates on TV. It aired on February 9, 1958—with delightful songs by Hugh Martin (best known as the composer of Meet Me in St. Louis), direction by Sidney Lumet, and a first-rate cast including Tab Hunter, Peggy King, Button, opera great Jarmila Novotna, Basil Rathbone, and Carmen Mathews. Hans Brinker was seen in eleven and a half million homes—making it the most-watched Hallmark Hall of Fame broadcast of the time (a record it held until the 1970s).

The Paley Center recently screened Hans Brinker, followed by a panel discussion with performers Peggy King (who played Hans’s girlfriend Rychie) and Ellie Sommers (Hans’s sister, Trinka). Though Button was unable to attend, he sent a letter to the audience that is excerpted here:

"Hans Brinker was a favorite project of mine... It was what seemed to me to be a full scale musical production of Broadway caliber... It was a live broadcast not videotaped and the memories were held in kinescopes. Everyone who worked on it was of the highest talent caliber and a joy to be near… including [Hallmark Hall of Fame producer] George Schaefer and Sidney Lumet, who gave the greatest advice a young performer could get: ‘Just relax. It’s O.K.’ You have no idea how that helped a nervous skater… John Butler had done skating choreography often and was a good friend, and Ellie Sommers and Blair Heimbach [who played Carl] were marvelous skaters too.
I knew Tab Hunter, who competed in the National Figure Skating Championships, could execute every skating move in the books, and was a fine performer and a gentleman of the first order.
When I first started to promote the project I wanted to play the title role. Disappointment set in when it was [clear] that Tab would get the role and I would be Peter… Of course I ignored the fact that he was a huge heartthrob, extraordinarily handsome, a big star… and a fine actor, skater, singer and overall performer—minor factors certainly.
It was fun all the way…I admired the set design of Harvey Schmidt who later created The Fantasticks and made the space of the skating rink seem large. I arranged for the ice equipment, oversaw the hiring of the skaters and was having a ball…
Our first publicity shots were held at the Rockefeller Plaza skating Rink… Tab and I were already on the ice when Peggy King arrived… I had never met her nor seen her skate… Her voice had just blown everyone away and she was indeed perfect… now only if she could skate…???????? Suddenly I turned and saw her standing beside us… The photographer asked for a vertical shot so I said to Tab and Peggy, ‘Let’s just jump straight up, cross our feet and land on our toes in the same spot’... Panic spread across Peggy’s face... We all stood silent… She masqueraded her fright very well—getting pulled by others around the ice and being the best sport of any performer I have ever seen. Of course her looks and her voice were legendary.”
—Dick Button

VISIT: The ’58 telecast of Hans Brinker has never been released commercially but can be watched in the Paley Center libraries in New York City and Los Angeles: Wednesdays to Sundays from noon to 6:00 pm.

Button going for the Gold in 1952…

….and repeating his routine for reporters the following morning.

The Met's "Rosenkavalier" in Hi-Def: Older Can Be Better

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:00:00 CST

I came to work today with every intention of blogging about the Jay Leno–Conan O’Brien brouhaha. But since far too much has already been written about the NBC scheduling mess, I’ve decided it’s best to toss off that subject with a mere Tweet: Everyone knew this adventure in “Must Not See TV” was doomed to fail. C+J are as much at fault as NBC execs. Both men should do a Fox trot.

Now I’m free to move on to something I truly care about.

I’m speaking of Saturday’s “Live from the Met” hi-def transmission of Der Rosenkavalier, seen in hundreds of movie theaters here and abroad. I walked into my local ten-plex at 12:55 p.m., expecting to witness a humdrum performance of an old production. (“I’m leaving after the first act,” I smugly emailed a friend.)

I ended up staying for the entire opera, which clocked in at 4 hours and 40 minutes. (I left briefly, for a few minutes at the end of the first intermission, to put more quarters in the parking meter.) I only wish I could have stayed in my seat and watched it all over again. It was that good. Better than good. It was sublime.

For starters, Renée Fleming gave the performance of a lifetime as the Marschallin. Her voice was ravishing—gone were the scoops, swoops, and cutesy mannerisms of the past few years—and I nearly came undone as she reflected on her waning youth at the end of Act One. Susan Graham was her match vocally and dramatically as Octavian, the 17-year-old count with raging hormones who professes his love for the married Marschallin but ends up finding true romance—at least for the moment—with the teenage Sophie. (It’s love at first sight as he hands her the red rose in Act II.)

The beloved production by Nathaniel Merrill with sets and costumes by Robert O’Hearn premiered on January 23, 1969, and is sumptuous yet traditional. In high definition I couldn’t help but notice all sorts of details that I had never glimpsed from my Balcony or Family Circle seats in the opera house: the gorgeous jewels and embroidery on so many of the costumes, and even the lovely china tea set in Act I (Limoge, for sure) and the cookie (which looked both historically correct and familiar—a Pepperidge Farm Milano?) that Octavian grabbed as the oafish Baron Ochs tried to grab him/her while Octavian was disguised as a chambermaid to avoid being discovered in the Marschallin’s boudoir. (Sorry, I promised myself I wouldn’t bore you with details of the plot.)

