Barbara Cook died recently. And she’s been on my mind.
When the film version of The Music Man came out in 1962, I joined by mother, my aunt, and grandma Lucas – who was my cousins’ grandmother, not mine, but you can never have too many grandmothers – on a rare trip to San Jose’s Fox Theater. It was a glorious old place that with its décor kept audiences at least as entertained before and after anything was projected on its screen, as during. We went to a matinee, and the house was packed.
I was already a Shirley Jones fan, and her portrayal of Marian the librarian convinced me that it was for good reason, too. And as an extra bonus, thanks to her appearance in the movie, I became a Hermione Gingold fan. She was – as this twelve-year-old film critic declared immediately afterwards to his relatives who had no idea what he was talking about – the best character actress of our time.
Me, my aunt, and my mom all loved the show. Grandma Lucas’ take was somewhat different.
“Oh, the music is nice and it was pleasant to look at, and the acting is good, but the story is just awful.” When pressed as to why she had thought this, she explained, “A con man comes to town, the girl he’s courting knows he’s a con man, and she takes his side anyway. Then as soon as there is good evidence against him that he’s not at all who he claims to be, he cons them all again. I just don’t think it’s a good story.”
This caused an instant and insuperable conflict in my pre-adolescent mind, already plagued by a horrible suspicion that I may hold within me an ability to fake my way through anything.
We left the theatre in relative silence. Once she was behind the wheel of her Ford Galaxy, grandma Lucas next to her in the front passenger seat, my aunt decided to address her mother’s misgivings. “Well, you know, we didn’t see a transformation, or at least we were treated to very little of his change, but at the end he does change.”
“Oh, he seems to change, but that’s just because he wants the girl,” her mother countered.
“Well, maybe, but I don’t know. He has the children play Beethoven, and they’re not very good, but they do pretty well for beginners. He’s brought music into their lives. Maybe he came to town as a scam artist, but the town and its librarian altered him. At the end, he’s finding his way into the community as a music teacher, qualified or not, and that is going to make him a better man. He’s settling down, he’s in love, he’s finally bringing joy and life to those around him.”
My aunt, by the way, was an art teacher at a pubic elementary school, beloved by her students. And her name was Marian.
“Well,” countered grandma Lucas, “that may be so, but once a con man, always a con man.” I wondered what had formed her world view – even if not in so many words.
The next four dollars I managed to earn or bluff from my parents went towards the purchase of the original cast album. I was disappointed not to be able to find the sound track, but I guess the wheels of commerce were not as well-greased as they are today, at least not in Sunnyvale, so the Broadway version was all I could find.
However, on my first listen I was shocked to discover that Barbara Cook was better than Shirley Jones. In fact, she was so good that I grew a little angry on her behalf that she hadn’t been cast in the film. It became a minor subject to blow steam about throughout my teenage years.
When I heard this week that Ms. Cook had died, in the odd way a mind can work, I began to wonder if on her death bed she had replayed the last words of My White Knight – her thirty-five year old self singing “My white knight, let me walk with him where others ride by / Walk and love him till I die, till I die.” It’s a morbid speculation on my part, I know, and strange, but it wouldn’t go away. I sang what little I could remember of the song over and over to myself. Frustrated that the lyrics hadn’t all survived fifty years of memory, I looked them up, and croaked my way through bits of the melody I could recall (it’s pretty sophisticated) until I got to the last phrase. Then I repeated it. Several times. A scratchy but heartfelt memorial to the lady with the elegant voice who first sang it.
Death is the only thing we can really depend on in life. How we regard it, defines who we are. It puts a healthy limitation on our egos, spurs our aspirations, forces us to savor our fellow creatures, and causes us to balance the urgency of making a contribution with a relaxed enjoyment of life. On the other hand, if you spend your life denying life’s one sure thing, you can end up a Con. You con yourself first, then try to con others into seeing things as you do.
Today I put together yet another tomato, onion, and fresh mozzarella (di bufala) salad. I sat down still humming My White Knight and thinking about The Music Man. My humming migrated to Seventy-Six Trombones about four bites into the salad. Suddenly, I heard the song as describing a whole town’s being told for the first time that its children could be collectively wonderful beyond any previous imagining. And I cried all over the salad.
At that moment, I was ignoring the part of the story where Harold Hill tells the town their kids are going to hell in a hand basket thanks to the presence of a pool hall, and that only paying him top dollar for a brass band could save them. Emotion is often a form of selective excitement.
To one degree or another, I’ve chased after excitement all my life. Making theatre is to be always creating some new thing, especially making theatre at the level that I’ve worked in. I marvel at Broadway performers who can craft and then deliver a fresh show, day after day, night after night, four hundred performances, or more. I never worked on Broadway or toured. For thirty-five years every month or two brought with it a new project. Novelty fed excitement, and excitement fed me.
Then the novelty/excitement continuum began to lose its charm. I decided to move to Orvieto. At first, I told myself I would test the waters here by limiting my stay to seven months; merely an exploration to be reversed should it not go well. Predictably, those months were filled with excitement, discovery, and novelty. This was a new culture, a fabulous adventure, and hugely educational. So, I determined to rent a smallish house with a garden in the center of town to see if I could make a home. I borrowed an image from Hindu tradition – where the last third of life is a retreat from what has propelled you during the first two-thirds – and called it my hut in the forest. My next ten months in town were a somewhat more relaxed version of the first seven.
By now, I know the streets, I’ve planted my garden and furnished my house. Excitement has become less important, novelty has seeped its way into small corners and cracks. The ease is welcome, but it also brings to the surface old conflicts, long-hidden, like the childhood fear that my better angels could be easily overtaken by a talent for being able to fake my way through almost anything.
I hope I have never been a true fake on the long term, but I have lately noticed lazy habits of thought and action that suggest fakery still come into play from time to time. For example, in learning Italian I’ve noticed a tendency to believe that I can bluff Italians into thinking I speak well. That is manifestly impossible, but part of me is surprised when it doesn’t work. I’ve often wondered if by giving my talents as an actor short shrift among my other career choices was a mistake. I wonder if my quasi faith in fakery stems from having failed to provide it a healthy and proper outlet.
Whatever. I’m writing plays, and can imagine some day I might rejoin a theatrical effort. But sometimes the playwrighting seems – aside from the joy it brings – to be primarily an exercise in avoiding despair. What are the chances that these scripts I lavish so much time on will ever be appreciated by another human being? From time to time, a friend may read one of them, but who is actually going to spend money to put one on stage? And will any of my plays ever be good enough to cause anyone to want to try? When faced with those doubts, I turn to the Con.
But is refusing to face the possible futility of artistic effort any different from refusing to acknowledge the end of life? And doesn’t the same set of options follow? Admit that my time spent may be for nothing and write anyway, or con myself into imagining greatness, then spend more time coning others into agreement than I give to the act of creation itself? These two years in Orvieto, learning to embrace its wonderful and complex community, have engendered in me a healthy mistrust of the Con.
Gradually, the conflict grandma Lucas’ review of The Music Man created in me fifty-five years ago unravels. Will loving and cherishing a community make Harold Hill a more genuine person? Regards my personal Con, I think I’m with aunt Marian on the answer to that question; yes. Regards Cons in general, current events seem to have proven grandma Lucas right; once a Con, always a Con.