EPISODE 901: MAKING MY ENTRANCE AGAIN

...with schmaltz by the bowlful.

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

Hi! Welcome to the ninth season of Pop Culture Spirit Wow. 9 years. Wow indeed. And some of you have been with me all those years and aren’t even related to me!

To one and all I say thank you. Here’s to a year full of lower case and upper case wows for you and yours.

Let’s jump in!

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THE WOWND UP

In Africa, Catholic bishops are protesting the Pope’s decision to allow priests to bless queer  married couples, saying it threatens to “derail growth” in the Church there and “weaken Catholics’ faith.” Not exactly what you’d call a stirring endorsement of the strength of the African Church, but there you have it.

The bishop of one diocese in South Africa went so far as to say that homosexuality is “un-African,” a comment that has generated widespread amusement. Paraphrasing queer Catholics everywhere, may I say, Sister Somebody needs to get out more.

In truth these bishops’ response is absolutely predictable. Some might even argue that for as widely celebrated as Francis’ announcement was in the West, the real Jesus-like element of the statement is the challenge it poses to widespread homophobia in Africa and elsewhere. You can’t say you follow a God who stood up for sinners of the most egregious kinds and then be like, but two dudes or ladies in love, that’s a bridge too far. Sorry about that. Just because you want it to be different don’t make it so.

Meanwhile, in the MCU, a new trailer (above) for the upcoming show Echo which refers to the Kingpin’s past with Daredevil has fans of the Netflix Marvel shows believing that Marvel Studios is finally acknowledging those shows and characters as part of the MCU.

Concerned by Marvel’s about face, fans of the Netflix shows have started a series of online hashtags begging the company not to include Netflix’s rich-white-boy-with-Kung-Fu-powers, Danny Rand. #NetflixNotTheWhiteBoy #SayNotoDannyBland #WeJustWantDaredevilLukeCagePunisherandJessicaJones

And above the skies of Portland, an Alaska Airlines flight had its mid-cabin door “depart the plane” after takeoff on Saturday, in the words of National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy . Shockingly, no one was injured, as the seats closest to the door were empty.

But Homendy did her best to make the event even more terrifying than it was, noting “Think about what happens when you’re in cruise. Everybody’s up and walking. Folks don’t have seat belts on. They’re going to restrooms. The flight attendants are providing service to passengers. We could have ended up with something so much more tragic.”

Having placed that horrifying image in everyone’s heads, Homendy assured those listening not to worry, true and abiding harm was still done to those onboard. “I imagine this was a pretty terrifying event. We don’t often talk about psychological injury, but I’m sure that occurred here.” And after her press conference, too.

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Isn’t It Bliss?

British actress Glynis Johns died last week at age 100. While she’s known to many for playing Winifred Banks, the mother in Mary Poppins, to me she will always be Desiree Armfeldt from Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s A Little Night Music.

In large part that’s because in that role she originated one of Sondheim’s most iconic songs, “Send in the Clowns.”

The story of the creation of the song is really something. In 2010, while being interviewed about his book Look I Made a Hat, Sondheim told Terry Gross that the moment in which that song occurs, late in the second act, was originally intended to give a song to Johns’ co-star Len Cariou, who plays Frederich Egerman, Desiree’s old flame, who loves her still but has married someone else. The song to be written was to be the big 11 o’clock number in which Frederich admits he just can’t cheat on his wife to be with her.

But deep into rehearsal, Sondheim had still not been able to crack the song. And then director Hal Prince brought him in to see a new version of the scene in which the emotional weight was placed more on her than him.  Len Cariou remembered Sondheim watching their new interpretation: “I remember he looked like death warmed over. I mean, he had a cold and he was—he really looked miserable. He said, ‘That’s interesting.’ And he got up and left. And Hal said, ‘That’s Steve.’”

A few days later, Sondheim came back with “Send in the Clowns.” Said Cariou, “He says, ‘Sorry, Len. You don’t sing this song anymore. She does.’”

As you can tell from the video, Johns does not have a traditional singer’s voice. But that ended up motivating Sondheim’s conception of the song. “I knew that Glynis had this lovely smoky, silvery voice, but she couldn't sustain notes,” Sondheim told gross. “She's not really a singer. She's an actress who can sing very nicely but not with a capital S singing. And so I decided to write a series of short musical lines so she wouldn't have to sustain notes.” Instead of long phrases to be sung in one breath he chose short ones, which also invited the idea of her singing a series of questions.

