The Sound of Music Comedy

One of my favorite lines from a movie comes from “Easy A,” starring Emma Stone as Olive Pendergast. She says:

“I want my life to be like an 80’s movie, with an awesome musical number for no apparent reason.”

I grew up on movie musicals. Despite all her hard edges, my Mom was still a musician, and she LOVED movie musicals. The first one I saw was, of course, “The Wizard of Oz.” Mom had a collection of all the original Oz books by L. Frank Baum that she’d read to us every night before bedtime. As I got older, I would then read to my sister and brothers from those same books.

My Mom’s parents had one of the first color TVs on their block, so when the movie was going to be on, we all hurried over there to watch. After black-and-white TV, the color was just fascinating.

I remember being transported by the music into the Land of Oz. I had a record (vinyl, of course) of the soundtrack and played it over and over until Dad couldn’t take it anymore.

All the classic movie musicals were part of my growing up, but as I got older, I fell in love for the first time — with Gene Kelly. Goodness, that man could dance. To this day, watching the “Moses Supposes” song from “Singin’ In The Rain,” with Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor dancing rings around a diction coach, sends me over the moon.

So it’s no surprise that when I got to New Jersey for my third high school in my freshman year, I gravitated to a great club called The Musical Comedy Club, or MC2 for short. I met some of my best friends in that club and in marching band since quite a few were in both.

We’d go into New York City at least once a month, with no adult supervision (remember — this was the mid-1970s), and we’d see a different Broadway musical. Sometimes.

I saw “Pippin” at the Imperial Theater 12 times during those years, not always from the seats and not always with anyone else along. We befriended the stage manager of the Imperial, and he’d let us in backstage after the show had started, so I saw it from the cheap seats, from the orchestra pit, from stage left, from stage right, and from underneath the stage. You might think that’s a weird place to see a musical, but “Pippin” was different. Ben Vereen costarred with John Rubenstein. Ben would pull a handkerchief from the stage throughout the play, and a whole set would come up from the floor. Being under the stage to watch that set go up was amazing.

We saw “Grease” with the original Broadway cast, “Godspell” off-Broadway, “The Fantastiks,” and so many others, it’s hard to remember them all. It was an amazing time.

Years later, right after David and I got married, we were enticed to play in musical pit crews by a friend of David’s, Andy. We did “Three Penny Opera,” “Carousel,” and “Godspell.” Funny — I played different instruments in each; not sure how that happened.

During the run of “Godspell,” David and I had to go to Michigan to attend my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. We were supposed to have a performance the next day, but we told Andy we’d have to miss it, leaving him without a guitar player, a recorder player, and a drummer. Not sure how he was going to do it, but he’d figure it out.

We left my parents’ party and drove all night to get back to Connecticut. We stopped at home to pick up our kit and raced over to where the play was going to start in two hours. As we drove up the driveway to the venue, David opened the windows of the car and blasted the theme from “Star Wars.” The musical heroes had arrived.

I don’t play anymore, again, for some weird reasons only I understand, but I still love movie musicals and musical comedies. “Glee” was a much-watch for me, which is also why I love Korean boy bands, with different ones singing and harmonizing throughout the performance. (Yes, I’m an old lady who still loves boy bands, Korean no less, but that’s a story for another time.)