A Blog of My Own

Enchanted is more different from its preview than any movie I’ve ever seen. The preview makes this part-animated, mostly live-action Disney musical look like a deconstruction (read: trashing) of Disney musicals of the past. The preview makes you anticipate a movie soaked in the brine of irony; it looks like Disney devaluing its own legacy, turning on itself and eating its own leg in desperation.

The movie is a deconstruction of sorts, but what you’d never expect from the previews is that the effect is to elevate the Disney legacy–to praise it, not to bury it. The preview makes the movie look like its energy comes from the cold water of reality thrown in the face of fantasy, but it turns out that for our cynical times, Enchanted makes the case that fantasy is more important than ever. It reminds us that there is a reason humans have told stories that ended in happily ever after for as long as there have been stories. And it makes the case that The Musical, rather than being an outmoded contraption worthy only of ridicule and contempt, continues to be the best way to tell these stories. Who’d a thunk it?

Every element of the movie contributes to this success, but I’d like to single out two. As I’ve said, the movie succeeds because of its absence of cynicism (in opposition to the impression created by the previews); the movie’s sense of commitment to its story is epitomized by star Amy Adams and composer Alan Menken.

Amy Adams is brilliant casting, because she’s counterintuitive casting. This actress has been authentic in every supporting part she’s done (see Junebug, especially), but at 33, she might be considered a little “long in the tooth” for the part of an innocent fairy-tale princess. A more expected choice would be a Mandy Moore or other early twenty something pop icon. We can thank our fairy godmother that the studio chose Adams, for the success of the movie hangs on our belief in Gisele, and Amy Adams makes us believe.

Composer Alan Menken has created a pastiche score—combining echoes of music from the great animated Disney musicals of the past as well as his own from the Disney animated musicals of the nineties—while going beyond pastiche to create music of excellence on its own terms. The song “True Love’s Kiss”—which is the emotional linchpin of the movie—hearkens back to the music of Frank Churchill for Snow White and Bambi (words by Larry Morey). (Churchill’s career was cut short tragically by suicide when he was 40, on May 14, 1942.) In fact, the octave leap that is the central motif of “True Love’s Kiss” is highly redolent of the same in Bambi’s “Love is a Song,” which was the emotional linchpin of that movie.But here’s the thing. You don’t sense Menken saying, “I’m going to send up these old songs with clever musical quotations for the cognoscenti.” You sense him saying, “I want to tap into the primal unconscious the way Frank Churchill did. I want to salute him, and the best way to do that is to write music with the same power as his.” Everyone involved with Enchanted seems to have felt a similar obligation, and to have been impassioned by similar motives. Shot in New York, it comes in an envelope decorated to look like satire, but inside the envelope is a love letter.

In my second blog post ever, way back in March, I linked to “I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles”—the comedy song by Ken Welch that put a young Carol Burnett on the map. On November 4, American Masters on PBS took a 90-minute look at this musical/comedic star. Carol Burnett: A Woman of Character is that rare example of the TV-bio genre that does justice; within minutes of starting this program you know you are watching something important and new, something that captures the essence of its subject.

Several of those who worked with Burnett through the years are interviewed on the show (as is Burnett), and more than once we hear that the writers could never get Burnett to do a song “as herself.” She had the chops, but apparently felt too naked unless she could sing as a character. Here’s an example of that, in a clip not included in the American Masters program—a Carol Burnett character’s own special take on Rodgers and Hart’s “The Lady is a Tramp”:

The vocal, stripped of the visual, would be a creditable interpretation of the song. But in the context her characterization provides, whole new layers of meaning and subtext come into play. It’s a vivid character sketch–Bob Mackie’s costume certainly helps but it’s Burnett’s gestures, facial mannerisms, and body language that do the real heavy lifting–and it shows that Burnett’s reluctance to do a song “as herself” may not have come from insecurity about her singing as much as from her assessment that she was in a unique position to bring added value. Why not do a song as a character, when your talent allows you to sell the song and turn it into a brand new one-act play?

