Category Archives: Fashion, music, politics, sports

Politics, music, and fashion

Fashion, music, politics, sports

[May 8, 1967] The Old and the New: Did Success Spoil Tony Randall?

1 Comment


by Lorelei Marcus

It’s happened. They said it never would, but it’s finally happened. I’ve fallen out of love with Tony Randall.

Now before, dear reader, you careen away in horror and begin searching frantically for what blasphemous thing he could have done to cause this, I’ll simply tell you. Nothing. Tony Randall is the most considerate, chivalrous, and kind man alive, and virtuous…and married. While he is perfect, he is also perfectly happy with his wife, and may perhaps never even know my name. An unrequited love can only burn for so long before it must sleep in somber acceptance.

And so, the day has come for that to pass. But do not weep, dear reader, for I am not here to tell a sad tale of love lost, but rather to send off these two good years with a short trip through his movies and my memories of why I fell in love. Welcome to my farewell letter to Tony Randall.

The Beginning:

My first exposure to Tony Randall was in The Seven Faces of Doctor Lao. Ironically enough, thanks to his immense acting ability and an impressive makeup department, I only saw his seven characters, but never his actual face. I had respect for his name, but that was about all. Until, of course, I saw him on the game show ‘Password’ the next week. That was the real him, and oh boy was he incredible. He won four games in a row, (unheard of!) and he used words I’d never known existed. And so, the seeds of love were sown.

From then on I vowed to watch everything Randall has ever been in and will be in, a blessing and a curse. While Dr. Lao was an unusual set of roles, I particularly admired Randall as Lao himself, and the wise, leading persona he put on. I began searching for movies with him in that handsome leading role, and was sorely disappointed. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, Brass Bottle, and Fluffy may have all had his name in the title cards, but that didn’t save them from being fairly awful movies. Worse yet, in all of them plays a type: an ineffectual, weak, neurotic man. They could not have been further from the man underneath the act, the one I was searching for.

Until now. Perhaps I was able to move on partially from the closure Bang! Bang! You’re Dead, Randall’s most recent film, gave me. Since Dr. Lao, this movie is everything I’ve been looking for and more.

Bang! Bang! You’re Dead, or Our Man in Marrakesh, as it’s known in England (and what I will refer to the film as from here on out because I like the title better), is a spy farce directed by Don Sharp and written by Peter Yeldham. It stars an ensemble cast with some big names, including Senta Berger, Herbert Lom, and Terry-Thomas. The advertising for the film is horribly misleading; don’t be fooled by the posters of Tony Randall crawling awkwardly through a bikini-clad woman’s legs. The plot and its handling of both Randall’s and its female characters is very nuanced and sophisticated.

Speaking of plot, here’s what the movie is about. A powerful syndicate leader is trying to make a deal to fix votes in the United Nations. The last step to his plan is to make contact with a courier carrying two million dollars, one of six people on the bus from Casablanca. The only problem is at least three of them fit the bill for his contact, and he doesn’t know which one it is.

Randall plays unassuming Andrew Jessel, who gets accidentally roped into this mess when he finds a dead man in his closet. With the aid of a mysterious, beautiful woman who can’t tell the truth to save her life, and the natives of Marrakesh, he must unravel the truth and stop the syndicate before the contact is made—or die trying.

The film is a wonderful balance of poking fun at the absurdities of the spy genre and utilizing them in serious and satisfying ways. It is complex, with characters and problems that are not strictly black and white. It has action and romance, but in believable forms that make the movie feel grounded in reality despite its farcical nature. But most of all, it gives an opportunity for Randall to play the leading man I always knew he was capable of. He’s not suave and cocky like James Bond, nor cool-headed and calculating like John Drake. He’s no spy, at least at the start, but he is clever, confident, and competent, and that’s the kind of main character I like to see. Perhaps even the kind I can fall in love with.

The End:

Tony Randall, the perfect man, in the perfect role. How can one not love him? Well, sadly, Our Man in Marrakesh is the exception, not the rule. He’s played quite a few nebbish side characters in all of the Doris Day/Rock Hudson movies, and that bizarre romp Island of Love.

That trend began in his first film role, Oh Men, Oh Women!, which, ironically, has been the final movie of Randall’s I’ve seen. In it he plays Grant Cobbler, a neurotic nutcase dogmatically chasing a man’s fiancee. While he plays the role excellently (I would expect nothing less), the experience of watching him applies neatly to the rest of the movie as well: tedious bouts of discomfort with the occasional flash of hilarity. The plot is fairly convoluted, but generally it follows the strife in two marriages and how it’s resolved. As I mentioned before, not particularly pleasant to watch.

I think this film was the nail in the coffin for my dwindling feelings. It cemented that the roles Randall plays are so far from his true self, and yet are the only format I will ever be allowed to see him in. I don’t want to live from movie to movie, game show to game show, hoping and longing for the hint of a glance at the man underneath the mask. I fell in love with the man, not the character, and that is possibly the hardest truth of all. For among his many, many talents, Tony Randall, at his core, is an actor.

The Beginning (Again):

I once heard that to love someone is to want what is best for them, even when it hurts you. I wish only success for Tony Randall, and I will continue to support and respect him as an actor. I think it is only fitting to begin this new relationship with objective ratings of the two movies I’ve reviewed here, just as I would do in any other article.

Our Man in Marrakesh gets five stars; it brilliantly executes everything it tries to do. Truly the “Russians are Coming” of spy films. I would love this movie regardless of who was in the leading role. Go watch it while it’s out in theaters.

Oh Men, Oh Women! gets two stars. This movie did not translate from a stage setting to a film one very well. I’m still trying to figure out what the point of it was. Go see Our Man in Marrakesh twice before you consider watching this movie.

And so, it ends as it begins, without him.

Farewell, dear Tony. Thank you for everything.



1 Comment Leave A Comment
Fashion, music, politics, sports

[April 10, 1967] A Queer Dream (the CBS "documentary" The Homosexuals)

7 Comments

There is something profoundly queer in enjoying science fiction and fantasy. The genre asks us, again and again, to imagine worlds fundamentally different to the one we live in every day. Worlds with equality of the sexes in a workplace, fair and accountable courts, ends to unjust wars – and of course, pointy-eared aliens, impossible spaceships, and lithesome green women.

Still of an green-bodies Orion dancer from Star Trek: The Original Series episode The Cage
As queer a dancer as I ever saw outside of the Tenderloin.

