Creative Currents Under a Great War ... South Pacific to Victory At Sea

I am so enthralled, in love really, with the Broadway revival of South Pacific (it's brilliantly inspired score remains my favorite), that I've seen it twice in NY and will again if I'm back there before it closes. And I've been moved to finally get a library copy of the book upon which the show is based, James A. Michener's novel Tales of the South Pacific. What a rich and rewarding work, the prose and realistic detail close in purity to Hemingway. I am waiting to reach the two or three stories used by Oscar Hammerstein II and Josh Logan in their Pulitzer prize winning adaptation of the book. Already, however, Nellie Forbush has entered (to me, I forever see Mary Martin), but in a story about an affair she has with an officer -- ill fated (she finally forces the issue, and yes, he is married) -- before she meets up with the Frenchman. What a great writer was Michener. I wonder how much courage it took him to mercilessly blast PT boats as being hopelessly useless? That is a new notion to me. He also narrates safe boring pockets of military life that can drive a soldier to beg for a transfer into real action. To me, this gives his account that much more depth and believability.

Victory at Sea is the other compelling source through which I have on many occasions connected with a war that commenced when I was in a crib hearing the sounds of the Big Dipper roller coaster across the street, the pacific ocean just to the west. This TV documentary, interestingly, it comes to mind, as I write this, also bears the music of Richard Rodgers. And what a tour-de-force that is. It's the blunt black and white footage, the terse narrator's voice, and the simple short-sentence prose combined with music to die for that makes Victory such an astounding achievement, in my opinion trumping all other TV Documentaries that have since come our way.

Thank you, James Michener. And Thank you, Rodgers and Hammerstein and Logan.

Next stop: I am going to read John Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday. Drawn to a fresh challenge, Rodgers and Hammerstein, striking a more daring though all-too-tempered frame, based their 1955 flop Pipe Dream on the book's characters and themes. Critics complained of a Sunday school approach to hinting at rather than depicting a house of ill repute, and of the central character's participation in it insufficiently defined. So I want to see how this story element is handled in the novel. The show contains a marvelous score, and the characters at least seem to convey Steinbeck's sympathetic and humorous view of that particular world as reflected in another of his remarkable works which I have read, Tortilla Flat.

Slapdash Sunday: Showbizery Leftovers, I think ... Well, They're Free! ...

Where do we start. How about Ella in the background, under the L'Amyx tea tent in Oaktown, as the locals call the place.

Country & Western, like opera, it never got me. But oh, what a soft lyrical high: A sweet Japanese singer crooning "Country Road," as to infuse this classic with Great American songbook cache. So perfect on a mellow morning. And where should I be going, if anywhere. I was thinking, why not a Best of TV Commercials DVD? Or is there already one. That Geico character, the Pizza Whisperer, the gosh-oh-my! Progressive Insurance gal. AND, did you see the spaghetti lady getting whipped in her face by a thin noodle on the tip of her proper fork lashing out against it?!!!!!HaHaHa!!! I'd love seeing all of these amusing characters together in the same shoot, kind of a trade-talk chat, stars in their own right. BTW: Can TV get any creepier than the way those drugs ads are followed by nerve-wracking warnings: CONSULT YOUR DOCTOR IF, UPON INJECTION, YOU FEEL DEATH KNOCKING ON YOUR DOOR.


Here's to Betty White, about to appear in yet a new sitcom. I love this lady. Remember her in the 1950s. She reached sit-com heaven in The Golden Girls. All five of those women held their own, so did, in a similar way, all four of the I Love Lucy principals. I know Lucy was central, but all three others were absolutely spot-on before "spot on" meant anything to anybody, tweet tweet!

Showbiz David Sounds Off -- That's ME in a big headline at the top of page A3 in the Baraboo News Republic, sent to me by Baraboo's dapper man for all seasons, Bob Dewel, in this instance twirling his columnist's pen over my Circus World Museum posting. The size of my name in print makes it a rare first for me. Maybe there's something to be said for big fish/small pond. I always preferred the other option, and have yet to conquer either. Tickles me, it does ... And while we're in Ringlingville, Sir Bob reports that two retired profs are handling the library archives. Nice to know somebody's minding the stacks ...

So what's all the 3D fuss about? May I tell you, World, Been There Done That, back in the early fifties, when upon entering the movie house, you'd be handed a flimsy cardboard thing to wear in front of your eyeballs, sit back for the special effects -- monsters and weapons shooting off the screen right into your face! ... Short lived then, and I'm predicting short lived now. Gimmicks. Give me a break, Obsolete Electronics On Demand; Didn't they just foist Blue Ray onto the consumer, Hi-Def before that, and already Blue Ray is looking older and quainter by the minute as talk turns to 3D. Does anybody still own old black and white Zenith? ...

