Cornelius Claudio Kreusch (jazz pianist/record producer/online digital music mogul/all-around-entrepreneur) and I have spent some memorable times in his Bowery loft (pic below). Many fantastic ideas were shared and brain-stormed -- and by brain-stormed, I mean a typhoon.
It's funny, and a bit poetic, that the most recent time (June 2009) had us listening to some of my CD mixes on what was possibly the smallest sound system possible: Cornelius -- who lives in Germany and often sublets the loft -- had removed his sound system and had replaced it with a small, rather girlish, purple "boom" box.
That day/night was also unique as it marked the first time I played piano for him -- a very surreal experience for both of us as I am NOT a pianist, but was inspired and "in the moment" enough to try and play the baby grand Chung that graces his space. Thank you, Cornelius, for being such a good friend and inspiration. We'll both miss that loft when it's gone.
My friends (Michael Schultz and Chad Hudson) and I started doing what we called "Music and Art" day where we pick a theme, listen to music (my mixes), have a few cocktails, and create something on our separate 12" x 12" white canvases...
This was our third session on the theme of "Transformation" and here are our three pieces of art created on May 30, 2009:
THE NEXT FOUR POSTS contain the playlists of the music -- I put together, edited, and re-mashed -- that we listened to, discussed, and were inspired by on that day:
Oh, one other detail: the back of my canvas contains dozens of straight pins that hold the thread in place. Here's a view of the back against the wall:
My friends (Michael Schultz and Chad Hudson) and I started doing what we called "Music and Art" day where we pick a theme, listen to music (my mixes), have a few cocktails, and create something on our separate 12" x 12" white canvases...
This was our third session on the theme of "Transformation" and here are our three pieces of art created on May 30, 2009:
Here is a playlist (the first of four) of the music that I put together, edited, and re-mashed for us to listened to, discuss, and be insprired by that day, along with notes and comments about each section (in yellow):
Transformations Mix No. 1 “Minimal Color and Light”
(Note on the first section: This section, with its sparse textures, often one note at a time, conveys the beginning of an artistic process, where ideas and technique are slowly coming together...)
(1)
Reflections on the Nature of Water — 1. Crystal (J. Druckman) — Daniel Druckman
Variations for Piano, op. 27 (A. Webern) — Halle
Variations for Orchestra (A. Webern) — Berlin, Boulez
(Note on the next section: Finally, the atonal series of notes in this section coalesce into an arrangement of a Bach Fugue made by the atonal of all atonal composers -- that’s all he did -- Alban Berg. Noted for its Klangfarbenmelodie style; i.e. melody lines are passed on from one instrument to another after every few notes, every note receiving the ‘tone color’ of the instrument it is played on).
(2)
“Sunday” from Sunday in the Park With George (Sondheim) — Daniel Evans
Variations for Orchestra (A. Webern) — Berlin, Boulez
Transformation — Nona Hendryx, Pam Grier, Betty
Fuga for Six Voices from Musical Offering (J.S. Bach, arr Webern) — Orchestre symphonique de Québec
(Note on the next section: We start fresh with the minimalist compositions of American Steve Reich, then introduce the American “minimalist” poet William Carlos Williams. I have two thoughts about his poem “The Red Wheel Barrow” -- neither very original: (1) The poet was a doctor and was attending to a dying young girl confined to her farm-house bedroom. As he gazed out her window, he realized the only “real” things (ie, not death-related) she saw day-in and day-out where the wheelbarrow and the chickens. To the little child, so much depended on those simple items… (2) he arranges each two-line stanza in the shape of a wheelbarrow.)
(3)
New York Counterpoint for clarinet, bass clarinet & tape (S. Reich) — Roland Diry
Transformation — Megadrums
Electric Counterpoint (Reich) — Michael Nicolella
Poet William Carlos Williams and the Red Wheel Barrow — Charles Osgoode
so much depends upon
a red wheel barrow
glazed with rain water
beside the white chickens
(Note on the next section: This segues into a discussion of another popular Williams’ poem and several “variations” on it. My favorite being the last that turns on the author’s mother, just as she turned on their family. I take the 1980’s anthem Cold As Ice, and add a loop of the Reichs Vermont Counterpoint -- coming up in two tracks -- and lead into a remix of Cold As Ice by Starsplash; this leads into two remixes of a song called Transformation (!) pointing out a link between what minimalist classical composers were doing in the 1980s and what was happening in popular music through remixes that take small cells and samples and loop them over and over -- of course pop remixes hardly ever change from a 4/4 structure, all the same…)
(4)
This Is Just To Say (William Carlos Williams) — S. Cole, J. Goldstein, H. O'Neill (Chicago Public Radio)
Cold as Ice — Foreigner
Cold as Ice (Rubberboy Remix) — Starsplash
Transformation (Inkfish/Club Remix) — Novy and Isma Ae
(Note on the next section: Two versions of Vermont Counterpoint, the first a computer-generated arrangement for “marimba” that morphs into the famous recording by flutist Ransom Wilson, for whom the piece was written in 1982. Reich wrote the work for one live solo flutist who plays along with a recording of 11 tracks of prerecorded flutes, alto flutes, and piccolo. You can rent Wilson’s pre-recorded tracks from the publisher. I studied at Manhattan School of Music with Mr. Wilson. Ransom shared a home in Vermont with his lover Walter, until they bought land in a small, up-state New York town called Denver. I helped plant bulbs along their driveway one spring in exchange for extra lessons. Here is link to a really cool “visual score” created in 2007 that shows the composition graphically as it is played: http://www.mattgilbert.net/article/41/visual-score-for-vermont-counterpoint)
(5)
Tokyo “Vermont” Counterpoint (Reich) — Mika Yoshida
Vermont Counterpoint (Reich) — Ransom Wilson
Opening Glass — Nathaniel Bartlett
(Note on the next section: I’ve loved Dawn Upshaw’s recording of This Is Prophetic since it came out in 1998. This aria -- which is sung by Pat Nixon in the opera, if you can believe it! -- is so filled with vivid images that suddenly shift with the next line and take on whole new meanings when heard in context. My favs: “Let the expression on the face of the Statue of Liberty change just a little, let her see what lies inland” and “Let the farmer switch on the light over the porch, let passersby look in at the large family around the table, let them pass” and “Let days grow imperceptibly longer.” I was thrilled to find a new recording by a saxophonist who has arranged it for himself -- he must love it as much as I do. This acts as a prelude.)
(6)
This Is Prophetic — Simon Haram
This Is Prophetic from Nixon in China — Dawn Upshaw (as Pat Nixon) Libretto by Alice Goodman:
This is prophetic! I foresee a time will come when luxury dissolves into the atmosphere Like a perfume, and everywhere the simple virtues root and branch and leaf and flower. On that bench there we'll relax and taste the fruit of all our actions. Why regret life which is so much like a dream? Let the eternal plan resume: In the bedroom communities let us be taken by surprise; Yes! Let the band play on and on; let the stand-up comedian finish his act, Let Gypsy Rose kick off her high-heeled party shoes; Let interested businessmen speculate further, let routine dull the edge of mortality. Let days grow imperceptibly longer, let the sun set in cloud; Let lonely drivers on the road pull over for a bite to eat, Let the farmer switch on the light over the porch, Let passersby look in at the large family around the table, let them pass. Let the expression on the face of the Statue of Liberty change just a little, let her see what lies inland: Across the plain one man is marching — the Unknown Soldier has risen from his tomb; Let him be recognized at home. The Prodigal. Give him his share: The eagle nailed to the barn door. Let him be quick. The sirens wail as bride and groom kiss through the veil. Bless this union with all its might, let it remain inviolate.
(Note on the next section: Just a really cool piece.)