For many of us, these science fictional spaces are a refuge, a place that is not only safe for imagining, but safe from discrimination, casual cruelty, and doubt as to our welcome. Fan communities, at their best, can be places where fairness, open mindedness, and creativity reign over entrenched biases, reflexive bigotry, and the dishwater-dull thinking of corporate life.

Last month, I felt myself yearning for Ursula K. Le Guin's shapeshifting wizards, the science fictional poetry of Adrienne Rich, the spinning worlds of Star Trek–the direct result of having watched CBS News's deeply cruel, intellectually lazy, and poorly reported documentary piece "The Homosexuals."

Over the course of an hour, reporter Mike Wallace managed to repeat nearly every stereotype, false scandal, and ignorant opinion of this group from the past decade, along with tossing tinder onto the fire of at least two witch-hunts whose scarring cinders had barely cooled. From San Francisco to Washington DC, with law enforcement layovers in Idaho and Los Angeles, this documentary gave platform and voice to faux expert after faux expert who pathologized, medicalized, and generally generalized about a population they are not from and whose membership they only come into contact with during extreme criminal or psychiatric crises.

1955 editorial headline from the Idaho Statesman "Crush the Monster"
Editorial headline "Crush the Monster," referring to homosexuality in Boise, ID. November 3, 1955, Idaho Statesman.

It was a bit like watching a reporter interview a panel of ax murderers about about the lives of modern lumberjacks and taking their words on lumberjacks' needs, lives, and values based on their shared experiences wielding an ax.

Love is generally treated much more gently in science fiction and fantasy. There are any number of cruel, debasing, woman-hating or family-hating or love-hating works of fiction available on the average public library shelf, but it is far easier to find acceptance and warmth and a curiosity about all the ways there are to be alive in our shared universe between the covers of a book than on the nightly news. Perhaps that is because those of us who love science fiction and fantasy are used to being seen as queer by the wider world, we can find it within ourselves to accept queerness in others. Perhaps the experience of imagining different languages and cultures and lifeways makes us more open to allowing others to live as makes them happiest.

I think this shared hobby certainly makes us more comfortable trying on new language for size. For example, in the program mentioned above, Mr. Wallace doggedly uses the word "homosexuals," even while one of the several men he spoke to used the term "gay." Once, Mr. Wallace used the term "bisexual," but swiftly dropped it.

A still of Mike Wallace speaking from the 1967 CBS News Report "The Homosexuals."
"Some are bisexual: they marry, have children, and keep their homosexual contacts to the side."

Now, there is no word for this community that is not soaked in blood. I have friends who call themselves saphists or faggots or queers or lesbians or fairies or dykes or homophiles or queens or gays or homosexuals, and that is their right; I'll call anyone what they ask to be called. I use "queer" for myself because I had four years of high school Latin and can't really square calling myself "man-sexual" when what I am is a woman who is plumbing agnostic. Bisexual is a fair enough descriptor too and one I sometimes use in the wilds, but there is something juicy in taking back a word so often used in violent insult, so "queer" is what I use.

It is also how I think of my collection of friends here in California, queer as to their sexual orientation or their genders or just their worldview. It is a wide and colorful umbrella we all crouch under, holding each other close out of the storms of social opprobrium like those given a megaphone in this documentary.

It did not have to be like this. Mike Wallace could have spoken to members of the Janus Society or ONE Magazine, rather than merely filming their doors for shock value; he could have followed in the footsteps of his fellows reporters at my own local station, KQED, who produced a much better documentary on this same subject six years ago titled "The Rejected." If he wished to speak to bisexuals, to women or anyone who isn't a man, to people of color, to people outside of the middle class, all he had to do was pick-up a copy of Tangents or The Phoenix or Vanguard Magazine or ring up the editors.

Song from Vanguard Magazine, 1966
"The Fairytale Ballad of Katy the Queen" from the August 1966 edition of Vanguard Magazine.
Cover of Tangents Magazine, Dec 1966, covered in anti-war and pro sexual liberation buttons
Cover from the December 1966 edition of Tangents Magazine. Pins include: "Equality for homosexuals," "It's a gay world," and "Be peculiar."

Mr. Wallace could have done what an anonymous congressional aide did nearly 20 years ago in one of the most sympathetic federal reports on queer people; he could have represented our experiences with compassion and care. In 1949, while the United States Congress was debating a change to the U.S. military's approach to discharges, an aide serving the House of Representatives' Committee on Veterans Affairs compiled report entitled: “History of the Phrase 'Discharged Under Conditions Other Than Dishonorable’ and Present Discharge Criteria for Three Services.”

Now, this report title has none of the thrill of Mr. Wallace's headlines from Boise ("Crush the Monster") or the brutal audio he included of a 19-year-old soldier begging police not to tell his mother they'd caught him with another man and near weeping when they taunted him with the threat of telling his commanding officer. But I find the best stories are sometimes tucked away, not behind flashy titles but in tomes deep enough to hide the truth. No one would accuse Professor J.R.R. Tolkien of being flashy, but I find more truth in his writing of the world than many a jazzier author.

Imagine cracking open the Congressional Record of 1949 like we're opening up your well-loved edition of The Lord of the Rings. Find your way to the report, where a staffer explains how extraordinary it is that the committee has received any formal complaints about the blue discharge ticket process – the process by which the U.S. military removed tens of thousands of soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen from the armed services during World War II. Flip your way past the harsh realities of finding a job with blue ticket discharge and references to reports with names like The Pervert Records (1947), and you will find this impossibly poignant and beautiful paragraph:

“It should be borne in mind that even a moderate amount of complaint in a matter of this sort is significant. For a person to make such a complaint in his own case implies that, he feels, a sense of injustice so great that he is willing to risk publicizing the stigma of having been discharged from the Army under circumstances which savor of disgrace. For each complainant there are many more persons who feel the same sense of injustice but prefer to bury their hurt in as much oblivion as possible.”

Today, most people who I would call queer "bury their hurt in as much oblivion as possible," making the brave few who raise their voices worthy of our shared pride. Most people who I would call queer seek to protect themselves and the ones they love from the stigma and disgrace and frequent injustices that Mr. Wallace's program did nothing to address or to heal. Most of us fantasize about a day when we will be free to be who we are. Of living fully in communities where fairness, open mindedness, and creativity reign.

I think we can get there. I dream about it. I hope you do too.




