The Songbird of the South
April 19, 2019
KATE SMITH
Should we chip Abraham Lincoln’s image off of Mount Rushmore, because he said that black and white people could not live together in peace; because he believed the white race was superior; or because his favored disposition of freed slaves was not to establish them as American citizens with full rights but rather to ship them to a colony in Liberia?
Or should we evaluate Abraham Lincoln in the context of his whole life and conclude that, whatever disagreements we may have with him, the country is better off overall because he lived?
And what of Kate Smith, the “songbird of the South”?
In the 1930s, she recorded one song, “That’s Why Darkies Were Born,” that is racially problematic and another, “Pickaninny Heaven,” that is just plain offensive. I say the first song was problematic, because it appears that the lyricist, Lew Brown, intended it as a parody of racist attitudes. That interpretation might be validated by the fact that Paul Robeson also recorded the song. There is no such room for interpretation of “Pickaninny Heaven,” a morbid and condescending lyric that Smith first addressed, on radio, to “a lot a little colored children listening in an orphanage in New York City.” And Smith also was featured in a cartoon advertisement for Calumet Baking Powder that included a stereotypical image of the turbaned black cook and a “mammy doll” supposedly sent to Smith by a fan of Smith’s recipe book.
IRVING BERLIN/Masterworks Broadway
Because of those two songs, recorded nearly ninety years ago, the New York Yankees, the team that didn’t integrate until 1955, and the Philadelphia Flyers announced that they would stop playing Smith’s recording of “God Bless America” at their games, and the Flyers said they would cover the statue of Smith outside their arena.
Full disclosure: I have been a fan of Kate Smith the singer since I was a kid listening to her radio show with my mother. But I have also long known that Kate Smith and I would have had serious philosophical differences. Though she had been a favorite of Franklin Roosevelt, she became very conservative and nationalistic, and, I gather, kind of a knee-jerk patriot who was not inclined to question authority. Her recording of “God Bless America,” which Irving Berlin wrote specifically for her, famously inspired Woody Guthrie to write “This Land is Your Land” in response.
JOSEPHINE BAKER
On the other hand, Kate Smith sold $600-million worth of war bonds during World War II, more than any other individual, and the number of her appearances before troops during that war was exceeded only by Bob Hope. And it’s worth mentioning here that in 1951—four years before the Yankees integrated—the highly controversial Josephine Baker, made her first American television appearance on The Kate Smith Evening Hour, a show that was produced by Smith’s manager, Ted Collins. Baker, who had returned to the United States that year after a long absence, had campaigned, during her U.S. tour, against segregation of audiences. After a spat with Walter Winchell in which he suggested that she had Communist leanings, Baker’s work visa was revoked, and she returned to France. Baker, by the way, had once appeared in blackface, a sin for which I believe she has long since been forgiven.
Perhaps it’s because racial bias has persisted for so long in this country that we tend to err on the side of righteousness, but in doing so, we should not lose our sense of balance.
“I’ll sing in the streets!”
April 2, 2019
An estimated 250,000 people assemble for Tetrazzini’s Christmas Eve concert in San Francisco.
My recent post about Nellie Melba called to mind Luisa Tetrazzini, who had several things in common with Melba. Tetrazzini was also a soprano—a coloratura whose range extended to the F above high C—and a contemporary of Melba at the beginning of the 20th century. Also like Melba, Tetrazzini had an enormously successful career in opera and concert and was treated like royalty around the world. She was, by reputation, a warm and friendly woman, but one of the few people she didn’t get along was Melba.
And Tetrazzini, like Melba, inspired a chef, although there is disagreement about whether the chef was Ernest Arbogast at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco or an unknown practitioner at the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York. The dish involved is “tetrazzini,” which consists of diced chicken or seafood and mushrooms in a sauce of butter, cream, and parmesan, laced with wine or sherry. This is usually served over pasta, although there is no fixed recipe or manner of presentation. Louis Paquet, a chef at the McAlpin Hotel in New York, seems to have had a hand in making this concoction popular. Paquet and Tetrazzini were friends, and he gave her cooking lessons.
