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(edward@ordman.net)
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This story has appeared in the Christian
Science
Monitor.
The
adventures
of my mother, The Music Woman
September 20, 2004
My wife and I have spent the past week at our
local summer
theater rehearsing for a production of "The Music Man," a
favorite
musical of mine. The protagonist, Harold Hill, comes to town
selling musical
instruments. He promises to teach the children how to play
them, but he doesn't
know how. Hill is presented as believing himself to be a
fraudulent promoter.
He is as startled as everyone else when the children somehow
figure out how to
play the instruments, at least enough to please their parents.
But I've always been a great fan of Harold Hill
and have never
been surprised that he could deliver. My mother, as it
happened, once had a
very similar job.
In the summer of 1937, she was a new college
graduate and
aspired to a career in theater. The company that employed her
might well have
employed Harold Hill. A salesman traveled from town to town,
selling the
promise of theatrical fundraising programs to local
organizations. He got them
to pay a deposit - whatever he could talk them into paying. He
kept the deposit
as his pay, and sent the contract to the company. They then
sent my mother,
whose job it was to produce and direct the play.
She would come into town and recruit every
available child for
the cast. She then recruited local businessmen for speaking
roles. Having the
children perform meant the parents would attend. Having the
parents attend
meant the businessmen would agree to perform. Once they had
agreed to perform,
they would buy advertisements in the program.
The local organization sold tickets and kept
the proceeds. My
mother kept half of the advertising sales and sent the other
half to her
employer, who provided the costumes. The play itself had
little plot, but it
took place in a circus setting. This allowed for a large
number of animal and
clown costumes for the children, and as many lion tamer and
ringleader roles as
were needed for the businessmen.
I have a letter she sent her mother. It reports
that on leaving
one town in Ohio, she had a net profit of $13.47 after all
expenses, and, in
her own words, "I feel like a bloated plutocrat."
My brother and I grew up on tales of some of
her early
adventures, and this included some bizarre bits of history.
The publicity for
the play included a parade the day before the first
performance, and in one
Southern town the local fire department assured her it knew
how to liven up the
parade. "Just come tomorrow, Miss Sisson," she was told, "and
don't worry. We'll give you a real nice parade."
It may have been the most amicable Ku Klux Klan
parade ever
organized on the occasion of a Jewish woman visiting town -
not that they knew
that she was Jewish.
Another acquaintance during her travels, also
not knowing her
religion, urged Miss Sisson to "Stay here after the play.
Don't go back to
Boston. Boston is dangerous. Why, do you know, there are Jews
up there in
Boston? Jews have horns. They wear those little round caps so
you won't see the
horns." As my mother said when she told these tales, "1937 was
a long
time ago."
The production my wife and I are in - we are
just volunteers in
the chorus and crowd scenes - is very professionally produced.
I've never
before been in a production that came equipped with a full
staff of producer,
director, choreographer, stage manager, costume and makeup
personnel, and so
on. My mother had to keep her cast and audiences happy with a
professional
staff of exactly one: herself. She coped with local cultures
and prejudices and
learned a great deal about the country in the process.
Recalling her stories
makes me marvel anew at her abilities and at the remarkable
passion that people
in the theater have for their work.
But I'm still not sure why the character Harold
Hill ever thinks of himself as a fraud. If my mother could make
her productions work, then certainly he could, too.