Barbara Ardinger's Blog, page 2

Stepping Into The 21st Century…

���Mother, it���s time for you to join the 21st century.��� This is what my son has been saying for twelve or thirteen years. He said it again a day or two ago. I���ve heard him every time. Gee whizzly���I know it���s a new century. Didn���t I work on a Y2K project?

The Witches That Fill My Home

I���m not sure when I started collecting witches. I remember going to a public ritual in 1988 or ���89 and seeing someone with a beautiful witch. ���Where���d you buy her?��� I asked. I went to the same store the very next day. Now I have (I think) 350 witches (not including me and not including the witch doll who rides in the back seat of my car with her own seatbelt). For a long time I thought I had about 200, but when I was interviewed a few years ago, I did a witch census.

Musical Theater

Just about my favorite thing in the world is musical theater. I go to the theater as often as I can. There���s a lot of live theater in the L.A. Basin, from the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum (where I���ve seen Shakespeare and Moliere), the Hollywood Bowl and the Pantages to little experimental theaters that do experimental productions to university theater to civic light opera and touring companies

Cats

You know the clich�� that working with pagans is like herding cats? Don���t you believe it. Cats are smart. They learn things fast. Herding them merely requires patience and rewards (usually food). Well���yes, this is true of pagans, too. Lots of patience. And the free food.

Gooder English

What are you writing? I can help you write ���gooder English.��� That���s the phrase I stole from the Spanish-American performer Charo for engineers who were writing user-hostile computer manuals. I���d just pat the guys on the knee and say, ���I can help you make that make sense. Let���s go for gooder English.��� The ���gooder��� makes my authors laugh.

Why Writers Need Editors

In his comedy, The Clouds, Aristophanes sends a young Athenian man to school at the Thinkery, which is run by Socrates. I wouldn���t even begin to compare myself to Socrates, but I have a pretty good idea what it���s like to live in a Thinkery. I live a wonderful life working and playing with words. I���m blessed to have edited more than 300 books, which���counting the people who have come back to me with their second or third or fourth project���means I���ve helped maybe a couple hundred people make their dreams of holding in their own hands a published book they wrote come true.

Serenissima: A Found Goddess of Taking Care of Yourself

I’m not sure when I first Found—made up—this goddess. It must have been
shortly after I read
Found Goddesses by Morgan Grey and Julia Penelope, which was published
in 1988 and now seems, alas, to be out of print. It was in this book that
we read, “Hail, Asphalta, full of grace,/ help me find a parking place.”




I decided that making up goddesses to deal with modern issues was a good
idea. Maybe I wrote about Serenissima for my first book,
Seeing Solutions, which was published in 1989. My literary agent
at the time became ill and everyone I knew was so busy we were all going
nuts. So Serenissima seemed like someone useful to invoke for help with
our lives. As I wrote then, She’s the goddess who holds our hand, rubs
our shoulders, tempts us into a bubble bath, and teaches us the vital,
life-preserving skills of self-love, self-care, and self-time. Now I’d
add that life doesn’t always have to be so serious, and Serenissima is
also the goddess who feeds us chocolate-hazelnut truffles when we need
to be comforted.




I’ve been looking through my books today and just now discovered Serenissima
in my second book,
A Woman’s Book of Rituals & Celebrations (1996). And Holy Cow
(that’s Hathor and Surabhi, you know)—here She is again in my third book,
Practicing the Presence of the Goddess (2000), in which I wrote a
long ritual for Her. I guess it was in the ’90s when we really needed a
goddess of self-care. We’d already been through the Second-Wave Women’s
Rights Movement and were still trying to get women elected to public office.
We were also still reading
Ms. Magazine and still raising our consciousness and forever trying
to get women paid as much as men. As for me, that decade. was the nadir
of my life. I was doing temp work in offices for people who didn’t even
recognize me as a human being. (“Let the temp do that nasty task.”) I really
needed to feel the presence of goddesses, real and found, in my life.