The popularity in their era of artists like Melba and Tetrazzini is hard to imagine now, because media and the nature of celebrity have changed so much. In 1910, Tetrazzini had a contract dispute with the impresario Oscar Hammerstein that was preventing her from singing in opera houses or concert halls in the United States. The soprano, who said San Francisco was her favorite city in the world, said, “When they told me I could not sing in America unless it was for Hammerstein, I said I would sing in the streets of San Francisco, for I knew the streets of San Francisco were free.” And she did that, on Christmas Eve, in front of the San Francisco Chronicle building. The mayor of San Francisco escorted her to a platform that had been built for an orchestra and chorus that were conducted by Paul Steindorf of the city’s Tivoli Opera. Hundreds of thousands of people turned out to hear a concert which Tetrazzini began with “The Last Rose of Summer” and concluded with the massive crowd joining her in “Auld Lang Syne.”
Tetrazzini had several failed marriages, and the last one cost her most of her fortune. When she was through performing, she returned to her native Italy and taught singing in order to support herself. She never lost her joie d’vivre, by all accounts, and used to say, “I’m old. I’m fat. But I’m still Tetrazzini!”
Click HERE to see an unusual film clip in which the 61-year-old Tetrazzini listens to a recording of Enrico Caruso singing “M’appari” from Martha and breaks into a duet with her old friend. Even at this age and with this quality of reproduction, you can get a sense of the character of her voice.
Sic transit and so forth
March 31, 2019
When I saw this display at the supermarket today, it sent my mind reeling back to an eposide of Downton Abbey in which the Australian soprano Nellie Melba was engaged to gave a recital at the Granthams’ mansion. More precisely, this display reminded me that among the historical inaccuracies presented in that series, the visit by Nellie Melba was one of the most glaring—to anachronisms such as I am, at least.
One feature of the episode was that Charles Carson, the Granthams’ head butler, was scandalized that a mere entertainer would be invited into the house. According to the Downton Abbey storyline, Carson had been a song-and-dance man before he took on the pompous persona of a butler, but apparently he didn’t see the irony in that.
NELLIE MELBA/Lilydale Historical Society
Carson treated Melba—portrayed by past-her-prime soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa—as though she were a hired hand, leaving her in her room with nothing but a cup of tea. Others in the house made caustic remarks about having to sit through her performance.
Actually, by 1922, when this was supposed to have occurred, Nellie Melba was a dame commander of the Order of the British Empire for her charity work during World War I. More to it, she was one of the most celebrated singers in the world, eagerly received by royalty.
As Robert Christiansen, the opera critic for The Telegraph pointed out when the episode was first broadcast, Nellie Melba “would only have sung at a private party as a personal favour to her host. Melba was nobody’s hireling: she called all the shots, and the Granthams and their staff would have quaked at her approach.”
A story by Tom Huizenga of National Public Radio included this passage:
“Even today, Melba’s recorded voice rings clearly as a favorite of Tim Page, Pulitzer winner for criticism and professor of music and journalism at USC.
“‘There’s something sort of unreal about it,’ Page says. ‘It’s a voice of ethereal purity with perhaps the only perfect trill I’ve ever heard.’ Another celebrated Melba attribute is accuracy: ‘She hit things absolutely on pitch,’ he continues. ‘You never hear Melba sliding into a note. Her tone was as reliable as a keyed instrument. She’s just dead on.'”
Incidentally, while Melba—whose birth name was Helen Porter Mitchell—has been forgotten by all but opera buffs, her professional name lives on in the product you see above, which was named after her, as was peach melba and several other delicacies.
You can hear Nellie Melba with Enrico Caruso in the duet “O Soave Fanciulla” from Giacomo Puccini’s La Boheme by clicking HERE.
The Music of the Night
October 30, 2018
Enrico Caruso, with his head in a noose, and Emmy Destinn, about to save him from hanging, in the original production of La Fanciulla del West.
We seized the rare opportunity to see a performance of Giocomo Puccini’s opera La Fanciulla del West when it was presented last week in the Metropolitan Opera Company’s HD broadcast series.
This is one of Puccini’s least popular operas, although some authorities, including Puccini himself, have said that it is one of his best. The discrepancy is probably due to the fact that this opera—inspired by David Belasco’s play The Girl of the Golden West—is almost devoid of the arias that for many folks are the real if not the only attraction of grand opera.
GIOCOMO PUCCINI
The tenor does have a well known aria, “Ch’ella mi creda,” in the third act; according to the commentary between the acts on the HD broadcast, Puccini had not included that song in the original version but inserted it at the request of Enrico Caruso, who was to sing the premiere performance of the opera in 1910 at the Met, which had commissioned it.