7 Comments Leave A Comment
Fashion, music, politics, sports

[March 24, 1967] One Door Closes As Another Opens (Death and Renewal with a VW Bus)

2 Comments


by Victoria Lucas

A Door Closes


Ruth Clark Lucas, 1897-1966

Except inside me, the door to my mother is forever closed. If anyone should wonder where I’ve been these past few months, the answer is grieving. In November my mother died and my partner Mel and I drove to Tucson to sell my house (the one I paid the mortgage on while going to Stanford), pick up whatever seemed right, deal with legal and funeral home details, and then drive back to SF again, and our little place at 29 Hodges Alley.

While we were in Tucson the funeral home had a memorial service, and I attended after some consultation (coffin closed). She had so few friends, only from where she worked. When I got home I finally looked at a copy of the death certificate I had acquired. It gave me a shock. It said she died from alcoholism.

Actually, I think it slammed


My pal Joe Bfstplk

I was completely clueless, but my man Mel claims to still be a recovering alcoholic after many years of being sober, admitting that he is still on the road to recovery rather than having accomplished a “cure.” He said he had recognized the signs when we were in the house–a random liquor cabinet full of bottles, all open and most with very little in them, and other things. The house gave me the creeps so bad I insisted we sleep in our van in the driveway rather than in a bed in the house. It was as if the cloud over Joe Bfstplk in Li’l Abner cartoons had escaped and was looming over my old home.

A door hanging open


Why, that looks like our bus

The vehicle we slept in, though, is a door to the future, and I must leave my grief before I get these pages wet. Mel and I had begun to talk about taking the transfer and raise he has been repeatedly offered at his place of work, Hartford Steam Boiler, to go to New York City, as Phase I of our overall plan to visit Europe. In preparation for driving there we bought a VW van from some friends, a Lesbian couple who have settled down and have no further need for a vehicle they can sleep in. Mel and I sold our individual cars. Now we are planning the trip across country.

Magazine in a box in my future?


Aspen Magazine No. 4

Partly to get a taste of New York, and partly because of the contents, I bought a “magazine” produced in New York City that makes me want to look up the publisher when we get to that city of publishers. This one, though, is a bit odd. It’s a “magazine in a box” called Aspen.

The spring issue is just out, and I am really fascinated with the concept and the content of this issue, which includes John Cage and a tiny record with electronic music.


The contents of Aspen Magazine No. 4

The move will mean leaving the publications we’re used to buying, or in my case, writing for, here. (Fortunately, I'll still be able to write for the Journey!)

Goodbye, Barb


The first Barb of the year

The Berkeley Barb has been my paddle in strange waters, sometimes my sounding board.

Goodbye, Oracle


A recent Oracle

And the San Francisco Oracle has been a predictor in uncertain times, a wad of possible futures, many of them hopeful. I don’t know if we will be able to get it in New York. We shall see.

Oh, wait, I forgot that I've already written for The East Village Other, and I've been reading that paper for awhile. And there is so much music, so much in NYC! I'm looking forward to John Cage concerts and St. Mark's Church events, and so on I've seen in the Other, and oh, the museums!


The Guggenheim

Museums and Concerts and Protests, Oh, My!

I especially want to see the Guggenheim both for the art and the architect. And the 59th Street Bridge, just so I can feel groovy! And we'll want to visit friends at The Bead Game (an old pharmacy building with drawers of beads). I've never been to New York before.

In fact, when I think about it, I've never been east of Arizona. Just crossing the country will be, yes, OK, a "trip," a learning experience. We aren't doing a lot of fitting out of our bus, because travel expenses are included in Mel's deal, and so there's money for motels and meals out. We're also taking camping stuff so we can stop at nice places to camp and put up a tent. I was taking a course of allergy shots in SF, so there's a spot in our new Coleman ice chest for my vaccine, and Mel will administer them. We will join protests in New York City as we have here. So much to do, tee do dee, please excuse me. I'm just bursting into song. I'll be happy to report from time to time.

I hope you'll keep tuning in!




2 Comments Leave A Comment
Fashion, music, politics, sports

[February 26th, 1967] Geoffrey Beene, The Master of Modernity

Leave a comment


by Gwyn Conaway

As I lounge in my silk dressing gown this morning, sipping a cup of tea, I find myself loath to venture forth into the day. Must I don nylons and lady-like undergarments composed of hooks and wires and straps? Come to that, must a man wear a tie and a suit jacket? Today, I am belligerent about the world and its rules.

Rather than prepare for the office, I have turned towards fawning over the designs of Geoffrey Beene. Taking my rebellious streak into consideration, this is a perfectly logical digression. This rising fashion designer shares my distaste of formality and convention, and to my delight, has been turned away from fine restaurants for refusing to wear a dinner jacket on more than one occasion. I applaud his rejection of tradition, particularly on mornings like this, on which I have no intention of following the rules of decorum.


Geoffrey Beene, photographed in 1965, sporting a very relatable affably unimpressed expression.


Geoffrey Beene designs, Harper's Bazaar, 1967

Womenswear has become increasingly structured and columnar these last few years, and as a result has lost connection with the human body. Interestingly, this disconnect is by design. Pierre Cardin is quoted as saying that he doesn’t consider the woman within his gowns, but thinks of each creation as architecture. Though this is certainly a valid design approach, particularly in avant garde, fashion is no longer ruled by the elite and their runways. Rather, the young and broke have become a ringing voice within the industry; a voice that calls for freedom of movement and accessible fabrics.


Pierre Cardin’s Cosmos Collection was released this winter, but has been labeled too impractical for the market.


In comparison, Beene’s football gowns strike a fanciful balance between glamour and leisure that has piqued the interests of the younger, more personable generation.

Mr Beene is rather new to the industry, but his impact is already creating ripples of change. From a rural Louisiana town, he understands the importance of mobility, something with which many designers are currently unconcerned. While the likes of Rabanne, Courrèges, and Gernreich are focusing their designs on the distant future, Mr Beene is designing for today. Miniskirts are lengthening back towards the calves, textiles are relaxing, and notions are regressing from metal zippers and snaps to wooden buttons and ties.

Mr Beene is doing exactly the same, concerning himself primarily with modernity and autonomy. His point of view is uniquely American working class, with the goal of giving control back to the wearer, prioritizing comfort and mobility. To achieve this, he employs primarily sportswear materials, such as athletic mesh and wool jersey. Wool jersey was originally developed for men's swimwear at the turn of the century, and is his favorite medium for women's eveningwear today.