Missing Jay at 10 PM. Was nice to have his opening jokes, sometimes boffo. Have switched back and forth in record mode between Jay and David, and have said farewell to both. Neither show ever made me a regular convert, nor will 3D get me back. Paul Shaffer in 3D?

Back to Baraboo, for a moment of bijou envy: The thought of the epic silent film Metropolis lensing at the Al Ringling Theatre, with a live orchestra no less, nearly gives me goosebumps. Does this little town know how lucky it is? They can thank one of the Ringling Brothers. Those guys were so far reaching in their day. Even pitched a "black tent" on the midway around 1897 to show a fascinating new entertainment invention called "motion pictures" ... If there is to be another Barnum, might that be, say, Donald Trump? Gotta say, watching him recently on Letterman, he does impress ...

Here we are, and you're still waiting for a main course. So am I. Bits and Pieces. That kind of a day. Have a cup of Genmaicha (promise, it doesn't produce side effects). And may you find better amusement inside the other tents. However, should you experience strange flashes or sudden bouts of dizzy spells, including but not limited to diarrhea, vomiting, headaches and stomach pains, gout or arthritis or nausea, do consult your doctor at once ...

Bye.

The Morning Midway: A Big Top Giant Who Might Have Been ...

Circus owners, remarkable considering all of the struggles they face, are remarkably enduring. Most of them.

Here was one who showed such great promise -- Sid Kellner, seen here in this 1969 newspaper photo with his son George, 15, when the Kellner name spelled the promise of a great success ahead. Today, while purging my "archives" (I hate clutter), I came across this picture. Such a radiant reminder of how a dream can seem so real in the beginning.

At the time, I had just finished handling "national press representative " duties for the show on its 10-week summer tour, driving a Ford Bronco (oh, what I did when I was young) from west to left coasts and back. Only job I ever had that got me one of those little business cards. I stayed in the cheapest hotels, never giving out cheap hotel phone numbers to city and feature editors at newspapers along the route.

Near the end of the tour, I pushed Sid on the idea of going out on rails in 1970. This fantasy made it into the pages of Amusement Business, and tickled Sid, though I doubt he ever gave my grand idea much attention.

By then, Kellner had been out on the road for thirteen years, most of them mediocre at best. I remember him playing the Grace Pavilion at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa and, after the show, with Don Marcks being friendly and supportive. Distinctly I recall Sid taking down a popcorn machine off a table to load it into a truck. Such youthful magic animated his smile and gait that night.

By 1968, he produce a cracking good show, rousingly scored, under the old Mills Bros. top which he'd just acquired. The performance rocked. Tom Parkinson loved it. I loved it. I think everybody loved it.

The next year, after I wrote a celebratory article about this up and coming Sid Kellner for The White Tops, Mr. Kellner warmed up to me, and I got the press agent's job that Eddie Howe had handled during the high-water 1968 tour. The compensation I was offered felt almost flatting: $250.00 a week plus use of Kellner's Bronco; I would pay for gas, hotel and food.

Now, James Bros. was back in buildings. Show was at least fair, but the magic of that sparkling 1968 performance was gone. Blame it in part the absence of the tent.

My best publicity coup, looking back over my notes, was getting major exposure in Philadelphia. ABC outlet WFIL-TV, on a Wed. at 8:00 AM. My memo sent ahead to company manager Chester Cable specified "One Baby Sue, the Woodcocks and Harry Ross or another clown." I played this one up: "This show has the highest ratings in this time period. All kids in Philly watch it. It tops Captain Kangaroo! [well, that's what somebody told me.] Miss Bresset wants a baby elephant, so let's get her one -- Baby Sue, the star!" Truth be told, I can't remember Baby Sue. I only remember my favorite, Baby Opal.

Kellner Kellnered on, a man of dynamic charm who could turn sour and vulgar on a coin, casting profanity from one end of the tent to the other. And in the presence of sponsors.

What did him in? The boiler rooms he operated so ruthlessly well. I am not even sure if he is still with us. His sons George and Matt went on to disgrace themselves in phone rooms practicing skills learned from their father.

Still, I have such fond memories of sitting across Kellner's exciting desk when he was considering me for the job, and of feeling his impressive entrepreneurial power. Both he and I merged personal dreams that would go no where.