Even so, I always managed to find time to attend and sometimes lead public
rituals. When I wrote and led a ritual invoking Serenissima, women told
me they liked it. I received letters (no email back then) from women who
had read my books and done the rituals in them and liked them. They thanked
me, but said the “real world” still wasn’t cooperating very much. Real
life was still pretty difficult for a lot of us.

What has changed in 2016? Many women hold down at least one job (sometimes
two) outside their home and still come home and have to do all the housework,
too. Many women are single mothers who find it just too exhausting to keep
track of their children and their electronic devices. Many women have too
few choices where their healthcare is concerned. Women are still trafficked
and enslaved and considered less important than men. And now, with all
the gun violence we keep reading about, too many mothers are mourning for
children shot by sociopaths with guns.




But you know what? I’ve just decided I don’t want to write an angry blog
about the “real world” right now. I don’t want to write about what we see
every day on Eyewitless News or MSNBC or the Faux News Channel. I especially
don’t want to write about the presidential candidates and people who give
speeches that are downright mean. I don’t want to write about terror. I
don’t need to add more angry vibes to the world.




Instead, here is a poem I wrote for
Rituals & Celebrations. My hope then—and now—is that we can all
learn to be kind to each other and practice the presence of the Goddess.




     Once upon a time


          ages and ages before
the Garden of Eden was constructed


          and had a landlord
and walls and fiery angel guards—


     Once upon a time


          ages and ages before
we fled to therapeutic couches


          and became Adult
Children Of—


     Once upon a time


          for ages and ages
before time


          we lived with our
mothers and our Mother.




     Once upon a time


          we planted and
reaped and labored and danced together


          we lived and lay
down together in honor


          and we were all
the children of—


              
two-legged and four legged and many-legged


              
winged and finned and rooted


              
crystalline and cloudy—


          Yes, we were all
Her children,


          And the powers
of the Power were present in our lives.


     Once upon a time


          She was present
in our lives


          every day and in
every task


          and everybody knew
the Lady of the lands.




      But now we stretch to find Her presence
in the lands


          and we realize
that Her time that once was


          is coming round
again…


     And once upon a time is nearly now.




As discouraged as I get when I watch the news, I refuse to sink into despair.
I remind myself that we are all kin, that Mother loves us, and that there
is hope. Bright blessings to all on a hot summer day.

A political blog for this weird election year

A political blog for this weird election year

All we get on TV and in probably all of the social media (most of which
I don’t do) is political news. I have therefore decided to join the parade,
at least for this blog, because it’s a good excuse to post a couple of
my parodies.

You no doubt know I’m one of those liberals. Which is kinda funny, because
though I’m a double Cancer (sun and rising), I tend not to like change.
(Especially where computers are involved!) For two thirds of my life, I
have consistently voted in favor of liberal and quasi-liberal candidates
who promise to bring change to government and/or society. I lived through
the Sixties. I lived through the end of the millennium. Even though I didn’t
vote for them, I survived Nixon and Reagan and Dubya. So, yes, I’ve seen
change, and sometimes change is a good thing. It’s the kind of changes
that Republicans—the tea party and anarchy/anti-government folks—usually
bring that I object to because those are policy changes that hurt people
who are hungry, underemployed, or fatherless or homeless. The party of
Lincoln has turned into a gang of rich, selfish curmudgeons.




I must confess, however, that I do know some intelligent and honorable
Republicans, and I respect their opinions. But, then, we don’t have to
all agree about everything, do we? I’m sure there must be some intelligent
Republican office holders, too. Why, I even voted Republican once. In 1976,
I voted for James Thompson to be governor of Illinois. He’s one of the
governors of Illinois who did not go to jail.




But I have zero respect for The Donald. You know I won’t vote for him.
You also know that I love to write parodies. Here are slightly new versions
of two that I posted on my Facebook page this spring. Have a good laugh.
If you’d like to repost either or both of these parodies, please send me
an email and ask for permission. And be sure (like the old joke says) to
spell my name right.