Two models stand in Beene’s fitting room, which is designed to feel comfortable and leisurely, much like his work.

Take, for instance, the eveningwear above, which debuted this winter. Note that the evening dress to the right combines Mr Beene’s love of sequins and lame with a collared cotton eyelet blouse. Collared shirts and cotton are both unconventional choices for an evening gown, as they’re usually associated with daywear. The use of daytime materials and cuts allows the woman wearing a Beene creation to feel simultaneously familiar and elegant. This combination highlights a sense of leisure, a facet of fashion that is traditionally relegated to the study, the resort, and the bedroom.


Beene poses with two models wearing his cocktail dresses from this year. The relaxed fit and miniskirt length suggest daywear while the materials, marabou and sequins, suggest eveningwear. Another perfect blend of American sportswear and formality.

Fashion is going through a metamorphosis, swinging from the uniformity of the Space Age and Mod fashion to a more temperate, organic frame of mind. I often see these pendulous motions swinging from one extreme to the other, and I am convinced that Mr Beene’s modern point of view is going to break open the fashion establishment. Personally, I’m looking forward to a more blasé approach to formality.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge!  Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




No comments Leave A Comment
Fashion, music, politics, sports

[February 10, 1967] Match made in Heaven (1966 NFL Season Overview)

2 Comments


by Marie Vibbert

It’s an active time for the National Football League, and the 1966 season that culminated this January will be remembered as one of the most exciting. Football continues to evolve and change. Last year, the NFL split the Eastern and Western conferences into two divisions each, and added a new official, the Line Judge, brought on specifically by Minnesota Vikings quarterback Fran “the scrambler” Tarkenton: he was so fond of running all over the backfield to avoid sacks that another official was needed to make sure he didn’t cross the line of scrimmage before throwing the ball.

Another change was adding a new team, bringing the number of teams in the NFL to 15. Now, the even numbers we’ve enjoyed for scheduling have been disrupted. The odd team out is the newly-added Atlanta Falcons in the Eastern Conference with my (Cleveland) Browns. There are plans to add a second team soon, possibly in Philadelphia or Miami. It’s said that Atlanta was added a year early, instead of joining next year with a partner, so that the NFL's rival, the American Football League (AFL) wouldn’t get them. To handle the odd number of teams, every team had a bye week, playing 14 games over 15 weeks.

The season started with controversy for my Browns. We were all justifiably proud that Jim Brown was going to star in a major Hollywood movie, The Dirty Dozen, filming during the off-season, but when production delays meant he would miss the start of training camp, team owner Art Modell threatened a hefty fine. Jim Brown responded by simply retiring from the game, rather than pay the owner. Jim Brown is still in his prime, and was the lead rusher in the league last season. The hole he left may never be filled, and I hope Mr. Modell doesn’t cross the street when I’m driving by. Let’s not forget this is also the man whose feud with Paul Brown cost us the best coach in football back in ‘63.


The Cleveland Browns on the cover of LIFE!

This was the first time since 1963 that my Browns didn’t make the playoffs, despite an offense that regularly racked up points and finished the season 9-5. (Tied with the Eagles in second place and with a better conference record…they also had a tied record and better conference percentage than the second place team in the Western Conference, the Baltimore Colts. HOW do they determine playoff positions again?! I’m writing a letter to the commissioner.) The Browns scored a hefty average of 28.8 points per game. If only their defense had been as strong. It’s so odd not having the Browns in the postseason. Is this what other team’s fans feel like?

The Western Conference did have an unusual season, with the unbeaten Cardinals playing the unbeaten Cowboys in week six to a 10-10 tie! It looked like the division would never be decided, but in week seven, both teams suffered their first losses–Dallas losing of course to the Browns.

In the Eastern Conference, the Packers have been unquestionably dominant, defending their league title. They finished 12-2, losing only to San Francisco and their arch-rivals, Minnesota. It’s hard to believe this is the team that had the worst record in the league in 1958 before Vince Lombardi turned them around. Who doesn’t love a rags-to-riches story? While Lombardi has stepped down, his picks are still beefing up the team, like Safety Willie Wood, a college quarterback no one wanted until Lombardi saw his true talents and put him to work.

I like the Packers, even if they defeated the Browns in last year’s Championship in Green Bay. I know the Browns will return to the title game soon, they have so rarely been out of it.

And speaking of the title game…

It’s hard to talk about the NFL this year without also talking about the AFL. The upstart league has done what previous challengers could not: it has won television contracts and it bid for top free-agents and draft picks against NFL teams. Quarterback Joe Namath was selected by the NFL’s St. Louis Cardinals, but chose a sweeter deal with the AFL's New York Jets, and showed great promise in his rookie season in 1965. The winless Jets became the winning Jets when they started Namath from their seventh game on, and they have not looked back. He’s getting better every season.

(The AFL of course claims that the NFL fired the first shot in this war by signing placekicker Pete Gogolak to the New York Giants when he had already been contracted to the AFL’s Buffalo Bills.)

Everyone wondered what the NFL would do to defeat their new, popular rival. Much to the surprise of everyone, they opted for a friendly agreement. The AFL and NFL have signed peace accords, agreeing to a common draft to end the bidding wars, and promising to merge together no later than 1970. Until then, they would play one game a year together while maintaining separate schedules.


NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, who oversaw the league unification

For the first time, the NFL would pit their champion against the champion of another league, a championship of championships some are calling “The Super Bowl.” Given how unusual this was, logistics proved challenging and a location and date were not announced until December! Still, the world was ready to watch whenever it landed, with NBC televising for the AFL and CBS for the NFL, simulcast on both coasts!

The AFL-NFL World Championship was played January 8th in the beautiful Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, ensuring that neither league could complain of home field advantage. Kansas City would use the AFL’s longer, narrower ball, and Green Bay the NFL standard. The AFL’s two-point conversion rule would not be used.

While many felt that no team from the younger and less experienced league could be a match, the Chiefs came into this game with a lot to brag about. Their 11-1-1 record was just a tie behind Green Bay’s. Their high-powered offense stomped over other teams with a trio of talented running backs, Mike Garrett, Bert Coan, and Curtis McClinton, each running over 500 yards for a combined 2,274 rushing yards on the season. Quarterback Len Dawson threw for 26 touchdowns and 2,527 yards of his own through the air. On the other side of the ball, their defense was packed with all-league players, including a secondary that racked up interceptions like they had been attending the other team’s throwing practices. The two safeties split 10 interceptions between them and defensive back Fred Williamson had four to himself. In their final game, they trounced the Buffalo Bills, a team I personally thought would put up more of a fight, 31-7. If any team in the AFL could put the nay-sayers to rest, it would be the Chiefs.