(7)
Short Ride in a Fast Machine (Adams) — Bournemouth, Alsop
(Note on the next section: Of course, I could not ignore Sunday in the Park with George -- which is all about creating art, changing relationships, and “moving on” -- now could I?! The performance by Bernadette Peters has been created by molding her studio recording, her live performance at Carnegie Hall “Sondheim, Etc.”, and her follow-up engagement of basically the same show in London, created for broadcast on PBS. I saw the original and was savvy enough to video-tape it in 1998 on, yes, a VCR! I was struck by the quality of her singing in this performance, possibly her best caught on tape: It was like she had found the perfect voice teacher, who was whispering in her ear during the performance, reminding her of how to sing with ease and beauty and light!)
(8)
“Color and Light” from Sunday in the Park with George (Sondheim) — Bernadette Peters, Mandy Patinkin
“Finir le chapeau” from Sunday in the Park with George (Sondheim) — Robert Marien
“Color and Light” — Troy Nilsson, Genie
“Move On” from Sunday in the Park with George (Sondheim) — Bernadette Peters
Tod und Verklärung “Death and Transfiguration” (R. Strauss) — Philharmonia, Kashif
“Sunday” from Sunday in the Park With George (Sondheim) — Daniel Evans
“Color and Light” from Sunday in the Park with George (Sondheim) — Bernadette Peters, Mandy Patinkin
My friends (Michael Schultz and Chad Hudson) and I started doing what we called "Music and Art" day where we pick a theme, listen to music (my mixes), have a few cocktails, and create something on our separate 12" x 12" white canvases...
This was our third session on the theme of "Transformation" and here are our three pieces of art created on May 30, 2009:
Here is a playlist (the second of four) of the music that I put together, edited, and re-mashed for us to listened to, discuss, and be insprired by that day, along with notes and comments about each section (in yellow):
Transformations Mix No. 2 “Beyond Bach/Bach to Fairyland”
(Note on the first section: I had heard that they included a phonograph record on Voyager One, launched in 1977. But I could not imagine how the scientists thought that aliens would figure out what it was or how to play it. I then had the funny thought that what if the alien who found it and read the instructions was as fallible as we are? What if the alien got most of it, but not all of it, right? One the recording, is music, sounds, and images. The music of Bach is presented more than any other. Scientist and author Lewis Thomas once suggested how the people of Earth should communicate with the universe: “I would vote for Bach, all of Bach, streamed out into space, over and over again. We would be bragging, of course, but it is surely excusable to put the best possible face on at the beginning of such an acquaintance. We can tell the harder truths later.”)
(1)
From Beyond — Klaus Nomi
The Voyager Record — (Various programs describing the 1977 recording on board the Voyager mission)
Nomi Chant — Klaus Nomi
Space Fantasy (Tomita) — Tomita
The Sea Named 'Solaris' (Tomita) — Tomita
Three-part Invention No 2 (J.S. Bach) — Carl Danzig
“Cum Santo Spiritu” from B Minor Mass (Bach) — Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque, Gardiner
(Note on the next section: The great American organist Vigil Fox was an evangelist for the music of Bach. To hear him “preach” in his live concert is truly inspiring. Here, I string together several Bach works together in various instrumentations, culminating in Fox’s performance live to blow the roof off! I also must point out the arrangement by Mr. Arnold “12-tone” Schoenberg in a spectacular show worthy of Disney.)
(2)
Spoken Introduction from 1973 Heavy Organ Concert at Carnegie Hall — Virgil Fox
Toccata (Bach) — Gould
Fugue (Bach) — John Canfield
Prelude (Bach) — Swingle Singers
Prelude and Fugue (Bach) — Wendy Carlos
Toccata (Bach) — Electric Skychurch
Fugue (Bach, arr Arnold Schoenberg) — LA Philharmonic, Salonen
Fugue (Bach) — Fox
(Note on the next section: My friend Michael had been blown away by Jenny Burton live a few years ago and I can hear why in this recording -- I must admit I did some surgical editing to make it more “spiritual” and less “Jesus” but inspiring all the same.)
(3)
Free — Jenny Burton Experience
(Note on the next section: Not much to say, except this is a powerful, deep performance. Notice how the beginning of each verse changes from “Where have you been” to “What did you see” all the way to “What’ll you do now.”))
(4)
A Hard Rain's a Gonna Fall (Dylan) — Jason Mraz
(Note on the next section: The story of Beauty and the Beast is ultimately about transformation. Ravel wrote small piano pieces based on many of the “Mother Goose” fairytales and here they underscore the performances by Streep and Andrews. Oh, and the Beast opposite Ms. Poppins? PDQ Bach himself!)
(5)
Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant “Pavane for Sleeping Beauty” (M. Ravel) — Gena Raps
Les entretiens de la Belle et de la Bête “Conversation of Beauty and the Beast” (M. Ravel) — Gena Raps
Beauty and the Beast — Julie Andrews, Peter Schickele
Beauty and the Beast — Diamond Rio
(Note on the next section: Yes, this section includes Bach and Rap. Flocabulary’s rap on Transformation is such a great breath of fresh air, being about learning and thinking, not hating and killing. The “other” Transformation has been pre-echoed on #1 and will be heard later in #4. It is from the L-Word soundtrack and seems tailor-made for these mixes.)
(6)
Prelude in C for Solo Cello: solo piano / flute / Bela Fleck / Yo-Yo Ma
chi 2 ny (Bach Remix) — N Visible Spotlite
Transformation — Flocabulary
Transformation — Nona Hendryx, Pam Grier, Betty
(Note on the next section: A great song by a great songwriter. The words speak for themselves.)
(7)
We Are Water (Patty Griffin) — Shayne
My friend, my friend, you are traveling So many secrets are unraveling Some other picture's coming into view I seen the water washing over you And the water’s speaking now, it speaks your name I hear it talking to me Sometimes when it rains Telling me a story of joy or pain But I’ve got no regrets baby, I’ve got no shame
’Cause we are water We flow and flow I feel you pouring through Every inch of my soul and I really must tell you this Baby, before you go We are water We flow and flow
I am a river baby, I’ve got plenty of time I don't know where I’m going I’m just following the lines There’s just no telling where this river will flow I got no choice in the matter, baby, I just go where it goes I’m making my bed tonight Right under this cloud Sometimes the lightening’s so frightening Sometimes the thunder’s so loud Still, I know this tide is always kissing my heels Sometimes I think I’m drowning in all these things that I feel
And we are water We flow and flow I feel you pouring through Every inch of my soul and I really must tell you this Baby, before you go We are water We flow and flow
Out on the beach today, I did not find One single footstep that we left behind So I went swimming in the deep blue sea And I could feel that water all around me
’Cause we are water We flow and flow I feel you pouring through Every inch of my soul and I really must tell you this Baby, before you go We are water, we are water We flow and flow
(Note on the next section: I found these Glenn Gould out-takes, during which he talks about Bach’s Quidlibet, which was a combination of two popular songs during Bach’s time. He then says that he came up with his own: The Star Spangled Banner and God Save the King, which he proceeds to play. I love his comment at the end: “…except for the parallel octaves, it works out perfectly. Need I mention that he starts out playing one of the Goldberg "Variations" -- talk about your set of transformations...)
(8)
Quidlibet from Goldberg Variations (Bach) — Glenn Gould /
Out-takes from 1951 recording of Goldberg Variations (Bach) — Glenn Gould
(Note on the next section: I reduced this performance by Ms. Price to the first line of each verse to highlight the modulations and get to the over-the-top ending enhance by the end of her Battle Hymn recording. I’ll admit I added the very end of her live performance of “Pace, pace mio Dio” (which thank goodness is also in Bb!) to give it that final push that send the audience into a frenzy.)
(9)
America the Beautiful (Katharine Lee Bates/Samuel A. Ward) /
Battle Hymn of the Republic (Julia Ward Howe) — Leontyne Price
My friends (Michael Schultz and Chad Hudson) and I started doing what we called "Music and Art" day where we pick a theme, listen to music (my mixes), have a few cocktails, and create something on our separate 12" x 12" white canvases...
