Thank You

As we start this post, we would like to recall the famous exit line used by George M. Cohan, as The Four Cohan’s finished their vaudeville performance: “My Father thanks you; my Mother thanks you; my Sister thanks you; and I thank you.”

We want to take a leaf out of the book of the great George M, and use this post to thank all of you. But before we can do that, we would like to thank John Sakowich for his review of the DVD of the television performance of The Most Happy Fella:

“I just received the DVD from MatsonCreative.com of Tozzi’s 1980 performance. The transfer is outstanding considering that it was apparently taken from someone’s BetaMax recording. The presentation box is very attractive and includes a DVD of the PlayBill for the performance. Hearing and seeing the whole show is a shattering experience. Why this musical is not better know or more often done is beyond me. Get this DVD!!!”

Let’s start at the beginning. We started this page with modest expectations and a hope that we could let the public know that we existed. We didn’t have much more of a plan than that, so the warmth and appreciation that we have received is overwhelming and quite welcome. Oliver Twist mentioned the dictum from The King and I, “by your pupils you’ll be taught;” and we agree.

We really felt we needed to express our appreciation for your support. People and organizations, alike, have reached out to us and thanked us for providing the posts that appear on this page. Of course, the purpose of the Foundation is to share our love of music with others, but our reach has surprised us. It extends from Eastern Europe to the Far East. Music truly is an international language, even if our words don’t translate well.

More important to us, we have been blessed by your comments. In expressing our love of music, we have received a thanksgiving many times what we have given. Further, many of you have provided a treasure-trove of anecdotes of personal encounters, family connections, individual careers or performances, etc. We will try to preserve your responses here, as best we can, as long as FB will permit us to keep this page here for you.

As for future posts, we will try to provide a mix of popular shows, along with information about music that forms the foundation of western vocal music. We will probably repeat ourselves over time, but we will try to present the material in a new way, highlighting something that we did not address the first time around. We know you like the great shows the best; and our numbers fall off when we stray from what you like best. However, we also appreciate the fact that you eat your vegetables along with the main course. You have been tolerant of our desire to cover many aspects of musicals and movies; have stuck with us on our excursions; and have returned over and over to see what we have to present next.

We don’t get much into the technical side of music magic, but we try to cover the various types of vocal and instrumental music that have influenced the compositions of Broadway musicals and Hollywood movies. Second, we try to break down artificial barriers between musical genres, so that good music can be appreciated, no matter if it is a movie soundtrack or a Broadway ballet.

The is a secret about good music. It is known by all of us, even if we don’t know that we know it. The secret is the “goosebumps” factor. Music moves us in a subliminal way that we can’t necessarily define when first we hear it. We actually “feel” before we understand; philosophically, people call this a “spiritual sense” that is awakened. There is one famous head of hair that we would like to refer to; that of Edna Ferber. She had been reluctant to permit Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II to adapt her sprawling novel, Show Boat, into a Broadway musical, but she did on the proviso that the spirit and intent of the book would remain in the musical. Here is an excerpt from her autobiography, entitled A Peculiar Treasure:

“I had melted under the bewitching strains of Make Believe and Why Do I Love You? and Gaylord Ravenal’s insolent careless gambler’s song. And then Jerome Kern appeared at my apartment late one afternoon with a strange look of quiet exultation in his eyes. He sat down at the piano. He doesn’t play the piano particularly well and his singing voice, though true, is negligible. He played and sang Ol’ Man River. The music mounted, mounted, and I give you my word my hair stood on end, the tears came to my eyes, I breathed like a heroine in a melodrama.”

Another example is the “mood” that music can create, just as the initial words of a novel can set the “tone” for the novel. In The Mayor of Casterbridge, the author Thomas Hardy was intent on telling us a tale of deceit and loss. He knew that he had to establish the right tone at the outset, a tone of foreboding that would set the stage for a dismal outcome. Therefore, in the very first chapter, Hardy paints a dreary word-picture. In fact, we sense an aura of foreboding before we find out the reasons for it.

Similarly, in the movie, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, we need to get a sense of the story from very early on in the picture. In the movie, a young widow and her daughter seek refuge from the world in a small English village by the ocean. From the very outset, much to the dismay of the letting agent, Mrs. Muir selects Gull Cottage. Gull Cottage is much less expensive than the rest of the rentals, and the reason becomes apparent after Mrs. Muir decides to rent it. It is haunted by its previous owner, a seafaring Captain, Daniel Gregg. It is a remarkable movie, in that most of the movie is devoted to Lucy Muir’s first year in Gull Cottage, during which she gets to know Daniel Gregg’s ghost and starts to fall in love with him. During this period of time, Daniel saves her and Gull Cottage by dictating his memoirs and then sending her to a publisher that he knew during his life. The income from this one book is sufficient to sustain Lucy and to permit her to buy the cottage. The last fifteen minutes of the movie covers the rest of Lucy’s life and provides a most satisfying resolution.

Bernard Hermann wrote the score for the movie, providing music as haunting and mysterious as the content of the picture. His impressive list of key Hollywood credits include, Citizen Kane and The Devil and Daniel Webster from 1941, Jane Eyre in 1944, Anna and the King of Siam in 1946, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir in 1947, Portrait of Jenny in 1948, The Day the Earth Stood Still and On Dangerous Ground in 1951, Five Fingers and The Snows of Kilimanjaro in 1952, The Trouble with Harry and The Kentuckian in 1955, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and The Wrong Man in 1956, A Hatful of Rain in 1957, Vertigo and The Naked and the Dead in 1958, North by Northwest  and Blue Denim in 1959, Psycho in 1960, Tender Is the Night and Cape Fear in 1962, The Birds in 1963, Marnie in 1964, Torn Curtain and Fahrenheit 451 in 1966, The Bride Wore Black in 1968 and Taxi Driver in 1976.

One senses, especially with his body of work for Hitchcock, that directors felt that Hermann could express musically what the directors wanted to portray through images and words.

Let’s take a quick look to see and hear for ourselves.

Here is the trailer.

Here is a clip that captures the following musical themes: Prelude; Local Train; The Sea.

Finally, we have a clip from someone that we discovered during our search for music–Kitty Hollywood. We think she is wonderful, and we hope you like her review of the movie.

We hope we can get to Hans Christian Anderson by Thursday; if not, we promise to have it ready by next Tuesday.