As the game started, it looked like that was exactly what they would do.

But first a note of special interest to Galactic Journeys readers: The opening of the Super Bowl was science fiction themed, with two adventurous souls in rocket packs flying around the field to meet in the middle. What a spectacle!


And the Jets aren't even playing…

The game started with back-to-back punts by both teams, then the Packers had a fantastic drive to come up 7-0. The Chiefs answered with a drive to the 33, but they couldn’t kick it in. However, they came back strong in the second quarter with a 6-play, 66-yard drive that tied the game.

At halftime, the score was 14-10 Green Bay, but it still felt like anyone’s game.

But then at the start of the third quarter, on a third-down play the Packers defense came alive and forced the Chiefs quarterback to throw a wobbly, weak ball that was intercepted and run back for 50 yards. From this point, the Packers defensive line had Quarterback Dawson’s number. Kansas City only managed 12 yards of offense in the entire third quarter. Green Bay buried Dawson on two consecutive sacks, so the team was forced to punt on their own 2 yard line.


Modern-day Blitz

Kansas City bravely fought on, but never scored again in the competition. The final score was Green Bay 35, Kansas City 10, and no one could deny that it was the interception by Willie Wood that broke the AFL’s back.

It seemed a fulfillment of what many predicted, that while it has been more successful than previous competing leagues, the AFL is not playing at the level of the NFL. Will the AFL survive this clear and public humiliation, broadcast live on two major networks? Or will they quietly die off like other competing leagues of the past, leaving their best teams to be scavenged by the NFL well before their dreams of league-marriage?

Stay tuned for "Superbowl" II!

 



2 Comments Leave A Comment
Fashion, music, politics, sports

[November 28, 1966] Truman Capote's Ink and Paper Cinderella (a party to end all parties)

Leave a comment


by Gwyn Conaway

Truman Capote has thrown a party and it might just be the talk of the century!


Truman Capote grew up in Alabama during the Great Depression and strived for a life of luxury and fame. When he finally found acclaim, it became apparent very soon after that he had the personality and audacity to fit the high society bill.

This rising star of American literature published In Cold Blood, his first widely acclaimed piece of work, with Random House Publishing earlier this year. Though the “nonfiction novel” propelled the small-town Alabamian onto international bestseller lists and the critic’s chopping block, securing both his notoriety and fortune alike, it’s this week's "Black and White Ball" that has bestowed him with the mantle of high society.


Oscar de la Renta and Françoise de Langlade wearing cat masks at the Black and White Ball, held in the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel, November 28th, 1966.

In fact, there hasn’t been quite this sort of mystery surrounding an invitation since Paul Poiret’s A Thousand and Second Night in 1911. Capote has, perhaps, received inspiration from the late French fashion designer in taking painstaking care to design his guest list and requiring a strict dress code for the spectacle of the soiree. While Poiret’s guests wore harem pants, lampshade dresses, and turbans inspired by the Ballets Russes’ Schéhérazade, Capote’s were instructed to wear masks, black, and white.


An illustration of Denise Poiret by George le Pape at One Thousand and Second Night, the infamous party at Chez Poiret. If guests arrived without something to wear, they were given something or politely turned away. The shapes and adornment of Poiret's fashions strike a chord with us today, and can be seen at Capote's ball as well.

Of course, Capote couldn’t throw such a lavish affair for himself; that would be in very poor taste, after all. All summer, he sat by literary agent and editor Eleanor Friede’s poolside, considering his guests. He carried his book with him all through the fall, crossing names off, adding new ones, taking notes. His little book became a subject of great curiosity, and so did the guest of honor. Most of us believed he’d choose one of his “swans”, the beautiful women he cavorts with these days, so imagine my surprise when he chose Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post.


Katharine Graham, the guest of honor, and Capote in attendance at the Black and White Ball. Pictured to the right is her mask, designed by famous American designer Halston.

Katharine Graham has hinted that she felt more like a prop for Capote’s whims than a guest of honor, but the baffled newspaper president accepted his invitation. The evening has revitalized her social standing and thrust one of the most important women in America back into the spotlight. Graham took over the capital’s most important daily publication after the unfortunate suicide of her late husband, Phillip Graham in 1963. Since then, she’s faced a tumultuous fight for recognition in a world in which men have dominated since the dawn of the periodical. Choosing Graham was ingenious. Although her influence and power reaches far and wide, she lives deep within her work and has rarely surfaced to socialize since the death of her husband. As a result, the queen of the press became Capote’s Cinderella, and the linchpin of the party’s success.

To be fair, the rest of the guest list didn’t disappoint the gossipers either. In fact, it put the party squarely at the top of this century’s list of places to be and people to see. Though the likes of first daughter Lynda Bird Johnson, Frank Sinatra, Gloria Vanderbilt, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were among the socialites grooving until four in the morning, it wasn’t necessarily the star power that made this party so thrilling. The hotel doorman, Andy Warhol, and a few residents of little Holcomb, Kansas, where he did research for In Cold Blood, were also invited. It’s true that high society parties like this are usually a strict in-crowd affair, but at the Black and White Ball, the more than five hundred guests were rubbing shoulders with people they never would have met otherwise. This cross-pollination of economics, politics, and culture is perhaps the last we’ll see for quite some time.


Notably, Capote’s critics were not invited to the ball. Kenneth Tynan of The Observer, for example. He vehemently criticized In Cold Blood and accused Capote of hoping both killers, Richard Hicock and Perry Smith, would be executed for the real massacre behind the novel so the ending would be more cathartic. Capote's infamous notebook is displayed on the right.

The party itself was a carefully designed spectacle. Although gloves have gone out of fashion in recent years, thanks to the dissipation of social modesty caused by the Beatnik and Mod movements, department stores and glovers ran a shortage this month in preparation for the big day. Milliners also faced a heavy burden, filling orders for fantastical masks and surreal headwear. And while the preparations for the ball were hectic all across New York City, the parade of costumes was just as eclectic and exhilarating. Capote proclaimed he was inspired by the Ascot scene in My Fair Lady and his guests took this to heart.