This was our third session on the theme of "Transformation" and here are our three pieces of art created on May 30, 2009:
Here is a playlist (the third of four) of the music that I put together, edited, and re-mashed for us to listened to, discuss, and be insprired by that day, along with notes and comments about each section (in yellow):
Transformations Mix No. 3 “Variations and Themes”
(Note on the first section: I dragged Michael and Chad to see “33 Variations,” a new Moisés Kaufman play on Broadway starring Jane Fonda. We loved it. There was so much to take away from it and to think about later. Among other things, it linked the way Beethoven took care to transform a simple tune into something worthwhile, just as a parent does to a child, just as we all do to our lives…This opening skit from a Broadway fundraiser, pokes fun at Fonda‘s high-strung reputation.)
‘Voluntary’ Rehearsal — Jane Fonda, Cast of 33 Variations (at the B’way Cares Easter Bonnet Competition)
(Note on the next section: So much has been written about this masterpiece. I just suggest you buy a copy of Moisés Kaufman’s “33 Variations” when it is finally published.)
33 Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli (Beethoven) Op.120 — Vladimir Ashkenazy
(Note on the next section: Most people know Pictures at an Exhibition as a huge orchestral work with the gongs and cymbals of the Great Gate of Kiev testing the power of your speakers. Yet that version was orchestrated by the French composer Maurice Ravel in 1922, almost 50 years after the Russian Modest Mussorgsky wrote it as a set of solo piano pieces (1874). Here, I show how the opening theme is transformed each time it occurs, played by the young Horowitz, a master of colorization.)
Promenades Nos. 3/5/8/13 from Pictures at an Exhibition (Mussorgsky) — Vladimir Horowitz
(Note on the next section: One of the most popular and most-performed of all works for piano and orchestra, Rachmaninoff‘s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini is a set of 22 variations. At the time of its premiere -- given in Baltimore 1934 with the composer performing -- the great Russian pianist had already transformed into an American. In this work, he transforms the traditional variation form, grouping the variations into three distinct sections, that actual create an overall “fast-slow-fast” Concerto.)
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (Rachmaninov) — Lang Lang, Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Gergiev
My friends (Michael Schultz and Chad Hudson) and I started doing what we called "Music and Art" day where we pick a theme, listen to music (my mixes), have a few cocktails, and create something on our separate 12" x 12" white canvases...
This was our third session on the theme of "Transformation" and here are our three pieces of art created on May 30, 2009:
Here is a playlist (the last of four) of the music that I put together, edited, and re-mashed for us to listened to, discuss, and be insprired by that day, along with notes and comments about each section (in yellow):
Transformations Mix No. 4 “Will Compassion Transfigure the Hero?”
(Note on the first section: This opening section acts as a prelude to the first half of this mix, hinting at Charles Ives’ Unanswered Question, Richard Straruss’ Transfigured Night, and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. It was at the last minute that I discovered that the Ives and the Vaughn Williams both began with an open-spaced G Major chord… The voice-overs also establish the links between the works in this mix.)
(1)
Third Tune for Archbishop Parker's Psalter “Why fum'th in sight” — Theatre of Voices, P. Hillier
The Unanswered Question (Ives) — Tomita
Discussing Verklärte Nacht “Transfigured Night” — Christopher Cook (BBC Radio)
Discussing Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis — Charles Hazlewood (BBC Radio)
The Unanswered Question (Ives) — Orchestra of St Luke's, J. Adams
You'll Never Walk Alone from Carousel — Orchestra of St. Luke's, P. Summers / London, E. Kohn
Verklärte Nacht “Transfigured Night” (A. Schoenberg) — Bozen String Academy Orchestra, F. Bernius
The Unanswered Question (Ives) — Tomita
Discussing Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis — Charles Hazlewood (BBC Radio)
(Note on the next section: Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis is truly one of the great works of the 20th Century. Only through research on this mix did I learn how “modern” it was, all the while sounding so ancient.)
(2)
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (Vaughan Williams) — St. Louis, Slatkin
(Note on the next section: I’ve revered Wagner’s 5-hour epic Parsifal ever since I was lucky to get free tickets to a Met production in the 1990s. Many scholars believe the story -- whose characters are members of the Knight of the Holy Grail and their adversaries -- is less about religion and more about the lesson of compassion. In this part of the Prelude, the motive linked to the act of communion, the “Pain” of Amfortas motif, and “the Grail” theme -- actually an old chorale also used by Mendelssohn in the Reformation Symphony and used in many hymnals today -- are transformed and melded together.)
(3)
Parsifal Prelude, Act I (R. Wagner) — The Hallé, M. Elder
(Note on the next section: Arnold Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night of 1899 was written for six strings in one movement and inspired by a poem by Richard Dehmel. The powerful poem is about a man and a woman walking through a dark forest on a moonlit night, wherein the woman shares a dark secret with her new lover; she bears the child of a stranger. After sections that depict the sadness of the woman's confession and the man reflecting upon the confession, the final section reflects the man's bright acceptance (and forgiveness) of the woman: see how brightly the universe gleams! There is a radiance on everything. Thus the night has been transformed, the unborn baby has been transformed, and the couple’s lives have been transformed. That Schoenberg, known as the “father of the twelve tone technique” could write such a powerful, Romantic work it to “transform” his imagine and reputation.)
(4)
Discussing Verklärte Nacht “Transfigured Night” — Christopher Cook (BBC Radio)
Verklärte Nacht “Transfigured Night” (A. Schoenberg) — Bozen String Academy Orchestra, F. Bernius
Two people walk through a bare, cold grove; The moon races along with them, they look into it. The moon races over tall oaks, No cloud obscures the light from the sky, Into which the black points of the boughs reach.
A woman’s voice speaks: I'm carrying a child, and not yours, I walk in sin beside you. I have committed a great offense against myself. I no longer believed I could be happy And yet I had a strong yearning For something to fill my life, for the joys of Motherhood And for duty; so I committed an effrontery, So, shuddering, I allowed my sex To be embraced by a strange man, And, on top of that, I blessed myself for it. Now life has taken its revenge: Now I have met you, oh, you.
She walks with a clumsy gait, She looks up; the moon is racing along. Her dark gaze is drowned in light.
A man’s voice speaks: May the child you conceived Be no burden to your soul; Just see how brightly the universe is gleaming! There's a glow around everything; You are floating with me on a cold ocean, But a special warmth flickers From you into me, from me into you. It will transfigure the strange man's child. You will bear the child for me, as if it were mine; You have brought the glow into me, You have made me like a child myself.
Their breath kisses in the breeze. Two people walk through the lofty, bright night.
(Note on the next section: Originally, Mix No. 4 was only instrumental music until Beverly Sills sings around the 30 minute mark, but this seemed a little too much without a break. After searching for just the right singer to insert at this point, I listened to Barbra Steisand’s Classical Album again and was surprised at how her version of Hugo Wolf’s Verschwiegene Liebe fit perfectly. I was also surprised to learn that this song was completed just a year before Schoeberg wrote Verklärte Nacht. Since both lived and worked in Vienna, Schoenberg no doubt knew of this song as well and might have even been inspired by it.)
(5)
Verschwiegene Liebe “Silent Love” (H. Wolf) — Barbra Streisand, Claus Ogermann Set to the poetry of Josef Karl Benedikt von Eichendorff
Over treetops and into the splendor — who may guess them, (the secrets) who may overtake them? Thoughts go floating, the night is silent; thoughts run free.
If only he could guess, who has thought of him amid the rustling of the groves, when no one else is awake except the flying clouds — my love is silent and as beautiful as the night.
(Note on the next section: The original score of “Transfigured Night” called for two violins, two violas and two cellos. In 1917, Schoenberg produced an arrangement for string orchestra and further revised in 1943. There is also a version for piano trio by Eduard Steuermann. I have included recordings of all three arrangements in these sections. As mentioned earlier, the final section reflects the man’s acceptance -- and forgiveness -- of the woman.)