Anyway, during the first act, I was momentarily aware that I was listening to music from the Broadway musical The Phantom of the Opera. Then it was gone. Then I heard it again—a melody from “Music of the Night.” And then I recalled that in the patter setting up the performance someone had made a remark that I didn’t understand to the effect that Andrew Lloyd Webber loves this opera.
ANDREW LLOYD WEBER/The Independent photo
Later, I did what any music scholar would do—a Google search—and learned that when The Phantom of the Opera appeared, Puccini’s opera was still protected by copyright, and his estate sued Lloyd Webber, alleging plagiarism. The suit was settled out of court, and the details were never made public.
I was not surprised to read about that, because I was aware that Puccini’s publishers had sued another musical personality—Al Jolson—under similar circumstances. That case involved the aria “E lucevan le stelle” from Tosca and “Avalon,” a song attributed to Jolson, Buddy DeSylva, and Vincent Rose. “Avalon” doesn’t get much play time these days, but Casablanca aficionados will recognize it as the tune Sam is fooling around on the keyboard just before he plays “As Time Goes By.”
The Puccini bunch maintained that the opening melody of “Avalon” is identical to that of the aria, except that the opening of the aria is written in a minor key. Puccini’s publishers sued the composers in 1921 and were awarded $25,000 plus all royalties earned by “Avalon” thereafter.
I wrote about the latter case a few years ago in a post that was prompted by a dust-up over the similarity between Sam Smith’s hit “Stay With Me” and the Tom Petty song “I Won’t Back Down.”
Borrowing from other composers is a time-honored phenomenon, but so is the concept of intellectual property. As I mentioned in the earlier post, those who play it safe can have the best of both worlds. The case in point was Pete Seeger’s song “Sailing Down My Golden River.” We heard Pete explain during a concert in 2015 that after he had written the lyrics to that song, he found the opening melody in the first seven notes of “Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly” which was published in 1862 and, in turn, was based on a sixteenth-century Welsh carol. Of course, from Pete’s point of view, that wasn’t stealing anyway——it was just the folk process at work.
“We will serenade our Louie ….”
June 4, 2018
whiffenpoofs.com
A friend told me during a party the other day that when he moved to Garden City, New York, many years ago, he inquired about joining the choir in the local Catholic Church and discovered that it was an all-male ensemble.
Beside the fact that this expression of machismo denied women a role in this particular ministry of the Church, the policy was diminishing the force as older members who moved, retired, or partook in eternal Glory, were not being replaced by new voices.
For a while, anyone who raised the prospect of inviting a wife or sister or daughter was shouted down, and my friend, as a newcomer, remained aloof from this controversy. Eventually however, after he got his sea legs, he spoke up for equity, to say nothing of survival, and the choir finally welcomed the women.
The Whiffenpoofs of 1912, in ballet costume, with Louis Linder.
The process may have been different—although I have read that there was an ugly and abortive attempt in the 1980s—but a well-known singing aggregation has more recently taken a similar leap into the modern world. Well, yes, they will serenade their Louie, at least in spirit, but their song will have a new dimension—a female voice.
I refer to the Whiffenpoofs, the a cappella group composed of Yale University seniors that, for the first time in its 109-year-history, has admitted a female singer to its ranks. She is Sofia Campóamor, who sings soprano in another Yale ensemble but has a vocal range that equips her to sing tenor with the Whiffenpoofs, beginning in the next academic year. You can hear her singing “Say So,” one of her own compositions—and buy it if you like it—by clicking HERE.
Louis Linder
In a parallel development, Whim ‘n Rhythm, an all-female a cappella group at the university, has decided to admit singers regardless of gender, based on their vocal range. So Whim ‘n Rhythmn will run out the sopranos and altos, and the Whiffenpoofs will present tenors, baritones, and basses.
The Whiffenpoofs, the oldest and best-known of Yale’s several a cappella groups, close their concerts with their namesake song, the one that begins, “To the tables down at Mory’s, / to the place where Louie dwells, / to the dear old Temple Bar we love so well,” and later promises, “We will serenade our Louie / while voice and song shall last, / then we’ll pass and be forgotten with the rest.” It’s a pessimistic sentiment, so it’s just as well that the Whiffenpoofs don’t take it seriously. You can get an idea of their treatment of the song by clicking HERE.