My Fair Lady came out in 1964. It was directed by George Cukor and starred Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison. The Ascot scene has proven to be a major influence in the fashion world, and will likely continue to be referenced for decades to come. Bravo to costume designer Cecil Beaton for his lasting legacy!




Top: Princess Lee Radziwell, sister to former First Lady Jackie Kennedy, shows off her couture treasures to the adoring press; Middle: Andy Warhol, cult pop artist; Bottom: Guests who built their own masks out of papier-mâché and paint. The range of who's who at this party was enormous! Wildly different politics and economics. Who could have guessed we'd see these faces at the same party?

Maybe Truman Capote really did throw the Black and White Ball as a frivolous exercise in his newfound fame and wealth, but I see a gathering on the cusp of great division with far more significance. Although the theme was meant to inspire a sort of graphic elegance in the song-and-dance of high society entertainment, Capote’s guests betray a social experiment at the heart of his event. What with the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War protests, the Women's Movement, and so much more, could Capote be signaling to the Old Guard that the world is changing? Considering he chose to honor Katharine Graham, after months of reflection, and dressed the entire event in the colors of ink and paper, I simply can’t imagine this was all a convenient happenstance.

In truth, we often belittle the significance of spectacles like these until they are a distant memory, blinded by the wealth in attendance and whether or not the champagne was chilled or the dancing rowdy. Perhaps we suffer from jealousy in wishing we had been there ourselves, that we had walked the red carpet parade and smiled for the tabloids. Though I suffer from the same afflictions, of course, I still must ask myself: when is a party no longer just a party?

The Black and White Ball is on the wobbly edge, in my opinion. Was Capote simply bold in throwing aside the social conventions of like rubbing shoulders with like? Or did he adorn a politically charged event in the trappings of an extravaganza? Regardless of the answer, or maybe because there doesn’t seem to be one, he managed to pull off the party of the century.

[And while it might not quite rival Capote's party, the permanent floating event in Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge, is always jumping!  Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




No comments Leave A Comment
Fashion, music, politics, sports

[October 8, 1966] Martial Law in San Francisco (Hunters Point riots)

Leave a comment


by Victoria Lucas

Matthew Johnson. That was his name. A kid who died because he went joy-riding with his buddies. The last I knew that was not a capital crime. But clearly running from a policeman can be. 

It was this time.


Where "Peanut" was shot

How odd that his murderer had the same last name, Alvin Johnson, the police officer who shot him on September 27. He was 16 and his buddies were 15 and 14. They found the car outside Portola Junior High, and the owner had not even reported it stolen yet. Stories about why the policeman fired and how many times at this kid people called “Peanut” vary. Whatever people were saying, rioting broke out in Hunters Point the same evening. 


The Mayor meets with the people

The Mayor Is Stoned

After meeting with the commanding officer at the Potrero police station, desperate and grieving people went into the streets and began breaking windows. When Mayor Shelley came out to meet them, people threw rocks and a brick, and the lone Negro county supervisor, Francois, got the same treatment. These were people who were extremely frustrated by their treatment by the City and County of SF, and they could contain it no longer. The unrest was declared a riot around 7 pm. 

The National Guard Lands on City Hall

Later in the evening the mayor called Governor Brown to request 2,000 National Guardsmen, who used Candlestick Park and Kezar Stadium for their staging areas. A curfew was drawn around Negro neighborhoods from midnight until morning.  I didn’t hear about any of this until about 6 or 7. September 27 was a Tuesday, and I was at work. I caught a bus home, and I guess then I might have heard something I didn’t understand until I got home and was able to hear some kind of coherent account on one of the NPR stations. Now I have a copy of the SF Oracle, hot off the press, and already there are tear stains on it–mine. “Peanut’s” funeral was October 3, and there were 1,000 mourners. 

We could still be in custody


The SF Oracle's 2nd issue, 1st page

In the Oracle there are further accounts of police cars bristling with guns and bayonets, and the break up of a peaceful protest in the Haight. It could have been my boy friend Mel & me caught up in a singing, happy mob that was herded into police vans by trapping the crowd with roadblocks and armed force. Many nights we go over to the Haight to pick up the Oracle or the Berkeley Barb, buy some tchotchke and dig the scene. This night, an unpublicized curfew started at 8 pm. 

A Poet's Take on Things


Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The first missive on the “Letters” page of this Oracle (page 2) was from Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Here is most of what he wrote: “It looks like the Mayor realizes that the only answer to Black Power is not White Power at the end of a gun. The Mayor didn't do so badly the first day after the riots at Hunter's Point, considering the general spiritual bankruptcy of the Establishment . . . . But if the Mayor had gone on TV and declared that he was withdrawing every armed policeman and National Guardsman from the Hunter's Point area and was instead inviting every minister of every church in the city to come and walk the streets there and talk with everyone in sight, things might be different today. However, we are as far from such soul-action as we are from the Ascension of Buddha on the White House lawn . . . .”

When Will They Ever Learn?

Better than martial law, which we had from September 27 until October 1, with the state of emergency ending Sunday the second–but, as far as I can tell, the curfews, state of emergency and martial law were only for the Negros, hippies, and students. 

Maybe I should repeat that, in case it got by you. Only for the Negros, hippies, and students. Now I ask you, will they ever learn? And who is it who should do the learning?



No comments Leave A Comment
Fashion, music, politics, sports

[August 22, 1966] Been Beatnik So Long, Hippies Looking Up to Me

2 Comments


by Gwyn Conaway

I just set down my brand new copy of Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, a novel written by Richard Fariña, and I can confidently say that the colorful lights of hippie acid tests have finally overwhelmed the intellectually trendy monochrome of the beatniks. And though this has been a steadily changing tide the last few years, it now appears to be an inevitable rise that will affect our fashionable futures for years to come.


The novel is a modern Odyssey following the adventures of a college student named Gnossos in his search for a woman in green knee-socks. Most of the novel centers around challenging our systems of education and government, seeking karma, and liberating youth from the tyranny of traditional morals. In an act of divine poetry, Fariña died earlier this year in a motorcycle accident here in California, at the start of his book tour in San Francisco, where so much of this movement is coalescing.

California has become the center of a massive shift in popular culture this past year, seducing young intellectuals to its college campuses and festivals in a rapidly growing snowball of illicit substances, music, and self expression. This has led us into new, uncharted fashion waters dominated by natural fibers, hand-embellished adornments, and a color palette inspired by the pursuit of nirvana.