Jabbertrumpery(with copious apologies to Lewis Carroll)




’Twas brillig, and the slimy Trump


Did strut and posture on TV:


All mimsy were conservatives,


And the listeners outgrabe.




“Beware the Jabbertrump, my son!


The hair that scares, the mouth so loud!


Beware the Narcissist, and shun


The frumious Trumpercrowd!”




We take our protest signs in hand:


And now the toxic foe we seek—


So rest we now outside the real estate,


And talk and yell, not meek.




And as the Trumperjet rolled up,


The Jabbertrump, with eyes of flame,


Came whiffling down the tulgey steps,


And burbled as he came!




One, two! One, two! And forward came


The Jabbertrump with mouth a-roar!


He spun his spin and spoke again:


“I’ll make the deals forevermore!




“I’m always right, I’m very white,


Let’s remake our nation great,


I’ll sell red hats and stoke your fears


I won’t back down. I’ll speak of hate.”




And hast thou heard the Jabbertrump?


“All vote for me, you Trumperfolk,


Yell loud and let no Others in.


Then we ourselves will be great volk.”




’Tis brillig, and Conservatives


Do twist and turn in interviews.


All whiny are Republicans,


And we others watch the news….






You also know I like to have fun with Shakespeare. Here’s an example.
I first wrote this in 1994 when a certain Speaker from Georgia took out
his Contract on America. I’ve just updated it.




Tongue of Trumper, Eye of Newt, Or, Damn’d be him that first cries, “Hold,
enough!”




Scene 1: The piney woods of a red state. Thunder and lightning. Enter
three Witches carrying their cauldron, into which they throw the ingredients
as they speak their spell.


Scarlett.Streak of skunk. Fin of shark.


Melanie. Tooth of termite. Spur of cock.


Mammy. Tongue of trumper. Eye of newt.


All. Blam, gol-dangit! Blammety-blam-blam-blast! Our charm’s wound
up!


Enter Lord Trumper, Bilbo Baggins, and other warriors. Trumper is old
and fat and orange and speechifies with way too many repetitive gestures. 


Scarlett. One of you will be King. The rest of you guys can go home
and get jobs as TV pundits.


Trumper. Sparrows and lions are we. I’ll be King!


Baggins. Whoa—new honors come upon you and only you? Not in my lifetime!
Exeunt.




Scene 2: The dark castle in the red state. Domestic thunder and lightning.
Enter Lady Trumper, an ex-model and beauty-contest winner who wears a helmet
of blond hair and is miraculously well preserved for her age (which is
indeterminate).


Lady Trumper. Just gotta letter from my hubby. He says he won the
war.


Enter Trumper.The old king’s coming for supper, Sweet-Chucks. He’ll
need a bed for the night.


Enter the King and his knights.


King.What’s for supper? Lady, you’re lookin’ good as ever. Quite
a dish. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Exeunt.


Trumper. If it were done, when ’tis done, then ’twere done right
damn now.
Exeunt. The stage is bare except for the wall of TV monitors all displaying
Trumper in mid-rant.


Enter Trumper.Well, that’s done and I won. Who’ve thunk he had so
much blood in him?


Enter Lady. Yuck! I gotta go wash my hands. Hey, Lover-boy, you know
there’s still gonna be a lot of competition to be king, doncha? Whatcha
gonna do?


Trumper. Honey-babe, I’m the biggest, baddest alpha-male in town.
I’ll defeat the rest a those guys with my wit and wisdom and my big…jet
plane. Let’s just scatter a lot of gold and jewels on the streets and in
the airwaves and see what shakes out.


He summons his varlets and gives them elaborate, if ambiguous, instructions.
Exeunt.




Scene 3. Somewhere in the piney woods. Bilbo Baggins and his nephew Frodo
(who is like a son to him) enter. As they are walking from here to there,
Trumper’s varlets enter and kill them both. Exeunt.