The American Masters show not only has plenty of clips from The Carol Burnett Show; it also has some kinescopes of The Garry Moore Show from the late 50s and early 60s, the music-variety hour on which Burnett was a regular featured player and which rocketed her to stardom. Now that’s a show I’d like to see reissued on DVD. The program, if my boyhood memories are to be trusted (and I think they are), set a high bar for musical excellence (with guest stars on the order of Ella Fitzgerald) and the comedy sketches were always amiable–and, when Burnett was in them, often brilliant. If you click this link you can download a realvideo of a typical show open, featuring a cute idea for an ensemble dance number (you have to give it a moment or two to get going), the introduction of that week’s musical guests Barbra Streisand and Robert Goulet, and then show regular Carol Burnett–whom you’ll notice gets the loudest applause. The audience, in fact, audibly goes into some kind of ecstatic state at the mention of her name. She was a sensation.

A Carol Burnett fansite says a DVD of the American Masters program won’t be issued, since PBS didn’t secure the rights to the clips and song-snippets for that use. However, the show will be rebroadcast Christmas Day, and possibly other times. I suggest putting your DVR on high alert.

(Thanks to Danny Appel of the Songbirds list for bringing the YouTube video of “The Lady is a Tramp” to my attention.)

In novelist and essayist Wilfrid Sheed’s latest book, each chapter is essentially a monograph on the life and work of one or another of the creators of the Great American Songbook. (That body of song written mostly for Broadway and Hollywood and mostly from the 1920s through 1960s, extending out a bit on either end.) Together the chapters cover most of the usual (and wonderful) suspects: George Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Richard Rodgers, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Arthur Schwartz, Jimmy Van Heusen, Johnny Mercer, et. al. The book is an impressionistic study, but impressions can be valuable when they come from someone with something to say.

Three streams meet to provide the book’s source material. The first is Sheed’s reading of all the previous biographies. The second is observations that the songwriters (while they still lived) shared with Sheed in private conversation, about themselves and each other. The third is Sheed’s intimate familiarity with, passion for, and lifelong study of the music.

You might think the first stream has limited value–do we really need a digest of what’s already been written?–but the value is in Sheed’s critical eye and his powers of synthesis. He proves an astute “culler” of the available material, sorting the wheat from the chaff adroitly, and he puts the good bits together to build a persuasive narrative of the interior lives of these composers and lyricists. Some of his extrapolations from the available material are based on intuition, conjecture and speculation–and he is not shy about admitting this when it is so–but it’s informed speculation, and a master novelist’s superior insight into motivation, that he brings to the party. And so the results are seldom less than convincing, and never unworthy of consideration.

As for the second stream, during his sixty-plus years in this country Sheed (English by birth) made the acquaintance of several of the great GAS songwriters and those who knew them. (Sheed came here as a lad in 1940 and immediately fell in love with the music.) What they shared with Sheed, even if in some cases in only one or a few conversations, went beyond mere anecdote to include their perceptions of themselves and one another. And, of course, Sheed was able to form his own impressions of these writers from his encounters with them. A significant amount of this material is fresh, and hence, invaluable. Sheed integrates this data into his life/art narratives, the stories he builds about his subjects and their distinct contributions.

Although yet another quality Sheed brings to the book is a keen ear for the music, I didn’t always agree with him, and there are inaccuracies and errors. But these are minor complaints in light of the book’s qualities. And Sheed’s writing (last but definitely not least) is a joy to read. His prose is almost too rich here, causing you to rinse, lather and repeat just to appreciate all the nuances and felicities of language and allusion, but it’s too much of a good thing, not too much of a bad thing. The book, when all’s said and done, is fun. Sheed doesn’t strain for wit, he’s just born that way.

When the Steve and Eydie show at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora (about 40 miles west of Chicago) was announced, I resisted. I said, “We saw them in 1997–how different is their act going to be now?” And, “Ten more years have passed. Time will surely have taken its toll on them.” And, last but not least, “It’s Aurora. Who wants to go to Aurora?!?“

But about two weeks ago, another voice piped in. It said, “You idiot. If you don’t see them now, you may be forfeiting your chance to see them ever again. None of us is guaranteed to be on the planet tomorrow, let alone a year or two from now. You might be gone, either of them might be gone…The only thing we know is you’re here, and they’re here.”