The Hippie Movement is most definitely a natural progression from the Beatnik Movement, following the ever-worsening divide between generations, the popularity of psychedelic drugs and dope, and the politics of questionable warfare. Both of these movements are centered around the crossroads between music and intellectualism, promoting a free love lifestyle through art and literature, with followers that migrate like pilgrims from one mecca to the next, relying heavily on their countercultural communities to find security rather than the suburbs and pensions.


Bob Dylan in San Francisco with poets Allen Ginsburg and Michael McClure, as well as guitarist Robbie Robertson, 1965. The beatniks adhere to the stereotype of a black beret, black turtleneck, and cigarette trousers and are iconified by idols such as Bob Dylan and The Beatles. The term, interestingly enough, also originated in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1958, combining The Beat Generation with the Yiddish -nik, which translates to -er. I suspect this is also in reference to Sputnik and served as a dig towards the Beat Generation, implying it was an unpatriotic and ungrateful youth movement.

There is, however, one defining difference between these two movements. While the beatniks feel dissonant and hopelessly separate from society at large, the hippies are overwhelmingly hopeful, striving to bring the world together.

This new wave of love and peace is particularly apparent in the Haight, a neighborhood in San Francisco where more than fifteen thousand hippies have migrated as of this summer, following the music of the likes of Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. This great social experiment has transformed life in the bay area with parties like the Acid Tests organized by Ken Kesey and new businesses such as the head shop Ron and Jay Thelin’s Psychedelic Shop, supplying much of the Haight’s LSD and marijuana, and the coffee shop The Blue Unicorn.

And while the Haight is a petri dish of hippie ideals, it’s the events of Ken Kesey that are truly at the center of hippie fashion. In January of this year, he organized the Trips Festival in San Francisco at the Longshoreman’s Hall. This weekend extravaganza is now considered the first real gathering of hippies en masse. The crowd of ten thousand drank punch spiked with LSD to experience the music in an altered state of consciousness. Similarly, Kesey’s Acid Tests, a series of parties organized largely in Los Angeles these days, also heavily promote the drug and enhance its properties with the use of strobe lights, glowing paints, and black lights.


Note that the two men pictured here are wearing a corduroy jacket with a lamb's wool collar (front) and a poet's shirt with a paisley facing in the collar (back). LSD not only affects the eye, but all other senses as well. As a result, we see heavy use of textured materials in hippie fashion, such as crochet, fringe, and beading. This sensitivity to designing for "the trip" is an entirely new way of thinking about fashion.


A Grateful Dead postcard in comparison to the psychedelic paisleys (center and right). LSD causes undulation of sight, which brings us this sensationally warped graphic design and revives paisley as a major motif of the era. Note how the paisley is designed with "burn out", meaning that it's meant to replicate the bleeding of colors experienced by those tripping on LSD.

It’s this attention to LSD in the design of these events that has so thoroughly influenced the young rebellious fashions of today. Bright kaleidoscopic color palettes, unsteady stripes and warped geometric forms are commonplace among the hippies. This has led to the rise in popularity of paisley patterns, tie dye, and corduroy.

Tie dye has an especially close connection to the music scene and as such I think will be a defining fashion of this new movement moving forward. During parties such as the Acid Tests, a projector screen is used to light the band with swirling colors and bubbles. This swirling light show directly relates to the swirling colors now found on microbuses, t-shirts, posters, and more.


An insider look into the Trips Festival this summer. Where kaleidoscopic lights and patterns were used to enhance the effects of LSD. Compare the light show to the tie dyes below.


Tie dye and other symbols of the Hippie Movement have already permeated the fashion world from the streets up. Here we have a psychedelic vendor at a music festival selling tie dye t-shirts next to a exceptional velvet coat designed by American fashion designer Roy Halston.

The surge of hippies in California has truly taken us by storm, and the rise of head shops, communes, and music festivals is not well-liked by many. Divisive opinions on those that partake in LSD and marijuana have colored the hippies as mentally unstable vagabonds. Already there are rumblings of LSD being made illegal in The Golden State to curb the tide. This pushback by the more conservative echelons of America, however, only legitimizes the movement in the eyes of the young and passionate.

Which invites the questions: how polarized will this movement become, and what lasting effects will it leave in its wake? How will it change fashion? Will we move towards nature and organic shapes again? Will we abandon synthetic fabrics in favor of natural fibers? Will men finally return to moustaches and beards for the first time since the start of modern warfare?

Only time and upheaval will tell.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge!  It's the grooviest place: Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




2 Comments Leave A Comment
Fashion, music, politics, sports

[August 6, 1966] I Won't Dance, Don't Ask Me (Anna Halprin and the Dancers Workshop)

Leave a comment


by Victoria Lucas

Actually, thanks, I'd love to dance

Good day, readers. It's been a long time since I wrote about music in San Francisco, but when I did you might remember that I wrote about the San Francisco Tape Music Center and its experimental music.

321 Divisadero, as their venue is known, is not just the TMC. It also houses Radio Stations KPFA/KPFB (the San Francisco part) and something (on the 3rd floor) called the Dancers Workshop Studio.

But I'm not a dancer

Even after becoming curious about the people "upstairs" – namely Anna Halprin, who runs said studio – I've mostly seen her group dances outside around San Francisco, too busy with other things to get to indoor workshops or to her famous deck in Kentfield (north of San Francisco), built for her by her architect husband Larry Halprin.


Larry and Anna Halprin, architect & dancer

And my boy friend Mel and I have a sort of budget of both time and money that is pretty loose but by which we hope to avoid both bankruptcy and fatigue. (As I've written here before, there is a LOT to do in San Francisco and surrounding area.)

Halprin left the dance of the theatre for the dance of life

Eventually I learned that Anna Halprin studied contemporary dance and started a performance company with dancers AA Leath and John Graham, her daughters Daria and Rana Halprin, and designers Joe Landor and Patrick Hickey. They toured nationally and internationally before starting the San Francisco studio in 1964. There they worked with a dizzying array of avant-garde composers, filmmakers, poets, and other dancers, including dancer Merce Cunningham, John Cage's partner.


Cage & Cunningham pose with artist Robert Rauschenberg

Like Cage, Halprin uses pictorial scores and chance operations, but always with her focus on self-awareness as her pupils perform movements. She's also tackled issues of race and sexuality head on.