Scene 4. A manor house in another red state. Enter Lady Toad of Toad Hall
and all her tadpoles. They sit down to watch the Faux News Channel.


Lady Toad. Look, kiddies! There’s your daddy. He says the witches
said you tads’re gonna grow up to be king.


Tadpoles. All of us? At the same time? Right on!


Trumper's varlets enter and kill them all.


Chief Varlet. Let’s get back to the castle. Trumper’s throwing a
big barbecue tonight. With toad on the menu. LOL.
Exeunt.





Scene 5. Back at the dark castle. Enter Trumper, wiping his sword.


Trumper. Just stabbed another one in the back. Yeah, we were friends,
but I can’t let anyone beat me to the throne. I’d be very, very, very angry.


Enter Lady Trumper. Come to the barbecue, Sweet Meat. The company’s
all sittin’ ’round the table. They’re waitin’ on you.


Trumper. Is that a dagger I see before me?
Reaches out, cuts his fingers on the invisible dagger. Oh! Look there!
It’s a ghost! It’s Lyin’ Bilbo Baggins’ ghost. You’re fired! What?? Don’t
you guys see him?


Lady Trumper. Sit down, dear.
To guests. Pay no attention. He’s suffering from PTSD. That came
from being the Big and Only Star.
To her husband. Yo, Trumper! Get down off the damn table!


Trumper. It will have blood, they say. Blood will have blood.


The ghost of Bilbo threatens Trumper, Trumper fights back. It’s a draw.
Exeunt.




Scene 6. Cave of the Witches.


Scarlett. By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way
comes.


Enter Trumper.What’ve you girls got to show me this time? Any good
jewelry for the missus? Any new reality shows or beauty contests? I held
a beauty contest in Russia once. It was very, very successful. I can make
better deals than any other King.


Apparitions rise out of the cauldron. First, an Armed Head.


Trumper. Yep. That's for sure. I know my reality…er, I mean my history.
It’s all about me. 


Second, a Bloody Child.


Trumper.My varlets didn’t pay for all this blood, y’know. No man
born of woman will get me!


Additional apparitions: a Child carrying a tree, three Wannabe Kings,
the Knight of Clubs, the Red Queen. They're all running for office.


Scarlett. There’s your dumb show, King o' Reality. You’re so smart,
you figure it out. Tell us all about it.


Witches dance in a circle and vanish.


Exit Trumper, pursued by a bear. Draws his unlicensed weapon and shoots
the bear between the eyes.




Scene 7. The dark castle. Enter the Doctor.


Trumper. Yo, Doc, how’s the Missus doing?


Doctor. She’s having a nervous breakdown.


Trumper. That’s what OCD’ll do. I had to hide the soap, you know.


Doctor exits. Enter Lady Trumper.


Lady Trumper. No soap, no soap, no soap!
Dies.


Trumper, tweeting. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow,
a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then
is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.


Doctor ( calling from offstage right).That’s for sure! Who’s the
idiot?


Trumper: You’re fired!


Enter Toad of Toad Hall.


Toad. Yo, Trumper! You’re gonna get what’s comin’ to you now.


Trumper. No way. The piney woods’ll walk up and ring my doorbell
before anything can happen to me.
The doorbell rings. Like I said, no way!


Toad. Way! Turn, hell-hound, turn!


Trumper. Down, boy! What did your momma teach you about respecting
authority?


Toad. What momma? I’m a cyborg warrior on the Light Side! You’re
th’ Lord of the Dark Side. You can’t beat me. And you’re gonna lose everything
you’ve ever won. You’ll go bankrupt again and lose all your real estate.
Even the factory that makes your red caps. No use lying about your tax
returns. We know what’s goin’ on with you.


They do battle with many weapons. Toad hits Trumper with a tree, then
cuts his head off with a light saber. The head explodes and the ingredients
of the witches’ spell fly out and splatter the stage. (Members of the audience
are advised to duck and cover.)

