Summer Reading
In my last column, I noted that on the first day of grade school each year, a nun would insist that I write about “What I Did on My Summer Vacation.” While I complained about that, things would eventually get worse: During my high school years, a nun would bring out a test on the very first day of school. That’s right, a test on the first day, to see how carefully I had read the books that had been assigned for the summer.
And what books! Adam Bede, Pride and Prejudice, Love Is Eternal. But don’t infer that I recall those three because I read them. I didn’t, and neither did many of the other kids. At every class reunion I’ve since attended, someone always brings up the test where we were asked, “What was inscribed inside the ring that Abraham Lincoln gave Mary Todd upon their engagement?” All of us later learned that the correct answer was “Love Is Eternal,” but we recall with fondness that Willy Whalen guessed, “Made in Japan.”
Actually, I read lots of books that summer — but not Adam Bede, Pride and Prejudice or Love Is Eternal. Oh, if the nuns had told me that Pride and Prejudice had been made into a musical titled First Impressions, I’m sure I would have delved into it. But I’m sure none of them knew about that 92-performance failure.
Now that I’m free of nuns and assignments, I can read whatever I want — which is what I did this summer. Most of my time was spent reading musicals so that I could include them in the new edition of my book Let’s Put on a Musical . I read more than 100 and chose 70 new titles, from Aspects of Love to Zombie Prom. But while I was re-reading Bye Bye Birdie, I noted with interest the scene where Rosie goes to the filing cabinet to pull out the name of the lucky Conrad Birdie fans who’ll give him One Last Kiss. I wonder if it ever occurred to book writer Michael Stewart that he could have gotten a quick laugh if Rosie had first pulled out the name of a boy. After all, there must have been at least a few males in Birdie’s fan club!
I read Sidney Sheldon’s memoir, The Other Side of Me. Are you surprised that I read about the guy who writes all those potboilers? Ah, but before his series of smash successes in the pop-lit field, Sheldon did work on Broadway from time to time. I knew that he’d co-written the book for the Bob Fosse-Gwen Verdon hit Redhead in 1959, but I didn’t know that, in 1943, he wrote a new book for the 1907 hit The Merry Widow. (And you thought revisals were something new!) I liked his story of noted producer Vincent (Anything Goes) Freedley asking him to write the book for the 1944 musical Jackpot — “about a girl who raffles herself off to raise money for the war effort and the winning ticket is won by three soldiers who pooled their money.” When Sheldon saw the show’s set for the first time, he spied a huge white Southern house with a picket fence. “This is the set from my last show,” Freedley explained. “The show flopped, so we’re going to use the set for this one. It’ll save us a lot of money.” (Jackpot ran 69 performances.)
Sheldon also wrote the screenplay for Annie Get Your Gun. He reports that, after Judy Garland was replaced, Betty Garrett was offered the part — but her agent insisted on a three-picture deal. The studio wouldn’t budge, and that’s why Betty Hutton played Annie. Then, when Sheldon was writing the movie version of Jumbo, Richard Burton wanted to do it — until he was offered $50,000 more to do Cleopatra and Jumbo‘s producer wouldn’t match it. As anyone who was alive at the time can tell you, Burton took Cleopatra. States Sheldon, “My theory is that if he were paid that extra $50,000, Richard Burton would have done Jumbo and married Martha Raye.”
I also enjoyed What in the Word, Charles Harrington Elster’s book on “Wordplay, Word Lore, and Answers to Your Peskiest Questions about Language.” I was surprised to see that the old expression “23 Skidoo” has its origins in a play. Seems that in 1899, The Only Way — an adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities — showed Sydney Carton, about to be executed, being given the number 23 and told to wait his turn. The play was such a hit that the already popular word “skidoo,” meaning “time to leave,” was augmented to “23 Skidoo.” Who knew?
I checked out Science Fiction Quotations from The Inner Minds to The Outer Limits, edited by Gary Westfahl. I looked to see if Westfahl included any theatrical quotations and found three from Dracula (among them, “The whole world is mad, and if you want to help, you must come to a madman to get it”), six from Visit to a Small Planet (e.g., “War is the principal art form of your race”), seven from The Rocky Horror Show (including the lyrics that instruct us how to do “The Time Warp”) and nine from Peter Pan (including, of all things, “It is a mistake to have a dog for a nurse.”)
But who’d have expected that Shaw’s Man and Superman would be represented by “A lifetime of happiness? No man could bear it.” And can Mary Coyle Chase’s Harvey be considered science fiction? I say no, but I applaud Westfahl for wanting to spread the wise words of Elwood P. Dowd. “In this world, you must be oh-so-smart or oh-so-pleasant,” said the pookah aficionado. “For years, I was smart. I recommend pleasant.” Good for you, Elwood. So do I!
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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@theatermania.com]