The Morning Midway: Al Ringling Theatre Jumps with C&W, Magic, and a Capra Silent

It may be musty. May be a little creaky and cranky (that photo is very flattering), but oh what an atmospheric journey back to the long-lost. This last weekend, Baraboo's Al Ringling Theatre, five years away from its centennial anniversary, hosted three nights of disparate entertainment, something maybe for everyone:

Friday: Country singer Dayna Manlow's band from Chicago

Saturday: Illusionist Tristan Crist

Sunday: The 1926 Frank Capra directed silent film The Strong Man, with a live original score supplied by Donnie Rankin at the mighty Barton Theatre Organ. Also on the bill were animated movie shorts and "a little vaudeville."

Tickets for these events ranged from $5 to $10.

Stage also hosts plays and musicals. How many towns this size have their own movie palace? Enter with a kind forbearance for strange kerosene odors. And, by all means, come in top hat and cape if you wish. But be advised: no valet parking for horse drawn carriages.

The Morning Midway: Even Sarasota's Ringling Museum Faces Big Funding Cutbacks, Uncertain Future ...

It's not all peaches, Picasso and popcorn at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, the upscale Sarasota venue which also hosts, like it or not, the ever-expanding Ringling Museum of the Circus.

Fiscal woes are adding up, despite the place attracting a rather impressive 300,000 people a year. That breaks down to an average of over 800 patrons per day. I wonder how many of those ticket buyers went there to see the Ringlings rather than the Rubens? The museum has 10,000 members, and it has grown in stature among art circles.

State of Florida, said to provide roughly half the museum's $13.5 million budget, making waves about pulling out. The estate, willed to Florida by circus king John Ringling, has been run since 2000 by Florida State University and funded by the state. Big money has flowed its way. In 2002 through the University, $49 million for expansion alone. But now cutbacks are being considered. How to spend less and draw more people? FSU is facing its own 25% budget cut. In August, Museum director John Weternhall resigned, said to have grown "weary of the political wrangling."

Pardon me for giggling in retrospect. Sounds like the ghosts of old Ringling family circus wars still haunt the place. They could be dramatically revived were any of the art work acquired by Mr. Circus put up for sale, or was a single square foot of the grounds sold off. Were this to happen, as stipulated in Mr. Ringling's will, everything would revert to his heirs. Now, wouldn't that make for some extraordinary Kelly-Miller Circus funding?

All of this from a lengthy fact-packed story in The New York Times by Geraldine Fabrikant, which only once in passing, and in only four words, mentions the circus museum.

So far, even with a 20% budget cut, nobody's been laid off.

Doc Film Giant Michael Moore Deserves Profound Thanks for "Sicko" -- Helped Legitimize Health Care Debate ...

"Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness..."

"The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health" -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, State of the Union Address, January 11, 1944.

Because I believe in many of the fundamental goals of the health care bill that is on the verge of passing tonight (I am well covered myself), and without turning this into a speech, I reflect on the searing movie put out by documentary showman Michael Moore, Sicko and consider with deep appreciation its critical impact on the debate among Americans in recent years concerning universal health care coverage. Moore's riveting film opened my eyes, as I am sure it did many others, to a different view of the countries with free health care for all that are regularly belittled by Americans too selfish to care about the well being of their uninsured fellow citizens.

I have a friend who just incurred, courtesy of a government program called medicare, a $23,000 bill for two nights in the hospital. Why not health care for all, I asked her? "Because I am against a government run program," she answered. Anyway, she said, everybody can get health care. Where, I wondered? "They can go to the county hospital."

Michael Moore deserves the highest humanitarian award (why not a Nobel?) for his challenging films, for his singular genius both as entertainer and muckraker unafraid to take on corrupt American ways and institutions. Sure, he does not always cover the other side, and you know what? I don't care like I used to. Sometimes the evidence for the prosecution is just too overwhelmingly great. Critic Moore casts attention with the flair of a great showman on the underbelly of a culture that is sinking into the quicksand of an utter economic collapse born of predatory greed.

Last night I watched Capitalism: A Love Story, and was surprised to find it up to Moore's probing standards. Seems that it came and went with little acclaim or attention.

Moore should take lasting satisfaction in his travels with a camera around the world interviewing people in civilized countries generally content with the health care coverage they could expect for free. It certainly helped explode and elevate a simplistic pro-America status quo argument into a more constructive and all-embracing direction.

Friday Fireworks: Tigers, Tigers Burning Bright ... Olympics Versus Circus ...”Baraboo Revisited” Revisited ..

Snarling circus, come back! Clyde Beatty, can you hear us up here? Or, excuse me, down there? ... Mable Stark, come out of the dark. Alfred Court, to center ring report! Big Top Johnnies bringing back the Big Cage, right and left, evidently sensing a certain hunger from the crowds for old fashioned sawdust grit ...