(6)
“Transfigured Night” (Schoenberg, trans. for piano trio by E. Steuermann) — Wallin, Thedeen, Pontinen
“Transfigured Night” (A. Schoenberg) — Bozen String Academy Orchestra, F. Bernius
(Note on the next section: The Ballad of Baby Doe is an opera by the American composer Douglas Moore to a libretto by John Latouche. The chief characters (who were real people) are drawn from Colorado lore during the end of the 1800s. The story is the “classic triangle” of Tabor, a wealthy gold mine owner, and two women. Tabor rises from rags to riches with his stoic wife Augusta and then meets the young and beautiful, but unhappily married, Baby Doe. Ultimately Tabor divorces Augusta to marry the “other woman“ and his social ostracism is followed by an economic denouement, with Tabor ending his life in rags again. (The real Baby Doe remained at his side and after his death maintained an irrational thirty year vigil at a worthless mine he had bequeathed to her.) In the finale, Tabor returns to the Tabor Grand Theater which he built, a broken man old and ill, and relives in a curious fantasy many of the happy and sad moments of his life. Baby Doe joins him as the one reality remaining. After she has sung “Always Through the Changing,” the opera closes as she moves to her vigil at the Matchless Mine. Moore’s stage directions direct that toward the end Baby Doe’s hood should fall back to show her hair completely white as she moves toward the mine to begin her vigil. The evening ends quietly as snow begins to fall.)
(7)
“Always Through the Changing” from The Ballad of Baby Doe (Douglas Moore) — Beverly Sills Libretto by John Latouche:
Always through the changing Of sun and shadow, time and space, I will walk beside my love In a green and quiet place. Proof against the forms of fear No distress shall alter me I will walk beside my dear Clad in love's bright heraldry.
Sound the battle’s loud alarms Any foe I shall withstand In the circle of his arms I am safe in Beulah Land. Passion fades when joy is spent; Lust is lure for gold and crime. Beauty’s kiss is transient - Love alone is fixed in time. Death cannot divide my love; All we sealed with living vows. Warm I'll sleep beside my love In a cold and narrow house.
Never shall the mourning dove Weep for us with accents wild; I will walk beside my love Who is husband, father, child. As our earthly eyes grow dim Still the youth song will be sung (orig. "Let the ancient song be sung"): I will change along with him So that both are ever young, ever young.
(Note on the next section: I interrupt this quiet moment with Strauss’s tone poem Death and Transfiguration just as Strauss did in the original. Unusual for a composer of 25 years of age, the music depicts the death of an artist. As the man lays dying, thoughts of his life pass through his head: his childhood innocence, the struggles of his manhood, the attainment of his worldly goals; and at the end, he receives the longed-for transfiguration “from the infinite reaches of heaven.” I wanted to find a place to include Gunther Schuller’s “Twittering Machine” from 7 Studies on Themes of Paul Klee (1959) and this was a perfect place sonically and dramatically. I was happy to find an interview where Schuller discussed his life-long love of art and Klee’s lifelong love of music.)
(8)
Tod und Verklärung “Death and Transfiguration” (R. Strauss) — Philharmonia, Kashif
Discussion of Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee — Gunther Schuller
“Twittering Machine” from 7 Studies on Themes of Paul Klee (G. Schuller) — MSM Symphony, Schuller
(Note on the next section: The segue back from the Twittering Machine fit perfectly with a section of Strauss’s Don Juan, another tone poem. And the “Hero’s theme” fir perfectly in the narrative. It seems like you can slip from one Staruss work to another if you find the right transitional section.)
(9)
Don Juan (R. Strauss) — Philharmonia, Kashif
Tod und Verklärung “Death and Transfiguration” (R. Strauss) — Philharmonia, Kashif
Trumpet Excerpt from Don Juan (R. Strauss) — Philip Smith
(Note on the next section: I’ve always thought that the “love theme” of Strauss’ Death and Transfiguration was completely ripped off by John Williams for his Superman score. Here’s proof… It’s tied in here also by the way that Superman must transform himself each time he goes to fight crime.)
(10)
Love Theme (“Can You Read My Mind”) from Superman (J. Williams) — Boston Pops, Williams
Superman March from Superman (J. Williams) — Boston Pops, Williams
Tod und Verklärung “Death and Transfiguration” (R. Strauss) — Philharmonia, Kashif
(Note on the next section: This Epilogue, brings in our final “guest star” Renée Fleming singing an inspirational You'll Never Walk Alone in a great arrangement. Interesting that her character in the musical has been left alone and pregnant -- and like other characters in these mixes, is then transformed. But will compassion transfigure the Hero?)
(11)
Change Everything — Flojob
You'll Never Walk Alone from Carousel — Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Renée Fleming, P. Summers
The Unanswered Question — Orchestra of St. Luke’s, John Adams
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (Vaughan Williams) — St. Louis Symphony, Slatkin
(END)
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
MARTHA GRAHAM DANCE COMPANY CLYTEMNESTRA REMASH PROJECT
Well, I won. First Prize.
The video competition was held by the Martha Graham Dance Company this spring. They provided contestants with 5 video excerpts from their recent production of Clytemnestra. The challenge was to create a four-minute video that relates these characters (from the ancient Greek tragedy) to the present day. Contestants could choose from Helen of Troy, Electra, Clytemnestra, Cassandra, or the Messenger of Death. I choose all: Clytemnestra became Queen Vivianne Pitt-Jolie-Windsor, who is married to King William V; Electra became their adopted daughter the Princess of Wales; Helen became Zahara Pitt-Jolie; Cassandra became Chelsea Rodham-Clinton, U.N. Secretary-General, who is having an affair with King Williams; and the Messenger of Death became M.O.D., the host of the news show. Because we could not use copy-righted material, I chose to set my news show 20 years in the future at a time when footage and photos of celebrities are outlawed and the networks have turned to artists to represent and recreate the news for the public.
Here is an example of the "raw" video they provided us with:
This video was submitted for a competition held by the Martha Graham Dance Company. They provided contestants with 5 video excerpts from their recent production of Clytemnestra. The challenge was to create a four-minute video that relates these characters (from the ancient Greek tragedy) to the present day. Contestants could choose from Helen of Troy, Electra, Clytemnestra, Cassandra, or the Messenger of Death. I choose all: Clytemnestra became Queen Vivianne Pitt-Jolie-Windsor, who is married to King William V; Electra became their adopted daughter the Princess of Wales; Helen became Zahara Pitt-Jolie; Cassandra became Chelsea Rodham-Clinton, U.N. Secretary-General, who is having an affair with King Williams; and the Messenger of Death became M.O.D., the host of the news show.
Happy Hours with Royce and Marilyn (a.k.a Drunk and Bitter) *see script below
For all those of you who want to add this to your audition scenes:
Drunk and Bitter (transcribed by John Blanchard 2009)
[Scene in a room in a modest assisted living facility. Two women sit on a hospital bed – both in their late 60s. One wears a large fur hat, a shiny blouse, lots of gaudy jewelry. The other is in a house coat, no shoes, hair down. They are being interviewed on camera as if for a documentary.]
Women with Hat: [Drunk.] Liszt, Rachmaninov, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Greig… I know all it. I know how to play it internationally [she gestures with her hand] play piano internationally compose symphonies… God! The (shit) garbage, GARBAGE that I don’t want. Why would I have to be a victim of all this garbage, the crap that you like. [She finally looks to her right at the woman on the bed.] You know nothing about Classical music, opera, nothing! Nothing! You can’t sing an opera. You know nothing. [She starts to take a drink from a glass of white wine, holding the stem in her fist.]
Woman on Bed: I know I don’t sing opera.
Women with Hat: You know nothing. Nothing. [Another swig.]
Woman on Bed: That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy it.