Guest blog: my friend Allene Symons on Aldous Huxley, Shakespeare, and her new book

I first met
Allene Symons about ten years ago when I became a member of a neighborhood
association here in Long Beach. Allene grew up here and still owns her
family’s two houses, both of which were built in 1910 and are just six
blocks up the street from where I live. It’s true that we like to go to
the Huntington Library. And she’s very patient with me when I stand at
the cases with the old manuscripts in them and drool all over the glass.
(I haven’t tried to climb into the cases. Yet.)




Allene’s new book,
Aldous Huxley’s Hands: His Quest for Perception and the Origin and Return
of Psychedelic Science, is well worth reading! As you’ll learn from
her blog (below), Allene’s father was a friend of Huxley’s and took photos
of people’s hands as part of an on-going study. (Allene’s book explains
the study.) I bought the book at her first book talk last December, came
home, sat down, and read it. Practically straight through. I read most
of Huxley’s novels when I was in high school and college, so reading about
them was almost a journey into the past. Reading about my friend’s connection
with Huxley was fascinating. I hope you’ll buy and read her book. Here
she goes—




“O brave new world…”




My springboard for this guest blog is the Huntington Library, where Dr.
Barbara Ardinger and I have spent a number of afternoons peering at literary
treasures in the sepia-lit calm of the main exhibition hall.




The Huntington has one of the world’s four largest collections of works
by Shakespeare, including a copy of the famous First Folio edition of his
collected plays. Listening to Barbara toss off casual comments about Shakespeare
and his era is like time traveling with The Bard.




In case you wonder where I am heading with this riff, my plan is to make
a few connections between Shakespeare and my new book about Aldous Huxley,
his friendship with my father, and Huxley’s exploration of extraordinary
perception. Huxley was a lifelong Shakespeare fan. So were countless other
authors, of course, and if all the descendants of Shakespeare’s creative
gene pool, meaning every book he inspired, were placed end-to-end, the
accumulation would probably circle the perimeter of the Huntington’s 207-acre
grounds.




Shakespeare left behind a tool box, a recipe file, filled with ideas and
images for later generations to borrow and apply. He had no idea that,
three centuries after his death, the line “O, brave new world that has
such people in it! “ from his island castaway play
The Tempest would be adopted by a nearly blind writer for the title
of his dystopian novel,
Brave New World.




The Huntington also owns a number of rare works by eighteenth century
poet William Blake. An engraver by trade, Blake illustrated his poems with
such fantastical images that Aldous Huxley considered them examples of
visionary art – as if the poet-artist had found a hidden passageway to
the realm of otherworldly beings, some mythic or pagan, some biblical-angelic,
some as terrifying as if ripped from nightmarish dreams.




Two decades after
Brave New World was published In 1932, and after writing several
books in between, Huxley needed a title for one of his most controversial
nonfiction books: an account of his own visit to an extraordinary realm,
an altered state of consciousness. This took place in 1953 after Huxley
ingested a dose of the psychoactive cactus derivative called mescaline
(one of several substances later called psychedelic).


Searching for a phrase to capture this breaking-through-to-the-other-side
experience, he turned to William Blake and his poem “The Marriage of Heaven
and Hell.” From this work Huxley borrowed his title,
The Doors of Perception.




All this connects, indirectly at least, to my new book,
Aldous Huxley’s Hands: His Quest for Perception and the Origin and Return
of Psychedelic Science (Prometheus Books). Huxley’s determination
to experience extraordinary perception was more far-reaching than most
people realize, much more so than Huxley’s later interest in psychedelics.
Before and after the landmark day in 1953 when he first tried mescaline,
Huxley had an ongoing interest in the secrets etched in human hands, in
dreams and visions and mystical experience, in ESP and séances and clairvoyance,
in nontraditional healing and hypnosis, and the mysterious passage from
life to death.




And, yes, as the legend goes, Aldous did take LSD on the last day of his
life-- November 22, 1963, a date that coincided with the assassination
of President John F. Kennedy. We will never know if taking the substance
at the end gave Huxley a glimpse of heaven or hell or nothing at all.