He also avoided ending lines with open vowel sounds that audiences might expect to be held. “You take a word like rich,” he told Gross, “it cuts itself off and has a short vowel sound. So if somebody sings ‘Isn't it rich,’ you don't expect them to sing ‘Isn't it riiiiich.’ Whereas if it's an open vowel sound, you know, ‘Isn't it loooooove’ - if she went ‘Isn't it love,’ you could accept it, but you also know that it could be sustained. ‘Rich’ can't be sustained without ruining the word, so it sounds like it fits the short phrase and it fits her voice. So it was tailoring it that way.”

Cariou remembered that when they recorded the song for the cast album, Johns was terrified. He stuck around so that she could sing the song directly to him, thinking it would help. “And it’s good, it’s good. Nothing from the booth.”

But then the head of cast albums at Columbia Goddard Lieberson comes in. “I just have a note for you,” he tells her. “It’s a torch song.” Cariou notes that no one had ever proposed she think of the song in that way before—certainly Hal Prince would never have told her how to think about the song. But Cariou thought it changed her performance not just on the recording but in the show. “It seemed to relax her.”

I just love a deep dive like this.

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A Little Traveling Music, Please

Barry Manilow, who currently has his first musical Harmony on Broadway, turned 80 last June, and the Hollywood Reporter has a great profile on him this week. Here’s five great facts I learned:

1)    He’s tall!

Though he is not the mountain-size giant this photo makes him out to be, even at 80 years old, Manilow is still 6 feet tall.

2)    He found keeping his homosexuality a secret very difficult.

While Manilow’s sexual orientation was a matter of widespread speculation, he only came out publicly in 2017, after receiving advice early on that it would fuck up his career. But that silence came at a cost. Every single time he sat down for an interview, he lived in fear that someone was going to ask about his orientation.  

3)    He performed with a young Bette Midler in a New York City bathhouse.

Long before he was seen as a star in his own right, Manilow worked as an accompanist, music director and song writer. And early in his career he was asked to perform at a gay bathhouse with a young singer named Bette Midler. She was immediately so iconic they had to start adding a roped off area just for people coming to her concerts.

Manilow was actually enormously important in Midler’s career, stepping in when the producers of her first album did not properly capture her energy and spirit, and becoming producer on The Divine Miss M record that catapulted her to stardom. When Manilow left to start a performing career of his own Midler was furious and scared, something she acknowledges in great detail in the article.

Here’s some footage from one of her concerts at The Continental Baths:

4)    Many of his biggest hits were not written by him.

While Manilow has always been known as a song writer, when it came to his own albums his own songs did not initially make much of a splash. It was not until he agreed to sing Scott English and Richard Kerr’s song “Mandy” at the insistence of legendary producer Clive Davis that he got his first #1. After that, Manilow agreed to let Davis find him 2 or 3 songs on every album written by others. Among them were “Can’t Smile Without You,” “New England” and “I Write the Songs.”

5)    He also wrote the State Farm jingle.

Yep, Manilow wrote “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.” He did a lot of jingles back in the day. For that one, he got an attaboy and $500.

Here he is doing a medley of his commercial jingles with Rosie O’Donnell.

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OVERHEARD IN THE THIRD BALCONY

A horde of new plays and musicals are soon to descend upon New York, but in the meantime there are plenty of holiday comments from the cheap seats…

Merrily may have gotten extended, but sadly my credit limit has not.

The great thing about Spamalot is that there are always tickets available.

Thank you, Kimberly Akimbo, for flipping the bird to all those no taste producers who insist revivals and adaptations are the only viable stories.

I, too, have a prayer for the French Republic, and it is that they bring back Richard Topol, stat.

I really think Here We Are could transfer if this Sondheim character would just get off his butt and write a few more songs.

I support absolutely everything about How to Dance in Ohio except its book and score.

Of course we’re going to see Days of Wine & Roses. We’ll just need to have a few drinks first.

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For subscribers, there’s lots coming up soon in the new year, including interviews with composer and Marie’s Crisis piano player Jim Merillat and the lead trumpet on one of Broadway’s longest running shows; some new pieces from me about Jesuit life and life six months since being on leave; an exposé on Mickey Mouse; and much, much more!

Thanks again to one and all for joining me on this crazy adventure.

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Moment of Wow