One Johnny who never left the lot, Johnny Pugh, is pulling out the jungle stops, bringing back tigers into the show. Might the free market be speaking? Pugh's Cole Bros. Circus, about to hit the mud in DeLand, also to offer something called a daredevils ATV show. Also, a Thunder Dome, and of course, the cannon. I smell gusto over the Cole tent. Down on the ground, the one finger stand makes a return. Been gone long enough to maybe amaze a new generation ... To Lana I say, do the Big Stunt at the end not the start of the act. That was a structural flaw about the Unus showcase I refuse to overlook. Figure out a way to kill time while installing the hand gimmick, so you can reach climax on your pinkie ...

There’s a tie-in here to the Olympics, so let’s recall the dread thrill (pardon me for seeming insensitive ) over that ridiculously suicidal event called the luge. It tragically threw one of the riders into the hereafter, and that was by TV narrated over and over. So, when those same viewers turn to big tops, how are they gonna feel about a circus show retreating into lifeline (mechanics) security? Circuses taking this new safer route risk looking even more passe against Olympic skiers turning somersaults over snowy peaks, in essence rekindling the public’s appetite for risk taking ...

Compare the following two photos, and ask yourself, which image best illustrates the true spirit of circus. Study the images carefully. This one ...


Or this one?


Now with Carson and Barnes touring Dallas and Ft. Worth, it looks like most of the perennials are all out there once again, going if not for gold, for bankable copper.

Did ‘ya know about radical circus deconstructor named Pierrot Bidon, who just passed away at 56. Produced some take-note perverse variations on big top action, according to a London Times obit. They are remembered as “mesmerizing, pyrotechnic spectaculars “ that “popularized an outmoded form with a new audience.” A big draw in places like the fringe Edinburgh Festivals. One of Bidon's later darling deviants was called “Circus of Horrors.” There's a show like this in L.A. I'm hoping to check out. Now, reading that all of this modern mayhem cleared the way for today’s fresh troupes like Cirque du Soleil (right), I beg to differ, World. CDS is not and was never “anarchical.” It was clearly, despite numerous co-founders claiming genuine French ancestry, rooted in the Russian school of circus. Anybody who wants can make comedy hay out of trashing circus, but don’t think that’ll chill the public’s yen for great acrobats, flyers, and animal trainers. Anymore than somebody can trash Olympic achievers ... Just had to get that out on this meandering post ..

Baraboo, we hear you, do you hear us? Flattered that Doc Bob Dewel, devoted to restoration of the Al Ringling Theatre, on whose exalted organ keyboard his fingers still dance, turned out a piece for the Baraboo Republic News on my recent posting about, as I see it, things about Circus World Museum that perplex. They obviously do not see themselves as we/I see them. Here’s another comment, relayed to me by a Baraboo resident who for many years volunteered, and was inspired by Harry Kingston’s recalling trying to push a good idea onto Greg Parkinson and getting no where. This guy, who asked for anonymity, remembers so many volunteers who came and went with so many active ideas, none of them ever getting adopted. And feeling futile. Same old imperial indifference par for the course, says my trusted source, ruefully remembering a management block that blocked all volunteer offers even to help get good suggestions into working order, which is one reason why a lot of ex-enthusiasts who gave freely of their time are ex ... Meanwhile, the great classic Thimble Theatre fun house rots away in out-of-sight exile while, no doubt, yet more old circus wagons await doting front-of-the-line restoration. THAT fun house could by now have been on magnificent permanent protected display in one of the modern buildings.

I feel like restating one of my Baraboo convictions: About the vastly rich Ringling-Barnum Archives that were kept away from all but a few privileged insiders for decades, during work on my book Big Top Boss: John Ringling North and the Circus, I was told, oh, just wait a few more months and maybe they’ll open up, and I nearly begged Bob Parkinson, "Might you tell me, are there many letters by John Ringling North that might impact my research significantly?" Parkinson refused any answer of any sort. Had I waited, my book would never have been published. Parkinson of course was one of the good old boys who could play with the toys; I could not. Now who got Kenneth Feld to grant ownership of the archives to Circus World Museum? If Robert Parkinson even tried, he did not. If Fred Dahlinger even tried, he did not. Here is who made it happen, not one of the good old boys but a thorough professional from outside, archivist Erin Foley, who was recently let go in more cut backs. And even if all it took was picking up a telephone and calling Vienna, Virgina, it was Erin Foley who picked up a telephone and called Vienna, Virgina.

Please don't forget that, Circus World Museum.