Monthly Archives: June 2012

Back from the Baltic

28 Thursday Jun 2012

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Readers: thanks for your patience; blog entries resume now that I’ve returned from Europe. Of all the towns we visited on this Holland-America cruise, Stockholm was the winner. 

The buses there are boats -they run on water, you Hop-On and Hop-Off and these charming little launches putt-putt around the town, depositing you at any one of a dozen locations. The gulls and ducks in the harbor fly and paddle cheerfully alongside the variety of sea-going vehicles: launches, skiffs, catamarans and yachts; you glide by office buildings topped by steeples, residences crowned with turrets -the architecture expresses a buoyancy of spirit, the optimistic character of the inhabitants is revealed through the cityscape, it’s simply enchanting. The amusement park gives a kind of Pleasure Island feel to the place, with kids happily packed into roller coasters or dropping from immense heights from stomach-wrenching towers. There’s one of the most dramatic museums I’ve seen, the Vasa Muset. The Vasa was a 250 foot warship that sank in the bay minutes after being launched. For three centuries it lay on the harbor floor until raised and reconstructed in the 1960’s. You think the Titanic’s impressive? This ship hangs suspended, looming over you in a cavernous space three stories high, theatrically lit as if by Natasha Katz.    A towering leviathan, floating twenty feet above your head. On the second  level you can see the carved wooden figures decorating the hull, from cherubs to kings, with the proud Swedish lion under the bowsprit. Simply breathtaking. And of course there’s a gift shop, with mugs and place-mats and T-Shirts all displaying the ship’s image. Do yourself a favor -search Vasa Museum on Google. Monday I’ll post evaluations of the other cities we visited, plus, in future, a critique of Holland-America.   

Gay Teacher Makes Pass

10 Sunday Jun 2012

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Article in todays NYT (6.10.12) about pedophile teachers at Horace Mann -and how the school stonewalled attempts by parents to get the place to acknowledge the situation. Like the Catholic church, this school’s behavior was unconscionable. How glad I am to report that my alma mater, Fieldston, reacted differently in a similar situation: my friend Bob and I (age sixteen) were part of a school field trip when our French teacher, Fen Fuller, approached us. We were sitting on a hill, watching the livestock being fed. “Did you ever see a bull hump a cow?” he asked us. We were both shocked and intrigued that this instructor would let his hair down and treat us as his equals. Fuller then described an obscene dream, winking and laughing all the while, indicating that -between we three worldly fellows- such topics were sources of sophisticated amusement. At the end of this encounter, he told us he was sure our French marks could be improved: “In fact,” he said, “if you guys don’t get an A this semester, I’ll kiss your ass.” The next week, back at school, he invited us to meet him in the boy’s bathroom before classes began. In my naivete, I was ready to go, certain this was some kind of humorous prank the iconoclastic Fuller wanted to stage. But Bob informed his parents, they contacted mine, and the Fieldston authorities were alerted. The infamous Boys Bathroom liaison never happened. And to our school’s great credit (this was the mid-fifties) Fieldston gave Fen Fuller a leave of absence to get some therapy, and allowed him to return to his teaching position afterwards. Bravo, Fieldston!

Revue Baby

09 Saturday Jun 2012

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The joke that set me on the path to revue I made when I was twelve.     Pop had backed the station wagon into the flower bed -and I called to him: “Pop, look -there’s a Ford in your fuchsia.” Of course it was Pop who’d opened my mind to the possibilities of wit (and slapstick): he was a great fan of 1) Fred Allen, 2) WC Fields and, 3) the Marx Bros. So when Milton Berle burst on the scene we ate him up. Berle was very shtick-ey -which my twelve-year-old mind of course embraced, he walked around on the sides of his feet, dressed in drag, blacked out his teeth.Sid Caesar Sid Caesar‘s comedy had a more refined cast to it, though just as funny. He could imitate a gum machine malfunctioning, coughing, spitting, bulging his eyes. He could mimic any language, spouting nonsense syllables that sounded like the real thing (learned, I later realized, from Danny Kaye). Then, at eight in the morning, for Christ’s sake -there was Ernie Kovacs. I’d invariably be late to school, unable to tear myself away from his nearly surrealistic concepts: after each bit, he’d cut to a string puppet in the empty studio balcony, batting it’s cotton hands together in silent applause. He’d put on a pair of goggle-eyed, cross-eyed spectacles and become lisping poet Percy Dovetonsils (modeled, I later saw, on Truman Capote): Thought’s While Falling off the Empire State Building “-oh look, there goes the twenty-fourth floor“.  Phil Silvers in Top Banana was another milestone, a recap of classic vaudeville shtick from its heyday (plaintiff enters with a ladder: “I’m taking my case to a higher court” -rimshot!). My friend Bobby and I were convulsed. The hottest girl in our class was Julie Wald, she wore Angora sweaters and that pointy bra that was so big in the fifties. Phil SilversWe decided we could woo her by dressing up like Phil Silvers (baggy pants, giant neckties, outsize cap), going up to her apartment on Central Park West -and shpritzing her with seltzer from a seltzer bottle! Jesus, the things you think up at fifteen! Accordingly, we outfitted ourselves this way, and presented ourselves to the elevator man at the San Remo, one of Manhattans tonier addresses. “The Wald apartment, please.’ The operator looked at us strangely, and didn’t shut the door when he let us off at Julie’s foyer, just kind of stood there, watching. Fortunately, Julie answered the bell herself (not her mom or dad which would have been awful): “Johnny! Bobby! What are you doing???” At which point each of us underwent a total failure of nerve, and -instead of squirting Julie- turned the seltzer bottles on each other! After which we broke into embarrassed, hysterical giggles. I’m not making this up (how could I?). We then retreated to the elevator and made our red-faced, humiliated way back out to the street. God knows what we said to Julie next day at school (I’ve repressed it). Next week: how Bobby and I started writing songs.

