Sensible, Amused, Right

This Time:  The Sound of Music, and nothing else.

Some blog keeping.  We're not finished with the Jane Fonda page, although we have moved on for now.   I have nearly chucked in the whole project - if no one in the forest hears your tweets, is there any point to Twitter?  Boo hoo, etc.  But ridiculously heartened to see visitor from The British Museum, so onward we plough.  

Here is a pretty lady looking very 1920s and even a little 1820s; an interesting slab of clay (a guess) and a tiny photo of "Seven, Sounding Music."  Yes, The Sound of Music just opened on Broadway!  In 1959.  Not being much of a fan of Broadway, I had assumed that this came in the very early 1950s - certainly before West Side Story.  

Vogue says:  People Are Talking About. . . In The Sound of Music, the seven children -- attractive, odd-faced, easy on stage -- singing the kind of children's music that Richard Rodgers writes better than anyone else, sensible, amused, right. . ."

Oh, Vogue - not one editor thought it unamusing and wrong to call children "odd faced?"  What does that mean - odd faced and attractive?  Children do tend to grow out of these things.  

Seven unnamed child actors - none of whom went very much further.  Also - Rodgers wrote the music, Hammerstein wrote the words.   Even I knew that!  

Courtesy of Spotify, I've listened to the cast album all the way through three times.  It sort of knocks you senseless.  Some of the music is beautiful; some hideous.  I hadn't remembered that "Climb Every Mountain" was belted out by a nun.  That must have been quite an experience for the audience.  For me, The Sound of Music remains a mountain of ickiness.  It was one of the first movies I saw in the theater.  Quite the occasion, we drove all the way from Fullerton to Hollywood.   It was almost like going to a real theater.  But from the first moment, I was utterly confused.  Why was this woman so happy?  Why was she so much younger than Mary Poppins?  Why was it the same actress, but now she had short blond hair?  Why was she a nun?  Why did she want to become a governess?  Why did she marry that old man?  What was wrong with her?  Why were there so many children in that family?  Even if I could stomach all that, there was a moment when the family was hiding from the Nazis and one little kid asked if he could sing.  What a set up!  I think this was the first time I felt myself jerked around by a movie.  

That was the movie.  The musical must have been even stranger.  Mary Martin was 46; Theodore Bikel was 35.  (A big year for Theodore Bikel - The Sound of Music and Vogues's number one pick for what album to give for  Christmas.)  Mr. Bikel was performing in Berkeley last month.  It was a Thursday and I had to work the next day.  I am very sure that Mr. Bikel wouldn't have let that deter him.

I can't find a video from the original show.  So this will have to suffice:

I really hate that song. I hate puppets, folklore and goatherds.  But I found myself liking:

Sorry.  Such a plain post.

Also, no movie.  Netflix replace The Magician, but I haven't been able to bring myself to watch it.

Next time:  that mysterious sculpture.