So I carpied the diem, and scored a good seat. I’m glad.

The show opened with a montage of TV clips of S&E separately and together from the 50s through the 70s. You came away awed at the contribution they made to the mainstream culture all those years, making popular music popular at impossible-t0-take-for granted-now levels of artistry. Not to get cosmic about it, but the montage made me deeply grateful that so much of my time on the planet has coincided with so much of theirs.

At the close of the montage, Steve and Eydie came out on stage and sang a snappy piece of special material called, I’m thinking based on the lyric, “We’re Still Here” (not based on Sondheim’s “I’m Still Here”). The very first line of the song was funny. Making reference to the video just seen on the big screen, they sang, “We don’t look like that anymore.”

It was a shrewd lyric line to open with, because it disarmed an issue that had to be dealt with. Eydie doesn’t look like that anymore. She’s a bit rounder. She still looks great, and, my God, at 76, and with her recent knee surgery, if she’s rounder, she’s entitled. But she’s looks great in a different way than you might be expecting. Steve, thanks to the miracles of modern science and/or clean living and/or genetic luck, looks pretty much the same as always!

“We’re Still Here” turned out, as it went on, to stimulate cosmic thoughts similar to those I had while watching the montage. The song wasn’t just about that they were still here. It was about that all of us, we the audience as well as they, were still here. It was a celebration of survival. Not in the Sondheimian sense of having made it through Herbert and J. Edgar Hoover; rather in the sense that every day you wake up not dead yet is a gift. By virtue of the fact that they were on the stage, and we were in the audience, not one person there was dead yet! And that is something to thank the universe for. It was the unspoken theme of the entire show. Not to exaggerate, but the show was a religious experience.

And the show was a celebration of the survival of pop music excellence. It is just hanging on by a thread in this world, breathing its last breaths, but it is still here, for just a little while longer anyway. It is not dead yet. And this spirit, as beautiful as it is tragic (for we know what the future has in store), informed the entire show. When Steve and Eydie duet on Rodgers and Hart’s “Where or When” (a staple for them for many years), the song is no longer about a couple who meets for the first time with a sense of deja vu–it’s about all of us who love the Great American Songbook, performers and audience, meeting over and over again to share it with each other. And it takes on new qualities of the eternal, as we allow ourselves to imagine doing so in the next world when this one is through for us.

As an experiment, I closed my eyes at times and tried to imagine a young Steve and Eydie on stage, to determine if the sounds I was hearing would make sense with that picture. My rough guess is that the answer was yes about 75% of the time–which I think is amazing, and (getting all spiritual again) inspiring. The other 25% of the time there were signs of wear. But their musical instincts are sharp and they were able to “work around it” much of the time. When Eydie sang some of her hits, she employed some sensible melodic inversions in order to stay out of difficult territory. Yet at times she went for the high notes–and nailed them.

In their patter, Steve and Eydie didn’t miss too many chances to plug their website–steveandeydie.com–and neither will I. If you click on those words in this post, you’ll be taken right there. You’ll find many of their albums, separately and together, remastered for CD. I particularly commend to you the twofer composed of Two on the Aisle and Together on Broadway. The music of Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme exists at some kind of nexus of jazz and Broadway anyway, so the program of these two albums, tunes from Broadway shows of the midfifties through midsixties arranged by Don Costa and Pat Williams, is right in their wheelhouse, and they knock it out of the park.

Why post about Steve and Eydie now? Who doesn’t know about them, or, at least, of them? Well, while it’s important and exciting to talk about Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition (as Down Beat used to put it), it’s also a good thing now and then, for the sake of perspective, to reaffirm the Talent That Once Received So Much Recognition That It Now Receives None At All. To reaffirm, for the record, the phenomenality of phenomenons.

After the show, in the garage where I had parked a couple blocks from the theater, I shared an elevator with one of the musicians, a guy in his early forties. I complimented him on the show, and he said thanks. He said, “So what did you think of them?” I said, looking him straight in the eyes, “I think it’s a miracle.” He looked back at me and paused, struggling for something to say, and then replied, nodding, with awe in his voice. “I think that’s right. I think that’s the only word for it.”