Sam Goody’s Record Shop & Goddard Lieberson

04 Monday Jun 2012

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Pal Joey(Dah dah) YOU’RE THE TOP/(A-Boop-a-dee Dah dah) YOU’RE THE DAM AT BOULDER/( Dah dah) YOU’RE THE MOON (A-Boop-a-dee dah dah) OVER MAE WEST’S SHOULDER.  That’s Cole Porter. Here’s Lorenz Hart: DON’T CHANGE A HAIR FOR ME/NOT IF YOU CARE FOR ME.  

At the age of thirteen, I found these lyrics on cast albums issued by Goddard Lieberson.  This producer, who worked for Columbia records, shaped my musical (and lyrical) sensibility. He initiated a project: re-recording the scores of the most significant musicals of the 1920’S and 30’s, songs by the best composers and lyricists America ever produced. Take a look at the fantastic roster of brilliant scores: Girl Crazy and Oh, Kay (the Gershwins) and four by Rodgers & Hart –Boys From Syracuse, Babes in Arms, On Your Toes and Pal Joey.  Cole Porter’s Anything Goes. Not to mention The Bandwagon (Dietz & Schwartz)  I ALWAYS GO TO BED AT TEN/OH ISN’T THAT A BORE?/I ALWAYS GO TO BED AT TEN/BUT I GET HOME AT FOUR. Racy stuff for a fourteen year old, in 1951.

Girl CrazyMary Martin was the star on many of these albums, supported by an accomplished cast of Broadway voices: Jack Cassidy, Portia Nelson, Bibi Osterwald -all conducted by the man who later ran the BMI workshop –Lehman Engel. My total allowance went to Sam Goody’s record emporium on West 49th St. -the Broadway Section. Saturdays would find me there, picking through whatever new titles had just been released, and -as I got to know the composers- if there was no new show album that week, I’d search names like Vernon Duke and Vincent Youmans to find whatever related treasures might be beckoning within the thin plywood separators. Of course, listening to these discs over and over, at your most learning-intensive stage, embedded these songs so firmly in my mind that, later, I was able to make a living at the piano, singing these gems to audiences who responded to the fervor in my presentation. “Here’s a song from Anything Goes,” I’d inform them, “introduced by Ethel Merman in 1934.” And I’d sing I Get a Kick Out of You. But I’m digressing -I’ll deal with my adventures at the keyboard in another post. I simply want to record here my passion for this music; I was lucky to be born in New York, and to have parents to whom the theater was a bi-monthly event -they gave me and my sister tickets to My Fair Lady in it’s first week (they’d won the seats in a raffle, had seen it already). By that time (1956) I was a show veteran, having already taken in Broadway offerings Guys & Dolls, Where’s Charley (Frank Loesser), Make A Wish (Hugh Martin), House of Flowers (Harold Arlen), The Threepenny Opera (Kurt Weill), Pardon Our French (Victor Young) and both Hazel Flagg and Two On the Aisle (Jule Styne).

As for the content -the books- of these musicals, it was, admittedly, pretty slim. Of the shows listed above, I can cite only Guys & Dolls as having a book which matched the score. Without realizing it, I found myself gravitating towards revues like Two on the Aisle, which starred Bert Lahr and the very hot Dolores Gray. At least the sketches (Nat Hiken, Comden & Green) had point and were funny. Mel Brooks wrote his Death of a Salesman parody for New Faces of 1952 –which introduced me to both Ronny Graham and Eartha Kitt (years later, Eartha sang a song of mine at the Carlyle, A Voice Full of Yes). I finally got around to Rodgers & Hammerstein (never my favorites) in 1953 with Me and Juliet –a pallid piece. (to be continued)