High definition also has its down side. The Marschallin herself would be horrified at how modern technology magnifies every line and wrinkle on a woman’s face—soprano Christine Schäfer looked a bit long-in-the-tooth for the role of the ingénue Sophie. But not to worry, she rose to the challenge and sang like an angel in the Final Trio with Fleming and Graham. Also impressive was the luxury cast of Sir Thomas Allen as Faninal and the lively, expressive conducting of Edo de Waart, pinch-hitting for James Levine.

As a special treat, the host for the HD transmission was the indefatigable tenor superstar Plácido Domingo, who turns 70 this month and is celebrating his milestone birthday by conducting Stiffelio and singing the daunting title role in Simon Boccanegra.

Overall I was pleased with the work of television director Barbara Willis Sweete, who conveyed the opera in a straightforward and (with a few exceptions) unfussy manner—a complete roundabout from her bizarre direction of the HD Tristan und Isolde two seasons back. If Ms. Sweete’s direction was not as honest as the late Kirk Browning’s direction of the 1982 “Live from the Met” telecast of Der Rosenkavalier (see the YouTube clip of the Final trio from Act III with Kiri Te Kanawa, Tatiana Troyanos, and Judith Blegen below), it was still valid and satisfying.

Interestingly, this also turned out to be one of those rare times where it was better to see a performance in a movie theater than to experience it live in the opera house, according to a couple of audience members who were at the Met on Saturday (and posted their comments on Opera-L):

"Der Rosenkavalier in the house was tough going for me. While the music, the sets and costumes were very beautiful, the singing was difficult to hear from my 6th row center seat in the orchestra ... Fleming who has a gorgeous voice, does not project … The sound coming thru the body mics worn by the singers is not what we heard in our seats. I was not the only one there to note the sound problem during this performance. Others made comments during the intermissions that they could hardly hear Fleming. While I will look forward to seeing the HD presentation on PBS I would not go again to see this production in house at the Met."

"We are again left with very different experiences of those in the theater from those who hear and/or see stuff through electronic media. Fascinatin'! And a cause for pause!"

On Sunday I heard from a friend, a retired opera singer, who shared a bit of inside gossip about Der Rosenkavalier. She had been told by a reliable source that Metropolitan Opera General Manager Peter Gelb wanted to trash this production of Der Rosenkavalier for a new one (in much the same manner that he put the Zeffirelli Tosca out to pasture and replaced it with the controversial new Luc Bondy production this past September). According to the source, certain members of the Met board who are big money givers told Gelb that if he got rid of the Merrill–O’Hearn production of Rosenkavalier, they would withhold their money. They had earmarked some funds that were to be used to revitalize the 1969 production. Gelb, apparently, kept them happy. And made a lot of opera lovers happy.

Everything old is new again? In the case of this elegant production, Ja, Ja!

Jim Carrey vs. Mr. Magoo: A Tale of Two Christmas Carols

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:00:00 CST

A Christmas Carol never fails to get to me emotionally. What’s not to like about a mean old man who, overnight, finds his heart and becomes the nicest boss in the world? There are hundreds of films and television adaptations of the Charles Dickens novella out there, going back as far as 1908—when Charles Ogle played Scrooge in Thomas Edison’s one-reeler—and everyone has his or her favorite version, be it the classic ’51 British film with Alastair Sim or the ’92 Muppets movie with Michael Caine.

My favorite of all Christmas Carols is the one I watched with my parents and sister on our new 21-inch color TV when I was a kid—the animated Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol, which premiered on NBC on December 18, 1962, and was rebroadcast annually for the next several holiday seasons. It offered a clever, colorful (those reds! those blues! hot pink!) and amazingly faithful version of the story that our teacher had read to us in school minus a few of the characters (Scrooge’s sister Fan and nephew Fred), but it contained ever so much more: a play within a play—the myopic Quincy Magoo appearing as Scrooge in a hit New York play—with a real Broadway score by Jule Styne (whose name I knew from our original cast recording of Gypsy) and Bob Merrill. In those pre-VCR days, Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol was right up there with my other two favorite once-a-year telecasts: Peter Pan and The Wizard of Oz.

What I didn’t know at the time was that Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol was produced on a shoestring budget—$250,000 (or $1,771,523.18 in today’s dollars), according to Darrell Van Citters, an animator who has just published the book Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol: The Making of the First Animated Christmas Special. (This book, a must-read for anyone who grew up watching Magoo, is a treasure trove of fascinating anecdotes from actors and members of the creative team—plus lots of previously unseen color artwork.)