Rudy Vallèe
The song was published as sheet music in 1909. The chorus was taken almost verbatim from Runyard Kipling’s poem “Gentlemen Rankers.” The poem was set to music by Guy H. Scull and adapted for Whiffenpoof purposes by with lyrics by Meade Minnigerode and George Pomeroy. Rudy Vallèe—with whom the song was widely associated—made a hit recording in 1937 and Bing Crosby did the same in 1947. It has been recorded by a host of others, a widely diverse group that includes Elvis Presley, Count Basie, Perry Como, and the Statler Brothers.
“Louie” refers to Louis Linder, a German immigrant who, in the late 19th century, bought what was then already a hallowed old restaurant that catered to Yale undergraduates. Eventually, the place was acquired by a non-profit organization founded by Yale alumni, and its furniture and other appointments were moved to a new location. The institution, Mory’s Temple Bar, which has experienced and recovered from hard times, is now a membership club where the Whiffenpoofs regularly hold forth.
“Who wants people?”
July 21, 2017
As misanthropic as that title sounds—”Who wants people?”—misanthropy wasn’t what Lorenz Hart had in mind when he wrote that lyric in 1935 to go along with Richard Rodgers’ melody for “There’s a Small Hotel.”
No, Hart was thinking about solitude when he wrote, “Looking through the window / You can see a distant steeple /Not a sign of people, who wants people?” It was all about a couple, Junior and Frankie, who were planning get cozy in a remote way station where, according to Hart’s imagination, the amenities included “cheerful prints of Grant and Grover Cleveland” and an organ that was tuned every other fall.
Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart
By most accounts, Hart’s lyric was inspired by Rodgers’ visit to a place most recently known as the Stockton Inn, a restaurant and hotel whose history can be traced to a quarry-stone residence that was built in Stockton, New Jersey, hard by the Delaware River, in 1710, and still stands as the focal point of the establishment.
That area along the Delaware, including New Hope, Pennsylvania, a stone’s throw to the south, was once the haunt of New York’s creative community, including the Algonquin crowd.
If Dorothy Parker and Scott Fitzgerald were heading for the inn now, they’d be disappointed. We rushed down there for dinner recently after reading that it was closing in a week. It appears, and one hopes, that the original building will be preserved in the comprehensive redevelopment envisioned for the site. The structure does appear in a rendering, posted on the inn’s web site, of the mixed-use development proposed for the property.
Jimmy Durante
Meanwhile, “There’s a Small Hotel” has a quirky history in that Rodgers and Hart wrote it for “Jumbo,” a famous Broadway show—and later a movie—produced by Billy Rose. It was in that show that Jimmy Durante got to utter one of the shortest and most enduring lines in Broadway lore. Durante is leading a live elephant across the stage in order to keep it from being seized as the circus goes bankrupt. He is stopped by a sheriff who asks, “Where are you going with that elephant?” to which Durante replies, “What elephant?”
Anyway, “There’s a Small Hotel” was cut from “Jumbo” because the show was running too long, but it was introduced by Ray Bolger and Doris Carson in 1936 in the Rodgers and Hart hit “On Your Toes.”
Hart reputedly didn’t like the melody of the song, and frequently made fun of it in Rodgers’ presence by making up off-color lyrics. Others took to the tune, though, and it has been recorded by Josephine Baker (in French), Erroll Garner, Petula Clark, Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Eckstein, Della Reese, Barbara Cook, Tony Bennett, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Diana Ross, Peggy Lee, Sammy Davis Jr., Jerry Orbach, and Frank Sinatra (in the soundtrack of “Pal Joey”).
You can hear Carmen MacRae and Sammy Davis Jr. sing their version of “There’s a Small Hotel” by clicking HERE.
Jack Lawrence: a podiatrist my foot!
April 5, 2017
In my last post, I mentioned Jack Lawrence, who wrote the song “If I Didn’t Care,” which became the signature of The Ink Spots. Their recording of that song in 1939 sold 19 million copies and still ranks as the tenth best-selling single of all time.
Still, that barely scratched the surface where Lawrence was concerned—either professionally or personally. In terms of his profession, consider this:
- “Play, Fiddle, Play,” 1932, which Lawrence wrote when he was 20 years old, became an international hit, a favorite of singers, violinists, and orchestras. It earned Lawrence membership in ASCAP at that young age.
- “All Or Nothing At All,” 1939, with music by Arthur Altman, was Frank Sinatra’s first solo hit.
- “Never Smile at a Crocodile,” 1939, with music by Frank Churchill, became a children’s classic.