Women with Hat: You know nothing. [Sets glass down on table.] I sing everything perfectly, note by note. You know nothing… Oh, God, unreal!
Woman on Bed: [To camera.] In Las Vagas…
Women with Hat: Oh, shut up.
Woman on Bed: …I saw Milton Berle’s Show
[together]
Woman on Bed: …and I enjoyed it very much Women with Hat: Oh, honey, Milton Berle! [Stands.]
Woman on Bed: And I must say…
Women with Hat: Repulsive… [continues to mumble “repulsive”, “vulgar”, “oh”, “most ....vulgar...vulgar man to ever walk the earth.”]
Woman on Bed: …I even enjoyed Martha Raye. She appeared on the same program with Lena Horne. And I saw that. And of course, uh, in the nightclub, Martha has a dirty show.
Women with Hat: Oh, Jesus Christ!
Woman on Bed: But for comedy, you know…
Women with Hat: Honey, I want to live in the world that I’m used to: coming home, and putting on my opera, my concerto… live in this shit-hole. [Throws a wad of napkin across the room.] This SHIT-HOLE downtown. Where I’ve… all my money is gone. Gone! This garbage hole…God!
Woman on Bed: [Sighs.]
Women with Hat: Oh, God. [Halfheartedly tosses an ashtray lying on the bed.] This garbage hole.
Woman on Bed: [To Woman in Hat.] Well everybody either…
Women with Hat: Oh, shut up!
Woman on Bed: …has to inherit money, or… or… marry it, or make it yourself. There is only three ways.
Women with Hat: Well did you ever have it?
Woman on Bed: [Pause.] I had a little bit, yes…
Women with Hat: [Quieter now.] Please. Please… Please... Please.
Woman on Bed: But I’m not basically unhappy.
Women with Hat: [Laughs.] Basically sit in this shit-hole…
Woman on Bed: Well, all right. I can’t do it just…
DUSK, LOS ANGELES. A THOUSAND CARS ARE JOINING THE rush-hour conga lines of traffic fleeing downtown's office center. Soon the streets will be deserted of men with briefcases, and the sky emptied of corporate helicopters -- to be replaced by the occasional urban hawk searching, in the darkening curfew, for a careless pigeon. Inside a neighborhood bar that is neither dive nor tourist lounge, a few old-timers fortified with drinks and paper plates of happy-hour food watch a movie wind down on television. Except for the TV and a popcorn maker it's pretty quiet here, and pretty blue-collar, too, which is why the two women dressed like grandmotherly Holly Golightlys, their wide-brimmed hats smartly raked and enormous rings cincturing manicured fingers, stick out like a pair of Christmas trees planted on a 50-yard line.
Royce Reed and Marilyn Hoggatt, you see, are emissaries from a more refined time, women who do not end their sentences with prepositions, nor with the declarative question mark that is the California style. They are ladies who appreciate the snug fit of custom-made gloves, who know the difference between a cocktail ring and a solitaire -- and wince whenever their club sandwiches arrive with crusts untrimmed.
Their anachronistic mannerisms and codes of dress are part of an unfaltering faith in style, a faith that has been rewarded with a kind of unified field theory of life. Yet even a consoling world-view cannot shield an elderly woman from the rough realities of living downtown on a fixed income. For that, Royce and Marilyn must rely on one another, and a friendship that is a constant adjustment of needs and wants that are seldom completely in sync.
"I'm used to elegance, elegance," Royce says of downtown. "This is not my home, this is hell on earth! The noise of the helicopters and sirens day and night -- oh, my gawd, you'd lose your mind!" There's more than a trace of Norma Desmond in the voice and the eyeliner, and listening to her makes an interviewer feel more than a little like Joe Gillis. "I'm a clothes person, a fashion person," Royce will tell you as she sips a sauvignon blanc. "I was raised by rich, rich, elegant people who bought only the finest, everything made to order. You cannot handle anything else, as a woman -- it is your life."
"I've always liked clothes," Marilyn concurs. "My mother made mine -- as an infant, child and teenager. Even when I went to college, she made complete sets for me."
When Marilyn graduated from high school in 1941, a teenage girl's look was composed of "bobby sox, blouse with collar turned out, a sweater, string of pearls and always a pleated skirt." Today, Marilyn is swathed in a faux-leopard-skin shawl that is echoed by leopard-skin accents on her hat. Royce's own black fur chapeau matches the rest of her raven-hue ensemble. The two women live in an adjoining hotel that is a clean, well-lighted place by downtown standards, though a planet or two removed from, say, the Biltmore up on Olive Street. Wilshire, which Marilyn reverently refers to as "the big boulevard" and which has figured so many times in both their lives, dead-ends a few blocks away.
Marilyn is 5 feet 9 inches tall, large-boned and easygoing, while her Maroc-scented, wire-waisted friend stands 5 feet 4 and bristles with the steely self-confidence one acquires from working nearly half a century in fashion merchandising. "I know everyone in the rag business," Royce pronounces in the elongated, gravely accented vowels associated with breeding. "I went to work as a gift counselor and then bridal consultant in 1949 at J.W. Robinson's, which was on Seventh Street and owned by Mrs. Harry Robinson and the Schneiders, Carlos and Walter." When she speaks, her hands often flutter through the air in dramatic gestures. "Mrs. Robinson was exquisite -- a Beverly Hills socialite who would come in with her chauffeur, mink coats and her poodle, Happy."
Marilyn is a former schoolteacher and "executive housekeeper" whose good-time Ohio twang occasionally horns into her conversation -- which she says is a bit embarrassing, as her father was chairman of WittenbergUniversity's public-speaking department. Their stay at the hotel began some 11 years ago and has lasted far longer than either expected -- or wanted. Marilyn looks on the bright side, pointing out the proximity of Macy's and the exercise she gets from walking to nearby stores and her manicurist. Royce isn't so sanguine. "I'm 16th-generation back East," she is fond of saying. "I only exist here, it's not my territory."
The pair's exile is not just a matter of geography, though, it is one of time -- a time whose fashions and manners have been pulled out from beneath them by a nightmarish undertow called progress. "A man did not get into a restaurant without a suit and a tie," Royce laments of this vanished era, "nor a woman without a cocktail dress."
"Celebrities just don't dress up anymore," concedes the more accepting Marilyn.
MARILYN HOGGATT CAME TO LOS ANGELES IN 1958 AS AN elementary school teacher, having been lured from Colorado by the high salaries California was offering during the post-Sputnik education splurge. She taught fifth grade down in sleepy San Pedro but felt an urban excitement she had never experienced back in Ohio or Colorado. "California held such glamour for me," she says. "I was a professor's daughter who majored in speech and theater arts, but I had also been crazy about movies and was just besotted by the magnificent films of my youth. I wanted to see these places and some of the celebrities I'd read about all my life -- particularly the women, like Lana Turner and Ann Miller."
Life in Los Angeles offered her a close-up of those places and celebrities, along with memberships in the club culture of Palos Verdes, whose art association and swim and country clubs Marilyn gladly joined. It was a time, after all, when a divorcée could, as she did, raise two boys in an ocean-view apartment on a teacher's salary. Even the L.A. Teachers Association breakfasts, held at the Biltmore Bowl, seemed exciting: "I liked it -- I felt like I was a big-city girl!"
Her father's death brought Marilyn back to Ohio in 1962, but when her mother also passed away, seven years later, she returned to teaching in L.A., moving into the WilshireTowers. "I was one block from the Brown Derby and the Ambassador Hotel -- all you could think of was how they were so famous." The center of her life became the Round Table West literary club's monthly gatherings at the Ambassador's Cocoanut Grove, whose former glory, like an incandescence traveling from some distant, dying star, still dazzled Marilyn. One afternoon she sat at a table while Sammy Davis Jr. rehearsed a show, and got his autograph on a soggy napkin. "This is gonna be a wet one!" Sammy quipped.