The cost of Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol wouldn’t even pay the crafts service bill to feed all the hundreds (or is it thousands?) of people who worked on Disney’s new A Christmas Carol, which opened in theaters earlier this month. The film cost about $175 million to make—not including marketing costs—and though I was never good at math, by my calculation that appears to be 100 times the “today’s dollars cost” of Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol.

How does this newest extravaganza stack up against Magoo? Well… For all the advance build-up, the 3-D, performance-capture film—written and directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Jim Carrey—is big and loud and, by unequal turns, terrifying and touching. It’s lushly cast—Gary Oldman as Bob Cratchit, Jacob Marley, and Tiny Tim; Colin Firth as Fred; Bob Hoskins as Fezziwig and Old Joe—and Carrey for the most part rises to the occasion as Scrooge (and all the Ghosts), except in one unfortunate scene when he’s called upon to use a high-pitched Alvin the Chipmunk voice.

For my taste there are way too many dizzying flying scenes (Scrooge and Ghosts), mad chase sequences (carriages careening through the streets of London, French Connection–style), and bizarre, superfluous special effects. Still, I have to confess that I love wearing 3-D glasses, and for some reason Tiny Tim’s (Ryan Ochoa) plight and inner goodness seemed even more heartbreaking than usual in “mocap.” More importantly, my teenage son—who always wants loads of color and special effects—pronounced the film “excellent” and said he’d like to read the Dickens book. Last night we watched Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol. Though he said he missed the chase scenes from the Carrey film, he thought the Styne–Merrill songs were “cool.” Maybe it will be a good holiday season after all…

On Tuesday, December 1 at 6:00 pm the Paley Center in New York will screen a newly acquired HD print of Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol, followed by a panel discussion with Darrell Van Citters, the author of the book Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol: The Making of the First Animated Christmas Special; Marie Matthews, who played the voice of Young Scrooge; and Judy Levitow, daughter of Magoo’s director Abe Levitow. The moderator will be Jack Doulin, casting director of New York Theatre Workshop.

Marie Matthews will close the evening by singing “Alone in the World,” the song that she introduced in Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol, accompanied by Mark York at the piano. Afterward, Darrell Van Citters and Ms. Matthews will be in the Paley Center lobby signing copies of Mr. Van Citters’s new book.

As a special bonus, all audience members will receive a complimentary DVD of Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol.

The Balloon Boy's Parents: At What Price Fame?

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 CDT

What the blazes happened last Thursday when cable news networks across the country began airing footage of a strange-looking helium balloon (which bore a resemblance to a chef's hat designed by Maurice Sendak) sailing across the skies of Colorado?

Televised live for more than an hour, the news reports that a young boy was inside the balloon proved to be a big old lie when the vessel came to a gentle landing and was found to be empty. The boy, six-year-old Falcon Heene, was discovered at home a few hours later; he had been hiding the entire time in an attic above the garage. It turns out that his parents, who met several years ago while enrolled at an acting school in Los Angeles and were angling to get their own television reality show (after starring on two episodes of the ABC reality series Wife Swap), had planned this hoax a few weeks ago.

The whole incident is disgusting. Richard and Mayumi Heene will have their day in court and may lose custody of their three boys—which could turn out to be a blessing for these kids. But what troubles me even more than this deplorable couple's desire at all costs to be reality stars is the bad judgment displayed by television news directors in allowing the story to be broadcast live—and in making it the lead story on the nightly news broadcasts for the next three days (bumping pressing stories like the controversy surrounding the recent presidential elections in Afghanistan). Let's get real: How the heck could a thirty-seven-pound boy fit into that teeny balloon? And speaking of questionable news judgment, what are we to make of the Friday Good Morning America and Today interviews with the Heene family, where home viewers eating their breakfast were forced to watch little Falcon throw up not once but twice? (Hint to all talk show hosts: In the future, it might be good protocol not to ask any more questions of an interviewee who has just barfed. Hint to all parents: Never ask your child to lie on network TV. It will always backfire.)

Yesterday morning, while trying to make sense of this whole aberration, I was leafing through the New York Times and came upon a full-page reprint (page A28) of the Times from exactly 100 years ago: October 19, 1909. The entire left-hand column is devoted to an article about one Count de Lambert, who the previous day had flown roundtrip in a Wright "aeroplane" from the Juvisy Aerodome to Paris and back again in slightly under an hour's time. This thirty-mile trip was watched by crowds of people (20,000 at Juvisy as the flight began, and "thousands upon thousands near the Seine") but not officially reported until 5:15, by which time the plane had rounded the apex of the Eiffel Tower and was well on its way back to the aerodome.

After the flight, Countess de Lambert "embraced her husband with overflowing tears" and Orville Wright congratulated the pilot and "declared that the flight was the finest he had ever known." Lambert was taken in triumph to a restaurant, "where his health was toasted in champagne to the strains of the 'Marseillaise.'"

Americans learned about the feat the following day, in a well-crafted report that got the facts straight.