- “Yes, My Darling Daughter,” 1940, which Lawrence wrote using music from a Ukrainian folk song, was introduced by Dinah Shore on Eddie Cantor’s radio show, and it was Dinah Shore’s first recording—and a hit.
- “By the Sleepy Lagoon,” 1940, with music written by Eric Coates in 1930, provided hit records for the Harry James Orchestra, Dina Shore, Glenn Miller, Fred Waring and others, including—in 1960—The Platters.
- “Linda,” 1942, which Lawrence wrote during his tour of duty with the Maritime Service during World War II, was published in 1946. The recording in which Buddy Clark sang this song with the Ray Noble Orchestra, was on the Billboard charts for 17 weeks, peaking at No. 1. The title referred to the five-year-old daughter of Lawrence’s attorney, Lee Eastman. Linda Eastman would be known to later generations as Linda McCartney.
- “Heave Ho, My Lads! Heave Ho!” 1943, which Lawrence wrote while he was a bandleader at the Maritime Service Sheepshead Bay Training Center, became the official anthem of the Service and the Merchant Marine.
- “Tenderly,” 1946, with music by Walter Gross, was a hit for Sarah Vaughan in 1947, but went on to become the theme song for Rosemary Clooney.
- “Beyond the Sea,” 1946, with music from Charles Trenet’s “La Mer,” became indelibly associated with Bobby Darin.
- “Hold My Hand,” 1950, which Lawrence wrote with Richard Myers, was used in the 1954 film Susan Slept Here and nominated for an Academy Award as best song.
In later life, Lawrence owned two New York theaters, and his credits as a producer included “Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music” and “Come Back to the Five & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.”
Lawrence was born in Brooklyn and, although he was already writing songs when he was still a child, he acceded to his parents’ wishes and, after completing high school, received a doctorate in podiatry—a specialty that was not destined to be his career.
Lawrence was gay, and he was the longtime partner of Dr. Walter David Myden, a psychologist and a social worker in Los Angeles. The men met while serving in the Maritime Service. By the 1960s, their relationship was well known in their circles.
Lawrence and Myden were major art collectors and, in 1968, they donated about 100 20th century works to the American Pavilion of Art and Design at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. An interview concerning that donation, published in The New York Times, made no attempt to disguise their relationship—an unusual circumstance at the time but one that Lawrence and Myden could carry off with confidence and dignity. They were major supporters of the Israel Museum, which had just been established. Their donations in 1968 included works by Georgia O’Keeffe, Ben Shahn, John Marin, and Morris Graves.
Myden died suddenly of a heart attack in 1975, but Lawrence lived to the age of 96, dying in 2009 after a fall at his Connecticut home.
“The trees don’t need to know”
March 21, 2017
When we saw Arlo Guthrie at Carnegie Hall in November, he recalled—again—how he was having a beer after a gig in Chicago when he was approached by a young man who wanted Arlo to listen to a song. Arlo grudgingly agreed. The young man was Steve Goodman, the song was “City of New Orleans,” and rest is—well, never mind the cliche.
It’s one of those “near miss” stories. If Arlo had told Goodman to buzz off, who knows how history would have been altered?
The same goes for Jack Lawrence—or so it seems. There are differing accounts of this event, but according to Marv Goldberg in his book More Than Words Can Say: The Music of the Ink Spots, Lawrence made a cold-call visit on January 12, 1939 to the Decca Records recording studio in Manhattan where The Ink Spots were about to cut “Knock Kneed Sal,” and offered his own composition, “If I Didn’t Care.”
JACK LAWRENCE
The Ink Spots, whose membership evolved over the years, had been around since the early 1930s and by the middle of the decade were popular in the United States and abroad. They continued performing into the mid 1950s, although other groups peddled themselves as the originals for many years after that.
“If I Didn’t Care” was the first studio recording in which The Ink Spots used a style that would become the group’s trade mark. The lead vocal was sung by tenor Bill Kenny, and a spoken bridge was provided by bass Hoppy Jones.
Kenny, who is often cited as a forerunner of Johnny Mathis, sang with a precise, elegant diction and a remarkable high register. Jones would recite the bridge in a colloquial drawl, improvising on the original lyrics and peppering them with terms such as “darlin,” “honey chile,” “doggone,” and “askaird.”