In 1971, after two years of teaching on several city campuses, Marilyn called it quits when she saw that L.A.'s schools were becoming more dangerous places. She then made what seems like an off-the-chart career change for an educated woman, though it put her in a position to glimpse show-biz glamour from the inside. She remembers her first interview as a housekeeper for the wealthy.
"Raquel Welch lived in a house in back of the Beverly Hills Hotel," Marilyn says, "and just had on a little pair of jeans, a T-shirt, with her hair pulled back with a rubber band -- and no makeup. She said she felt uncomfortable with hiring someone older than herself, and so I didn't get the job."
Before long, though, Marilyn was putting her belongings in storage and moving out to cowboy actor Dale Robertson's Chatsworth ranch, where she landed a job working for the Oklahoman and his wife, Lou. "They were both Southern and very lovely," Marilyn recalls. "They had quite a few dinner parties with rich horse people. He became friends with a family who gave him a brand-new, custom-made Cadillac Eldorado. They were a foreign family -- by that, I mean they had foreign blood. So he had this gorgeous new Cadillac that he drove as a personal car, and then of course Mrs. Robertson had a Lincoln."
Life seemed idyllic, on and off the spread. Marilyn remembers the Beverly Hills Halloween party at the Jimmy Durantes' to which she escorted Dale's daughter Rebel, and how Mrs. Durante had to yell because Jimmy was hard of hearing. But the Robertsons' rustic acreage was Marilyn's true world, a home whose nearby neighbors included actor Chad Everett and the Gelsons, who owned the tony markets. "There was the regular ranch house, and then there was another house down by the stables, where they had James, their houseman. Now, when I say 'man,' I mean he was the colored man who had worked for Mr. Robertson for 25 years. He had his own house, took care of the cars and supervised the horses. He was lovely to me -- I was always 'Miss Marilyn.'"
But the Robertsons' marriage eventually hit the rocks, and Marilyn was out of a job. Next came work with singer Helen O'Connell in Brentwood, and afterward a stint with comedian Norm Crosby. Marilyn spent a particularly grand time at the West Hollywood home of R&B composer-arranger Gene Page, who worked with such superstars as Aretha Franklin and Barry White. "They were a black family," Marilyn recalls, "but there was no tension with the Pages, because they had friends of all races over at the house and took me along with them to the Shubert to see Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra." She also remembers Page as a very private man who kept four pianos in the house. "He was touted as a performer, but he didn't like performing, because he didn't want girls clawing at his clothes, tearing them off. Not at all."
IT WAS WHILE AT THE PAGES' THAT MARILYN WROTE A 536-page murder mystery titled The Copper Triangle, set in a private men's club in the mountains of Colorado. As she describes the book: "It's the story of the beautiful hostess Claire Breese. Her club's members are sophisticated singles, couples and out-of-towners who drive in, helicopter in or come by limousine. They have all these wonderful parties, and of course there's a lot of sex, and camaraderie."
Those 536 immaculately typed pages celebrate comfort, luxury and, yes, sex. The setting's Copperwood Estate, whose corporate color scheme is cream and lavender, is a swinging world of cinnamon suede suits, white llama-wool upholstery and royal-blue satin sheets; with each turn of the page one meets characters who are more beautiful, handsome, talented and rich than those already introduced, and everyone gobbles down enormous breakfasts of steak, eggs, potatoes, toast and marmalade. Brand-name perfumes exist side by side with push-button technology and rocket packs. The reader enters a fantasy whose characters, as beautiful, sensuous and wealthy as they are, voyeuristically gaze upon yet another fantasy world -- that of the softcore porn films they view. One of these royal-blue movies' stars may well be a role Marilyn envied: "She was the darling of musical comedy and feted on all continents. She owned one of the magnificent houses in Paris. She had a weekly salon where choice men were invited for dinner at 9, and dallying later. She surrounded herself with other pretty actresses. Her guest list was full of beautiful people." So far, the manuscript, penned over a mere nine-month period, remains unpublished.
Housekeeping, even at celebrity homes, is a tiring line of work, and especially for a woman approaching 60. And so in 1983, after moving to and from 10 employers, and to the motels she stayed at in between, Marilyn quit the business altogether. She set up house on the 19th floor of the Mark Wilshire apartment building, which sported a pool on its roof. "I loved it," she says, "because I'm a swimmer and because that was my idea of glamour! Wilshire Boulevard was just lovely then. My favorite thing to do was go shopping, what else? And going to the elegant places where the celebrities went -- the Beverly Hilton, Beverly Wilshire and Beverly Hills Hotel. Oh, I loved the ritzy places, and belonged to the Century City Health Club. The ritzier the better for me."
(One day, however, she got a glimpse of that starry world's mortality. On a Beverly Hills street, a man caught her attention, not just because the man happened to be black, but because he looked so ill. It was Sammy Davis, who had autographed her napkin years before.)
In the summer of that year, Marilyn met Royce, an encounter she remembers as if it had happened half an hour ago. "I was having lunch at the Tea Room in Bullocks Wilshire when I saw this woman who stood out from everyone else -- I just couldn't take my eyes off her! She looked like Scarlett O'Hara with this magnificent big picture hat on. Then when I went to the ladies' lounge, I found her there, singing an opera aria. So I introduced myself."
"I DIDN'T LIKE IT HERE THAT MUCH -- I'M USED TO GOING out every night of my life," says Royce Reed, the fluttery hands in full motion, as though conducting an invisible orchestra. "I'm used to New York, I'm used to elegant places, elegant food. We had the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, the Luau Room owned by Steve Crane, Scandia. LaRue? We lived in those places day and night. Now we have nothing."
When she speaks of her present living arrangements, her voice tends to roll abruptly from a purr to a rebuking growl. Royce is far less forgiving than Marilyn of the urban decay she sees all around her, as well as the changes in the fashion world she once moved in. She is strictly old-school, for example, on the subject of fur. "They don't torture these animals, they put them to sleep quietly," she insists. "I love animals and I would love to keep them as live pets, but I can't! You don't discuss fur with people who don't understand fur -- you dismiss them or have them taken away."
As a matter of fact, when she met Marilyn in Bullocks Wilshire, Royce had just bought a mink coat for herself and was living at the Chancellor Hotel, near the epicenter of a formerly vibrant Wilshire Boulevard chic. "Dahling," she says, recalling nearby restaurants, "I was one of those who spent fortunes at the Windsor, and at the Cove across the street -- elegant, elegant. If you had to be in Los Angeles, the Windsor and the Cove were the best places, and Perino's -- the original Perino's -- was the only elegant restaurant in HancockPark. For years I had an apartment next door, in the 3000 block of Wilshire at Norton."
If there is a Los Angeles to Royce's liking, it is the one she arrived in as a 20-year-old from Manhattan with her family in the late 1940s -- a culturally arid landscape that was nevertheless alleviated by oases like Rodeo Drive and the Sunset Strip, civilized greenbelts offering radiant cocktail lounges, nonstop conversation and decent French food.
"She likes beautiful," Marilyn explains.
"I don't understand anything else -- it's living death," Royce says.
"I offered to take Royce's life story down, 'As Told to . . .,'" Marilyn says.
But Royce hasn't taken her friend up on the offer, and for an outsider, interviewing her soon becomes a frustrating search past dropped names and anecdotal windows that briefly open, only to slam shut when she is asked to elaborate about her past. "Why would I want to review it?" she asks rhetorically. "We've had books written about my family -- The Annals of Lancaster County." Royce has considered writing a book herself about her career in the clothing business, but figures no one would buy it, because "you have to write about sex and disgusting things."
"My life history is very elegant," she will allow, "16 generations from Philadelphia and Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. I have a pedigree, a coat of arms, ye-e-s-s. We go back to Frankfurt, Germany, 400 A.D. My mother was from New Orleans going back to France."