Biblical images aside, my book about Aldous Huxley’s quest has a non-Christian
spiritual streak, even though my publisher downplays the spiritual theme.
The publisher’s logline for the Penguin Random House catalog reads like
this:




 “Psychedelics, neuroscience, and historical biography come together
when a journalist finds a lost photograph of Aldous Huxley and uncovers
a hidden side of the celebrated author of
Brave New World and
The Doors of Perception. Allene Symons had no inkling that Aldous
Huxley was once a friend of her father’s until the summer of 2001 when
she discovered a box of her dad’s old photographs.”




That last line brings me to Huxley’s friendship with my dad. Tucked away
among one thousand hand photographs was one image showing of the hands
of Aldous Huxley. It turned out that a shared interest in the mystery of
hands led to the friendship between my father and Aldous.




I only learned about this many years later, and that set me off on a journey
to understand the story behind their relationship and Huxley’s interests
in parapsychology and arcane pursuits. To my amazement, my research led
me to a private collection of original letters written by Aldous in which
such interests were apparent. Biographers sometimes talk about the rapture
of research when you come upon original documents and hold them in your
hands, and now I know what this means.




Which brings me back, bookend-style, to the former private estate of railroad
baron Henry Huntington, preserved as a foundation and its library and grounds
open to the public for almost a century. Meandering through the main exhibition
hall and seeing this collection of literary jewels under glass, some seeming
to glow in carmine leather bindings or reflecting soft light on their hand-drawn,
gilt embellishments, one feels almost swept away, time traveling to other
centuries.




And Barbara and I plan to make that trip again next week.

Operetta Geek, Part 3

Gilbert and Sullivan were satirists, or at least Gilbert’s libretti, were
satires of Victorian England. Sullivan, who was more old-fashioned, wrote
some lovely tunes like this one, “
Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes” from
The Gondoliers. I saw a live production of
The Gondoliers a few years ago in which one of the two young, very
sexy gondoliers was a fat, bald, middle-aged lawyer. I read further in
the program. Aha! Said lawyer had financed the production. But he had a
fine tenor voice and sang this song beautifully.




Sometimes when the usual operettas get too over-the-top romantic (i.e.,
corny), you need a serving of Gilbert and Sullivan. Their shows are like
the sorbet after a heavy banquet. They cleanse your palate. For example,
here’s “
My Name Is John Wellington Wells” from
The Sorcerer and sung by Martyn Green. It’s Gilbert’s first real
patter song.
The Sorcerer is about a wedding in which groom hires the sorcerer
to sneak a love philter (potion) into the tea to make everyone fall asleep
and then fall in love with the first person they see when they wake up.
It all goes wrong of course.

While most of Noel Coward’s plays seem to embody the Roaring Twenties,
he also loved operetta and in 1929 wrote
Bitter Sweet. Here’s “
I’ll See You Again” sung by Jeanette and Nelson from their 1940 movie.
To put the song in context, Jeanette is an English socialite and Nelson’s
her singing teacher. They elope to an operetta version of Vienna, where
he’s killed in a duel with an Austrian nobleman who tries to seduce Jeanette.
At the end of the movie she sings the duet again with his voice coming
from the clouds. Coward didn’t like the movie. He said, “I was saving up
Bitter Sweet as an investment for my old age. After MGM's dreadful film
I can never revive it.” I’d love to see Coward’s operetta, but it’s apparently
been in hiding for 85 years. There’s another movie, however, this one made
by a British company in 1933 and starring Anna Neagle and Fernand Gravey.
Even though it lacks nearly all of Coward’s songs, it’s apparently a lot
closer to Coward’s play and lacks the embroidery (and extra characters)
that MGM added. One of the characters is a French chanteuse who sings “If
Love Were All.” But her accent makes the song all but incomprehensible.
I guess we get a choice—we can either get the plot (1933) or the songs
(1940). I’ll go for the songs.