Radical refers to "root" & I can dig it

In "Parades and Changes" she introduced full-on nudity to San Francisco audiences and, even more radical, the idea that anyone could dance with "more like 10 seconds" of training rather than the 10 years dance maven Martha Graham laid down.


Halprin during a workshop

Unfortunately, I missed the performances at the Playhouse where I volunteer my time, since they were before my move to The City. After the "Trunk Dance" in 1959, the name of Terry Riley appears on the 1961 program for "Four Legged Stool," and Morton Subotnick and David Tudor (who also acts as electronicist for Cage and Cunningham) created the music for her revision called "Five Legged Stool" the following year.

She eventually realized, according to what I've read, that she wanted to get beyond dance as a performance piece or something based on specific music or a programmed narrative. She worked with Gestalt-psychologist Fritz Perls and engaged with the audience after "Parades and Changes," with a vision of "spontaneity and freedom." That is a performance I wish I had seen – sometimes there are so many things going on that if you're not at the right place and time to see a notice about something you miss it entirely! This is why I buy the Sunday Chronicle with the pink section in it every week–their event lists are pretty thorough. (But they might not cover "workshops.")


Anna Halprin by herself

I hope to still be able to make at least one of her workshops or events in future. Ms Halprin, if you live to be 100 I suspect you will not be able to realize all the talent and compassion within you. Good luck! (And thank you, Ms Michaels, for the honorific "Ms"!)




No comments Leave A Comment
Comics, Fashion, music, politics, sports

[August 4, 1966] Up, up, and away! (the Superman musical)

1 Comment


by Aaron Grunfeld

[Every so often, one of our readers submits a guest article.  We're always delighted to receive such unexpected bounty, and this one is particularly fun and relevant.

Aaron Grunfeld is a former journalist and dramaturg. In the past he has worked with playwrights and theaters on and Off-Broadway, and written for publications like Playbill. Aaron lives in New York City with his wife and daughter, and he’s preparing to teach high school English this fall.

As a science-fiction fan, Aaron is enjoying Adventure Comics, where Edmond Hamilton is currently writing a light-hearted space opera starring Superboy and a team of teen super-pals in the 30th century. Highly recommended!]

Batman may be the biggest superhero of 1966, but his pal Superman can still draw a crowd. This past spring, the Man of Steel was featured in a brand-new Broadway musical with a tongue-in-cheek title: It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman! But a marriage between the Great White Way and the Funny Pages isn’t as strange as it sounds. Television, comic books, and American musicals are all forms of ‘pop art,’ the trendy term for work that’s meant to be popular, mass-produced, and ephemeral. That definition clearly applied to Superman’s show, which only ran for four months. It was a flop by most measures, but not the one that counts: the producers recouped their costs.

Onstage at the Alvin Theatre, Superman faces a mad scientist who’s teamed with a gossip columnist at the Daily Planet; together they hope to ruin the superhero’s reputation. The newsroom is also the setting for the comic’s legendary love triangle, with reporter Lois Lane at its apex and Superman as his own rival. This angle is played as romantic comedy, and as a result, Superman feels less like a comic-book adventure than a generic musical with a superheroic twist.

All the action takes place in Metropolis, which is identical to Broadway’s vision of New York—a cynical, seen-it-all borough that breaks into song & dance every so often. Superman floats gently into the chorus of hoofers like he’s gliding off the movie screen at a Saturday matinee. He’s just as earnest and good-natured as he ever was, and his fellow citizens can’t take him seriously in the red cape and blue tights.

Neither can the show’s creators, Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, who had a hit a few years ago with Bye Bye Birdie. Strouse and Adams have developed Superman with book writers David Newman and Robert Benton and director Harold Prince (Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster originated the concept in 1938). Their Superman is a galoot with a big heart, and their impulse is to mock him. His super-feats are played for knowing laughs; when Superman swoops in on wires, he strikes a pose like Mary Martin in Peter Pan. I’m not sure why Strouse and Adams wrote a musical about Superman, rather than, say, Li’l Orphan Annie. I’m not sure they know either.

The actors are uniformly better than their material, and many received acclaim for their efforts. Bob Holiday plays the dual role of Clark Kent and Superman as so essentially decent that the show’s mockery just bounces off him. In the second act, he laments, “Why can’t the strongest man in the world | Be the happiest man in the world?” and for a moment, it seems like he’ll reveal his secret identity to Lois. Wouldn’t that be a twist!

Those who remember Lois Lane from the radio, or those incredible cartoon shorts during the war, will be disappointed that the musical’s newshound is more focused on wedlock than journalism. It’s a retrograde portrayal that feels out-of-step with the current decade; I’d like to think Lois is still reporting on civic corruption and civil unrest, not that she’s writing the Daily Planet’s advice column. However, the audience enjoyed her romantic antics, as executed by Patricia Marand, and, if her Tony nomination is anything to go by, so did her peers.

I found the show’s two villains more lively. Michael O’Sullivan plays a generic mad scientist, a “ten-time Nobel loser” who blames Superman for his failures. A veteran of vaudeville, O’Sullivan mugs and hams his way through the show like a cut-rate Bert Lahr. He’s at his best opposite Jack Cassidy, who plays a Walter Winchell type and goes for every laugh he can find. They’re a pair of old-fashioned entertainers who give the audience what we paid for: Broadway schtick done slick. For that, both men also earned Tony nominations. None of the show’s performers won their categories, but all three are professionals enjoying their work, and in the theater, that feeling is infectious.

The spotlight, however, is stolen by an up-and-comer named Linda Lavin. She plays a secretary who flirts with Clark Kent in a number called “You’ve Got Possibilities.” The lyrics suggest she views the mild-mannered reporter as a fixer-upper, a groom to be groomed. But in performance, Lavin’s character finds Kent genuinely, carnally attractive, and she’s not afraid to say so. “Possibilities” is the show’s strongest number, and Lavin uses it to make a big impression. All the critics agreed, Lavin is Superman’s high point. I’ll go further: Lavin is the only modern, original part of the entire Superman musical.

In its cultural attitudes, Superman is a throwback to the era between the War and Kennedy’s assassination. This is clearest in its treatment of Lois Lane, but it permeates the show. Lavin’s character, by contrast, doesn’t want to marry Superman, or even Clark Kent. She enjoys her independence, and she’s too busy living her own life to bother with the heroic melodrama of Superman. Lavin’s creation is looking forward, not back, and her moments onstage elevate the Superman musical from light entertainment to pop art.

Two and a half stars.



1 Comment Leave A Comment