But surrounding these tantalizing specifics are a haze of context and an eagerness to change the subject -- and some frankly bewildering claims. "My father helped build the atom bomb," she'll mention offhandedly, the next moment explaining that he was the chief accountant on the Manhattan Project. Further probing elicits the response that his family "was from Tarrytown on the Hudson, and Manhattan, for about 11 generations. They had an electrical business in New York they owned for 200 years, they had stores, they were billionaires." Eventually there is only this flat admission: "I'm well-established. I've never been in jail, never been arrested. I'm quite reputable. I wasn't born poor."
Royce Reed, ultimately, proves to be an enigma wrapped in a Chanel inside a mink. How is one to evaluate her nonstop recitation of designers, labels and restaurants -- many of which, as she would say, are long gone? Cursory fact checking reveals that her family name, Rosenstein, does appear in Lancaster genealogical histories, but unless one is committed to a research project on a par with the Warren Commission's, an interviewer must take most of her claims at face value. And why not? Even if Royce's "elegant" yet sketchy biography is exaggerated or completely dreamed up, it is breathed to life by a person who passionately believes in it.
"I've been in merchandising 45 years, retailing and wholesale," she says. "I started out training to be an opera star but got sidetracked." That is probably as straightforward a summary of her life as she will grant.
That life, according to Royce, was a gold-spoon existence: Sutton Place, a teenage job at Bonwit Teller, Fifth Avenue and interviews "by all the studios" -- which, she says, did not interest her. When her family moved to Los Angeles, Royce said goodbye to Old World gentility and entered a womanhood of husbands and homes in Beverly Hills and HancockPark, and a career conducted along an archipelago of Miracle Mile stores: J.J. Haggerty, Bullocks, Brock and Co., Mullen and Bluett, where she was a buyer for women's accessories -- cosmetics, perfume, hosiery, gifts. She recalls an early encounter with her new city, during an interview with the founder of a fashion industry publication: "He was a horrible man who tried to take my clothes off in his office. I was wearing this gorgeous Christian Dior and learned at the age of 19 never to make a 4:45 appointment." Eventually, with the second of her three husbands, Leo Marks, Royce owned an apparel line bearing his name that they sold on the road locally and throughout the South.
And there was that freebooting, cartwheeling nightlife. "I used to have all these fa-a-a-bulous drinking companions," she says. "We drank Bombay gin with cognac chasers -- our driving laws weren't that strict. We went to the Cocoanut Grove when it was elegant -- when Freddy Martin was there and we wore our $10,000 dresses. We had the Chez Voltaire and the Beverly Rodeo, on Rodeo Drive, two blocks north of the Beverly Regent. It was wild but elegant, and known as Hooker's Row. All the men from New York went there, women came and went -- who cared? I was appalled, but Marilyn says I could have made a fortune there!"
ROYCE'S WORLD IMPLODED WHEN HER MOTHER DIED IN Santa Ana in 1983; by then she had parted from her third husband and retired from the rag trade. "I've had elegant friends and husbands, but when she died I was devastated," she says. "I'm an only, fairy-princess child, and we were so close. I would never face the fact that one day she would pass away."
It was shortly after her mother's death that she sang the aria in Bullocks' ladies' lounge that would bring Marilyn to her. This was a fortuitous occasion, for money got tight while Royce was living at the Chancellor, and Marilyn stepped in with an offer to Royce to move in with her at the Mark Wilshire. From then on the two began "palling around," as Marilyn says, spending time at fashion shows, the racetrack and, of course, nightspots.
"We'd only go to the places I was used to," Royce says. "Bel Air, the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel, which is now filled with screaming, yelling people."
Marilyn: "We were going to a lot of happy hours . . ."
Royce: "Honey, I'm used to elegance, I'm not used to downtown -- oh my dear."
Marilyn: "We like to go dinner dancing, but you need a male companion for that."
Royce: "There's been no dinner dancing in Beverly Hills or Bel Air -- it's 30 years gone."
Marilyn: "We used to go to L'Escoffier in the Beverly Hilton."
Royce: "Oh, I went there four nights a week for 30 years, it was the only elegant room we had in Beverly Hills! I got a gorgeous South American man a job there as orchestra leader when he was about to commit suicide because he couldn't get work. It's gone now."
Marilyn: "They have put in the Coconut Club on Friday and Saturday nights, where you have to pay $20."
Royce: "Oh, it's a garbage hole, please."
The two women made a flashy, lively pair as they roamed from watering hole to watering hole, often hitting the town on double dates.
"I dated as much as I could," Marilyn says. "I wish I could say I dated someone in particular, but I didn't. I dated some lawyers, a lot of businessmen -- nice men, but no celebrities, no one of note. You'd meet them in, you know, cocktail lounges. But one of the most difficult things about dating, when you're out with a gentleman for the evening, is the fact that he drinks too much."
Royce: "Oh, you're not used to rich, rich men . . ."
Marilyn: "You either don't let them drink or make them take a taxi to the restaurant."
Royce: "People here are too cheap to hire chauffeurs . . ."
Marilyn: "Or, if he insists, you put your life in his hands. I've had a few wild rides. Men don't want to be separated from their cars -- not at all!"
Royce: "Years ago, the police in Beverly Hills would let you go if they knew you. They'd protect you and drive you home."
But life could be scary even on the Sunset Strip, as Marilyn was to learn one night. She and Royce had gone to catch Harold Robbins' wife, Grace, singing at Verita's, a restaurant owned by Humphrey Bogart's former mistress Verita Thompson. (Thompson decorated the bar with the actor's photographs and would one day cause a stir by auctioning off his toupee.) But they got there too early and realized it would be some time before Mrs. Robbins sang. They weren't eating, and Marilyn, feeling dozy, headed for her car, leaving Royce at the bar. Verita's parking lot had been packed, and so Marilyn's Cadillac was on the street. She locked the doors, cracked a window and stretched out on the back seat for a snooze. Soon, however, she awoke to find a stranger looking at her from behind the Caddy's wheel.
"He was black and seemed very nice," Marilyn recalls. "He said, 'Here, why don't you give me the keys and we'll go for a little ride.' I said, 'I don't think so,' but gave him the keys because I was afraid he'd get mad. So he drove me over to the parking garage down under City National Bank, just before Beverly Hills. We sat there for a while. He was smoking something -- probably hashish. He really didn't want me for sex, but to talk and pleasure himself. After that was over, he drove me back and got out. Then I went to Verita's, but Royce was gone, so I went to a common meeting place that we usually arranged before we went out at night, and eventually she came along in a taxi. We were very fortunate. We had some very wild things happen, things that should not have happened, that were not our fault."
IN 1987, MARILYN SOLD HER FURNITURE ("I HAD A BEAUTIFUL U-shaped couch in red velveteen"), and the women put their belongings in storage and decamped from the Mark Wilshire. They had decided to hit the road in Marilyn's 1977 Sedan de Ville -- "We were just doing what we wanted to do," she says of the trip. The idea was to tour the â state, although they never got north of Santa Barbara. The affluent mission town would be the scene of one unintentionally comical visit with friends of Marilyn who lived in ultra-upscale Montecito. The two remember their stay chiefly for their hosts' laser-beam security system, which kept them prisoners in their room at night, and for the absence of a home bar.
Marilyn: "They had a security system that was turned on at night, with those rays . . ."
Royce: "They turned them on at 10 or 11, and then you stayed in your room until 8 in the morning. They were not gracious, they were not charming. You can imagine! I was like a chained tiger. And they wouldn't serve a drink . . ."
Marilyn: "They didn't drink . . ."
Royce: "I've never liked Santa Barbara. I'm used to late-night elegance, sophistication, New York. Elegance."
After that, their road trip was essentially a ricochet drive of the 216 miles between Santa Barbara and San Diego, with stays at the CenturyPlaza or Bonaventure whenever they were in town. The unceremonious end came when the Caddy's transmission went out in Brentwood. Marilyn spent a lot of money getting it fixed at Lou Ehler's on Wilshire, only to have her cherished sedan broadsided -- twice. When it happened the second time, the guilty party, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist, offered Marilyn cash reparations on the spot. She took the money but ditched the car. It was time to settle down.