Operetta moved to America at the beginning of the 20th century. One of
the first big-time American composers of operetta came from Ireland. This
is Victor Herbert, composer of
Babes in Toyland (1903),
Mlle. Modiste (1905),
The Red Mill(1906),
Naughty Marietta (1910), and
Sweethearts (1913), the latter two made into Nelson-Jeanette movies
in the late 30s. There were TV productions of
Babes in Toyland in 1954 and 1955 starring Barbara Cook, Wally Cox,
Dave Garroway (who was the host of the
Today Show—what he was doing in Toyland I’ll never quite understand),
and the Baird Marionettes. Disney got hold of
Babes in Toyland in 1961. Here’s a song from the Disney movie, “

I Can’t Do That Sum.” Surely you recognize Annette Funicello. This is a highly Disneyized
version of Herbert’s song.

My all-time favorite operetta is
The Desert Song by Sigmund Romberg, Oscar Hammerstein II, Otto Harbach,
and Frank Mandel. It’s as corny and old-fashioned as they come, but I love
it. Originally produced on Broadway in 1926, it’s based on a 1925 uprising
by Moroccan warriors called Riffs against French colonial rule, plus the
stories about Lawrence of Arabia. Like Superman and the Scarlet Pimpernel,
it uses a common motif of a manly hero (the Red Shadow) in disguise as
a mild-mannered fool (Pierre). The operetta was so popular it was made
into a movie three times (1929, 1943, 1953) and there was also a live TV
special in 1955 starring Nelson Eddy as the hero. The love interest is
a French girl named Margot. I’m being vague about the story because it
was different every time it was filmed. When I was very young, my parents
had an album of the songs on 78 rpm records (one song per record) starring
Kitty Carlisle and Wilbur Evans. I have the CD of this recording.




Last fall, I set off on a search for the pre-Code 1929 movie, which all
the Internet sources I’ve read say is closest to the Broadway production.
The stars are John Boles (a majorly lusty baritone) and Carlotta King (a
wooden soprano). Because the show’s pretty risque (one of the comic relief
characters, a society reporter, is a “nancy boy” and they tell “blue” jokes),
it became illegal to show this movie after 1934, when the infamous Production
Code kicked in. I really wanted to see the 1929 movie, so I wrote to various
websites that sell old movies. It took a long time, but I was finally referred
to a site that has what they call a vault, and one of the movies in their
vault is the 1929
Desert Song. I ordered it immediately. It’s a sort of silent movie
(with intertitle cards to set the scenes) and it’s laughably politically
incorrect, but the music is there.

The 1943 movie is also politically incorrect. It’s also “sanitized” (which
means there’s no gay comic relief) and is hardly a musical at all. Dennis
Morgan, a tenor who plays an American cabaret piano player in Morocco,
is chasing Nazis. He sings a couple of the songs, but mostly Romberg’s
songs are merely background music. The American reporter is a drunk. (Gee,
do we sense a stereotype here?) And none of the French characters are remotely
French. The further sanitized 1953 movie stars Gordon MacRae and Kathryn
Grayson. It’s marginally closer to the original, but Gordon and Kathryn
sing all the songs. And they didn’t dare use the word “Red” during the
’50s. Our hero is not a communist! So he gets a new name, El Khobar. The
1955 TV version is also shortened and highly sanitized, but the songs are
there, and they’re beautifully sung.

Some of the songs are on YouTube. Here’s “
The Riff Song,” which opens the show. It’s one of those grand male
choruses that Romberg was so famous for. And here’s the
title song from the 1929 movie. After they sing this duet, the Red
Shadow takes Margot out into the desert and the plot moves along…. Finally,
here’s Nelson again. Two of the Riff have just sung that a man should have
many women in his “garden.” The Red Shadow wants only Margot and sings
“
One Alone.” Yes, Nelson wasn’t the greatest actor there ever was,
but he sure could sing.

For next month, I’m asking a friend to write a guest blog in this space.
I could go on about operetta, but.......