A Random Header Image
9th December 2006

Temptation

posted in Uncategorized |

iTunes now carries soundtracks from all of my favorite musicals. I think they’ve carried them for a while, but luckily I was ignorant to their presence.

Singin’ in The Rain. South Pacific. The King and I. Mary Poppins. The Sound of Music. My waller is not appreciative.

I’ve already given in to the lure of owning Finian’s Rainbow which was my favorite as a teenager; I had such a crush on Tommy Steele. That brogue. That twinkling smile. I know, I know Fred Astaire and Petula Clark’s accents were atrocious and Keenan Wynn’s makeup job as the white Senator turned black is laughable, but oh, it was magical. I’ve carried fantasies about being wooed under a devil moon since then.

We didn’t get cable at my home, because we lived too far out of town, so I watched mostly musicals and old Disney movies from the library growing up. When I was younger, my sisters and I would have contests and sing all of the musicals that we could remember. It made washing the dishes go by faster. I could probably sing you most of “Oklahoma!” from heart even now. There are very few of the “classic” musicals that I have not seen (I don’t think I’ve seen State Fair all the way through), and fewer that I hate. Gigi is probably top of that list. Old men singing about lusting after little girls is too much. As well as The Pajama Game (adore Doris Day. But, ugh that was a painful movie). And I’ve fallen asleep twice now rewatching Annie, because it’s so boring. Boring! The lure from childhood isn’t there anymore.

My favorite musical of all time is actually an operetta. Junior year of high school, I had stayed up to work on a paper, and a episode of “Live at Lincoln Center” was playing. They were putting on a performance of The Merry Widow. Within minutes I was hooked (the paper, if I remember right, did not get finished on time because of my latest obsession). I’ve watched it probably 50 times since then and still love it. I’ve seen it performed live, but it was a horrid disappointment. Apparently, the Lincoln Center performance was a new translation and interpretation; the version that I saw live was the San Francisco version and it lacked the humor and warmth and the threads of the Merry Widow Waltz throughout. I’ve never been able to track down a recording of it and I’ve worn holes in my old VCR copy. Such a shame.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 9th, 2006 at 10:06 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Comment


  • Warning: file_get_contents(http://juno_magic.livejournal.com/profile): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 410 Gone in /home/lotrinkl/www/redheadsnippet/wp-content/plugins/also-lj-avatar/also-lj-avatar.php on line 118
    juno_magic@livejournal says:

    Oh, but Maurice Chevalier is awesomely funny! And Gigi even has a serious background!

    Whereas the Sound of Music is so awfully *wrong* on so many levels. Ack! I once read a sporking of “Sound of Music” at [info]history_spork – that was rather brilliant.

    I’m bothered by even imagining “The King and I”, LOL. For me the only “true” version of that one will always remain the TV series with Yul Brynner, I’m afraid!

    You sound much better. I hope the stress will go away and that this nasty person will be easier on you. *hugs*

Leave a Reply to juno_magic

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

  • Julia’s Journal

  • Just an ordinary girl.
  • Monthly Calendar

  • December 2006
    S M T W T F S
     12
    3456789
    10111213141516
    17181920212223
    24252627282930
    31  
  • Archives

  • RSS Red Head Snippet

    • Books read October-December 01/01/2024
      My goal was to read 120 books this year. I just finished number 129. (Some of these I reviewed as part of my WWW posts). October: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. I had high expectations for this book, as it had been so praised, and I felt let down by it. Still enjoyable, […]