Happy Birthday Catwoman

Well actually a belated happy birthday to the still sexy ultimate femme fatale of jazz Eartha Kitt, she turned 81 last Wednesday Jan. 17. The smoky sultry Kitt-en of pop jazz got a second career start when she starred as Catwoman in the campy Batman TV series replacing Julie Newmar in the role. Her infamous Kitt-en purr growl and sultry femme fatale role has not been matched, neither by Pfieffer nor Barrie.



And she still struts her stuff, I saw her last fall with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, and it was an awesome show. She is still in great shape for her age, with legs to die for. As befits someone whose career began as a dancer. Once, Orson Welles referred to Kitt as the most exciting woman in the world.

And her infamous smoky growl was used to challenge the White House over the war in Viet Nam. And like the later ridicule faced by the Dixie Chicks over the Iraq war, Eartha faced the outrage of the American Right but unlike the white chicks, the attacks on her were tinged with predictable racism and sexism. So like other great Black American women artists and civil rights activists; Josephine Baker and Nina Simone, she went into exile in Paris.

1968 - Singer Eartha Kitt made headlines, as she got into a now-famous confrontation with Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson -- wife of the President of the United States -- at a White House luncheon to discuss urban crime. Ms. Kitt told Lady Bird (the First Lady) that American youth were rebelling against the war in Vietnam, linking the crime rate with the war escalation. She had a lot to say and it definitely was not, C’est Si Bon.

In 1968, however, Kitt encountered a substantial professional setback after she made anti-war statements during a White House luncheon. It was falsely reported that she made First Lady Lady Bird Johnson cry uncontrollably when in fact, the First Lady replied very diplomatically. The public reaction to Kitt's statements were much more extreme, both for and against her statements. Professionally exiled from the U.S., she devoted her energies to overseas performances.

Her style of Jazz influenced was influenced by Paris as was that of here contemporary Blossom Dearie. But unlike Carol Channing with her one hit wonder Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend, Eartha has an astounding set of sultry sexy hits about being the femme fatale that gets the millionaire,that get played over and over again, on jazz stations as well as contemporary soft pop stations, especially of course the seasonal classic; Santa Baby.


Eartha Kitt "Old Fashioned Girl" & "Santa Baby"




SEE:

West Side Story


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Canadian Idol

Now this is someone to vote for.

Canadian television viewers will get the chance to select the actress who will play Maria von Trapp in the North American premiere of "The Sound of Music," the producers said on Wednesday.

Andrew Lloyd Webber and David Ian's hit London production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic will debut in Toronto next September.

The producers are teaming with CBC television to broadcast the rehearsals in an eight-part prime-time series called "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?."

"How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?"sounds more like West Side Story than the Sound of Music. And this is Canadian Idol, CBC style.

"We really want to get this search from the ground up," said Randy Alldread, a spokesman for Mirvish Productions which will present the play at Toronto's Princess of Wales Theatre.

"We're looking to make somebody a star."

Kaching the hills are alive with the sound of cash registers.

Unlike the last open-ended musical to inhabit the P of W – the notoriously risky and interminable Lord of the Rings – this one chirps with the sound of money.

Lord Lloyd Webber does not like to discuss such crass matters, but sources say he is putting up one-third of the money for the $12 million Toronto production.

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West Side Story

Before Lou Dobbs and company got on their anti-Latino illegal alien campaign, way back in the late fifties early sixties, White America was anti-Latino. In New York the racism was towards their colonial subjects from Puerto Rico who took advantage of America's need for war workers and then with the advent of post-war air travel to move to New York. As exemplified in the song America from West Side Story.

Latinos in LA faced the same conditions of racism where assaults on the Mexican community occurred during WWII making headlines nation wide as the Zoot Suit riots.

The racism and oppression Latino Americans faced gave Leonard Bernstein his idea for a rewrite of Romeo and Juliet, and it was a young Stephen Sondheim who penned these caustic lyrics. As America tries to close its borders the song America and West Side Story itself are still relevant after fifty years.

West Side Story Turns 50
The Show Took Broadway By Storm And Changed The Broadway Musical Forever

American musical theater celebrates a major anniversary in 2007. Fifty years ago this month - on September 26, 1957 - "West Side Story" opened on Broadway. Based on William Shakespeare's famous tragedy "Romeo and Juliet," "West Side Story" introduced a dramatically new approach to the music, dance motifs, and storytelling of a stage musical.

The idea of West Side Story began with the man who was to become its director/choreographer, Jerome Robbins. He imagined a contemporary retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet on the back streets of New York City. It was originally the East Side, surprisingly enough, the conflict being Catholic/Jewish. Robbins's collaborator on several previous projects, composer Leonard Bernstein, persuaded him that it would work better if depicted on the West Side, with white New Yorkers vs. immigrant Puerto Ricans.

The musicals staged in New York could be politically liberal before movies generally tried to be. Hence the satiric power of a song like “America,” which counterpointed immigrant pride and immigrant disenchantment. Audiences in September 1957 heard “America” sung as inadvertent backbeat to Little Rock’s white mobs, who were attacking black children daring to desegregate Central High School. Such was the momentum of the civil rights revolution that, by 1961, the Oscar-winning film version had enough moral freedom to add that “life is all right in America” — but only “if you’re all white in America.” It was also easier to find “a terrace apartment” if you could “get rid of your accent.” In 1957, in an atmosphere of complacency in national politics, the “America” depicted in “West Side Story” was scarred by prejudice and violence, which this musical condemned with a raw energy that was irrepressible. Fifty years ago this month, a genre that was so often dismissed as escapist entertainment finally grew up.

And lets not forget the classic progressive rock version of America which launched Keith Emerson's career.

"America," by the Nice. Keith Emerson's '60s organ-playing sounds like an acid flashback. Is that a good thing? The Nice make you think so. It's listed on iTunes as "America (2nd Amendment)."

West Side Story - America




ROSALIA
Puerto Rico,
You lovely island . . .
Island of tropical breezes.
Always the pineapples growing,
Always the coffee blossoms blowing . . .

ANITA
Puerto Rico . . .
You ugly island . . .
Island of tropic diseases.
Always the hurricanes blowing,
Always the population growing . . .
And the money owing,
And the babies crying,
And the bullets flying.
I like the island Manhattan.
Smoke on your pipe and put that in!

OTHERS
I like to be in America!
O.K. by me in America!
Ev'rything free in America
For a small fee in America!

ROSALIA
I like the city of San Juan.

ANITA
I know a boat you can get on.

ROSALIA
Hundreds of flowers in full bloom.

ANITA
Hundreds of people in each room!

ALL
Automobile in America,
Chromium steel in America,
Wire-spoke wheel in America,
Very big deal in America!

ROSALIA
I'll drive a Buick through San Juan.

ANITA
If there's a road you can drive on.

ROSALIA
I'll give my cousins a free ride.

ANITA
How you get all of them inside?

ALL
Immigrant goes to America,
Many hellos in America;
Nobody knows in America
Puerto Rico's in America!

ROSALIA
I'll bring a T.V. to San Juan.

ANITA
If there a current to turn on!

ROSALIA
I'll give them new washing machine.

ANITA
What have they got there to keep clean?

ALL
I like the shores of America!
Comfort is yours in America!
Knobs on the doors in America,
Wall-to-wall floors in America!

ROSALIA
When I will go back to San Juan.

ANITA
When you will shut up and get gone?

ROSALIA
Everyone there will give big cheer!

ANITA
Everyone there will have moved here!

Music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
© 1956, 1957 Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Sondheim. Copyright renewed.
Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, Publisher.


SEE:

Farmer John's Robot

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