"AUGUST 2, 1988." MARILYN CAN TELL YOU THE EXACT day she and Royce moved into their present hotel. The two have been there ever since, first sharing a single room, now each with her own, though they are not neighbors. What vexes them most is the fact that downtown holds no social center for them. "There's no place," Marilyn says, "for us -- sophisticated, middle-aged women who need a regular place -- to go." Their prolonged stay has been hardest on Royce, whose tiny room abuts a noisy elevator.
"Los Angeles is the garbage hole of the wo-r-rld," she says, her hands grandly sweeping the air. "I'm used to huge space, I'm used to elegance. I'm used to the Plaza, I don't understand anything else! There's nothing downtown that I'm used to -- it's not my territory -- I'm like the leopard in The Snows of Kilimanjaro."
The hotel had been recommended to them by friends, and at the time the carless women were forced to halt their road trip, downtown had seemed like a reasonable compromise between the unaffordable Wilshire corridor and the colorless suburbs. It has 230 rooms, some of which are advertised at $39 per night, and the adjoining bar boasts a generous happy hour that lasts from 5 to 10 p.m. The lobby's faint cologne of disinfectant never lets one forget that this is downtown, with all its civic homeliness -- and dangers. When the 1992 riots exploded, "I'd go out in front of the building and could see them shooting out the windows of the Lady Footlocker," Marilyn remembers. "I didn't leave the hotel for weeks. My cousin called from Seattle and asked, 'What's going on down there?'"
Marilyn's own small room looks out upon a storage building, although a little neck craning rewards her with a partial view of a parking lot as well. Much of the room's precious space is taken up by a pile of large hats, some stuffed animals and a tottering butte of shoeboxes containing Royce's footwear. A framed poster of Marilyn Monroe in a white mink coat hangs on one wall, and a Princess Diana commemorative plate and framed photographs of Elizabeth Taylor and a Siamese cat are placed on tables.
An avid collector, Marilyn meticulously maintains a scrapbook that includes thank-you letters from novelist Barbara Cartland, the office of painter LeRoy Neiman and from Liz Taylor, to whom she once sent a get-well letter. Other pages are an eclectic archive of neatly clipped items from the newspapers or tabloids about fashion, the O.J. Simpson case and buildings she admires, along with a sketch of Howard Hughes. "This is my life," she says of her scrapbook, the 75th volume she has gathered.
Although the ladies spend much of their time together, their routines often diverge. "I have a tendency to read late and get up late," Marilyn confesses. "I also go to the library often."
Royce: "I have the original library card!"
Marilyn: "I frequently get the L.A. Times."
Royce: "Oh, God, I don't read the L.A. Times -- I read The New York Times, the London Times, Paris Match."
Marilyn: "I subscribe to Town & Country and Architectural Digest -- that's my favorite. And I take two tabloids, the Enquirer and the Star. It's all gossip and I love it! I've taken Playboy for the last 25 years. I admire beautiful people and beautiful bodies. She gets disgusted with me because I take these publications!"
Marilyn still maintains a membership in her beloved Round Table West literary club, and is also an ardent follower of the TV soaps and belongs to The Young and the Restless' official fan club, which holds gatherings at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
In contrast to Marilyn, Royce, who abhors television and prefers listening to classical music, is an early riser who frequently leaves the hotel to visit the Calmart building and other old haunts in the garment district. Despite the dodginess of downtown, Royce fears no one.
"I'm very careful," she says. "I'm very alert, I move very quickly. I would murder someone, I'm very strong."
"She wears her rings loaded!" Marilyn laughs. "Royce doesn't take them off, even when she goes out -- she says, 'I am who I am, and I'm going to be myself in every situation.'"
ON ONE COOL, WINDY AFTERNOON, MARILYN AND Royce leave their hotel to have lunch at Windows, a restaurant with panoramic views from the 32nd floor of the TransamericaBuilding. Gawkers in the tower's atrium and elevators stop and stare at the elegantly attired women in their enormous hats. Lunch begins on an ill omen as Royce's club sandwich arrives avec crusts. But before she can raise the matter with her waiter, she notices that her silverware has been placed on a paper serviette. "Oh, my God!" she says. "These paper napkins are unacceptable." Not only that, but all the restaurant's tables have been covered with paper instead of linen cloths for lunch time. "Paper here, oh! It's totally gross."
As the waiter searches for a cloth napkin, Marilyn and Royce reminisce about their occasional visits to the Santa Anita racetrack, where they are wont to spend an afternoon in the private Turf Club. "The first day I went to Santa Anita, I won the derby!" Marilyn confides.
Money for women on Social Security is understandably tight, and income from any source is welcome. Royce and Marilyn once worked as audience shills for an auctioneering firm, but haven't been on call since a new floor manager brought in her own crew of out-of-work actors. The only new money on the horizon is a possible settlement from the city and a private contractor for a fall Marilyn took near a construction site outside their hotel. As compensation for an injured ankle and arm, she hopes to receive a sum large enough to move away from downtown.
"I'd probably look at places in Beverly Hills that are quiet," she says. "Since Royce has no family, she'll be with me."
Royce: "I don't think so. I'm used to living in my own place."
Marilyn: "Well, maybe not."
Possibly thinking of a new source of revenue, Marilyn is considering trying to market her novel, The Copper Triangle, a work she looks upon as her lasting legacy. Again, one cannot help but discern a bit of the author in the central character, Claire Breese, the sensual, mothering guardian of the story's luxurious mountain club -- a woman who, by the way, shares Marilyn's middle and maiden names. "Oh, Claire," one character tells her, "you lead such a beautiful, exciting life surrounded by handsome men who adore you. Aren't you one of the lucky ones though." Perhaps the novelist has, in her own way, found the story's "wonderful parties and camaraderie" in the company of her glamorous friend, Royce, in whose shadow she has kept warm for 16 years and whom she regards as a celebrity in her own right.
"Royce is one of the most fascinating people in the world," Marilyn says. "I've met a lot of wonderful people through her, and she's at the top of that list. She's been very loyal, entertaining and generous -- she's given me a lot of clothes and jewelry." As evidence, she wears a luxurious blond fox-fur wrap and matching hat given to her by Royce, who calls Marilyn "a marvelous woman and wonderful friend."
As the two women finish their lunch, a hawk suddenly wheels 20 feet beyond a window of the restaurant, a sinister yet beautiful creature whose dusky feathers reflect none of the California sun. There is something hypnotic about the bird of prey, something about its unrepentant darkness that reaches back into primal memory, to a time before elegance and glamour were dreamt into existence.
"That's gorgeous," Royce says. "I want him, I'll feed him. Birds take to me, I love him, I want to adopt -- oh, this terrible paper tablecloth!"
John Blanchard is a musician, artist, writer, historian, and higher education administrator.
Over his 30-year career at Manhattan School of Music (MSM), he has held positions in admissions, development, career services, and alumni affairs. He was appointed the School’s Historian & Archivist in 2015 and played a pivotal role in its Centennial Season, his work being recognized with a 2020 CASE “Grand Gold” Award and two Silver Telly Awards. He received the President’s Medal for Distinguished Service from MSM in 2019.
He earned his undergraduate from the University of Memphis in 1987, followed by a Master’s degree from MSM, as a scholarship student of flutist/conductor Ransom Wilson. He has performed at Carnegie Hall with such artists as Harolyn Blackwell, Marilyn Horne, and Roberta Peters and can be heard on the Virgin and Varese Sarabande labels. He has produced the runway music for designer Carmen Marc Valvo’s New York Fashion Week shows.
In addition to being an expert at audio/video editing, John is a poet and visual artist, with a focus on abstract expressionist paintings.