I recently bought a double-CD collection of 50 of The Ink Spots’ recordings, the preponderance of them delivered in this fashion. I was familiar with The Ink Spots because my parents were fans of theirs, and there were some of the group’s Decca records around our house. But until I listened to the collection I just bought, I didn’t appreciate the effect created by the contrast between Kenny’s refined phrasing and Jones’s down-home style.
Besides Kenny’s purported influence on Mathis, The Ink Spots are regarded as ancestors of the R&B, rock ‘n’ roll, and doo-wop groups of later generations.
“If I Didn’t Care” never got higher than No. 2 on the pop charts, but it sold 19 million copies, making it the tenth best-selling single of all time. Their numerous other hits included “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire,” “My Prayer,” “Don’t Get Around Much Any More,” and “Lovely Way to Spend an Evening.”
My favorite among their recordings is “Whispering Grass,” written in 1940 by Fred Fisher and his daughter, Doris Fisher. Perhaps it appeals to me because the lyric seems to have been inspired by Kahlil Gibran: “If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.” You can hear “Whispering Grass” by clicking HERE.
You can hear “If I Didn’t Care” by clicking HERE.
Billy Bowen, Bill Kenny, Hoppy Jones, and Bernie Mackey at the Club Zanzibar in New York City, October 18, 1944. Hoppy Jones died that same day.
‘An unknown artist,’ sad to say
February 9, 2017
I came across an audio file on YouTube that identified the contents as “a very funky version of ‘Water Boy’ by an unknown artist named Valentine Pringle.” Well, unknown to the writer, maybe, but not unknown to me. I spotted Valentine Pringle in 1962 when Harry Belafonte introduced him on “Talent Scouts,” a short-lived television show with a premise that still has traction. Pringle’s voice, which ranged from tenor to basso profundo, was startling in its beauty and its power.
I remembered his name and did everything I could in those pre-internet days to find another opportunity to hear him sing. I was a big consumer of vinyl in those days, and on most Friday nights I would visit Dumont Records in Paterson, New Jersey. Eventually, Val Pringle did show up at Dumont in two RCA LPs–“I Hear America Singing” (1963) and “Powerhouse” (1964). I still have the vinyl, and “Powerhouse” is now available on CD and iTunes.
Pringle made a couple of other recordings; wrote some songs, including “Louise” which he wrote for Belafonte; and had some kind of a career in television and film, but nothing worthy of that voice. The entertainment industry frequently makes no sense to me.
In the 1980s Val Pringle and his wife, Thea van Maastrich, moved to Lesotho, a tiny kingdom that is surrounded by South Africa. Pringle had appeared in Lesotho on a cultural exchange tour sponsored by the United States Information Service, and I guess it appealed to him. He ran a nightclub and the Lancer’s Inn, a hotel and restaurant in Maseru.
On the night of December 13, 1999, two burglars broke into Pringle’s house. Pringle confronted the men with a pistol, but he was stabbed to death. Two men were caught and convicted of the crime.
Pringle had served in the United States Army as a specialist third-class. His ashes are buried in the Arlington National Cemetery.
You can hear Pringle sing in various audio files on line, including “Water Boy” HERE, “Old Man River” HERE, “Take This Hammer” HERE, “The Mouse Song” HERE, and “Oh, Freedom” HERE.
Movies: “Florence Foster Jenkins”
August 14, 2016
When my son, Christian, told me last July that Meryl Streep would play Florence Foster Jenkins in a movie, my first hope was that the filmmakers would not ridicule Mrs. Jenkins, who would be an easy mark.
I first learned about Florence Foster Jenkins when I reviewed a regional production of Steven Temperley’s play, Souvenir, which recounts the unorthodox singer’s career.
Mrs. Jenkins, who had had several disappointments in her life, inherited a fortune and used her wealth to break into New York society as a significant patron of the arts. She thought of herself as a talented classical singer—whereas in reality she had no sense of tone or pitch—and gave private recitals to controlled audiences that would not tell her the truth. Her ambition exceeded her grasp, however, when she decided to give a public performance at Carnegie Hall.
Some dismiss Mrs. Jenkins as a fool, but others see in her a certain heroism, and her belief in herself may rise to that level when it is viewed in the whole context of her life, including her seriously compromised health.
Anyway, Pat and I saw the Meryl Streep film and found that there was no need to worry. While the filmmakers depart from the facts in that compulsive way that they have, the movie is a fair representation of the woman’s life and, most important, it treats her kindly.
My earlier blog about Florence Foster Jenkins is at THIS LINK.
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