Nappanee Advance-News, Volume 129, Number 29, Nappanee, Elkhart County, 20 July 2006 — Page 28

Page 18

Explore Wa-Nee • July 27,2006

THEATRE, Continued from Page 16

world' flight with a fellow Oklahoman, world-renowned aviator Wiley Post, in the summer of 1935. Post's plane, an experimental and top-heavy hybrid of Lockheed Explorer and Orion parts, crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska, on 15 August 1935, killing both men. It may be difficult for people today to comprehend the place Rogers held in the U.S.A. at the time of his death. He was its most widely read newspaper columnist, betwfen his daily "Will Rogers Says" telegrams and his weekly column; his Sunday night half-hour radio show was the nation's most-lis-tened-to weekly broadcast; and, he had been the nation's Number One box office draw in 1934, ranking 2nd at the time of his death only to Shirley Temple. Rogers began as a lasso rope

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twirler in WOd West Shows and became popular for his quips that followed his failed rope tricks. As a humorist, he became one of the most quoted American's of all time. He is famous for many quotes that are now part of the American lexicon including, "All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that's an alibi for my ignorance." "It's easy being a humorist when you've got the whole government working for you." "So live that you wouldn't be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip." The "Will Rogers phenomenon" is the apparent paradox obtained when moving an element from one set to another set raises the average values of both sets. It is based on the following quote, attributed to comedian Will Rogers: "When

the Okies left Oklahoma and moved to California, they raised the average intelligence level in both states." "We are all here for a spell; get all the good laughs you can." Memorable songs of the musical include "Will-a-mania", "Never Met a Man I Didn't Like" (employing Rogers' famous motto), and the torch song "No Man Left For Me", Betty Blake's lament after her husband becomes the most sought after speaker and entertainer of his time. The odds of a white Christmas in Indianapolis and Chicago are just 30 percent, 0 percent in San Francisco, California, and 100 percent in Marquette, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Some of the least-likely white Christmases include the 2004 Christmas Eve

Snowstorm, which brought the first white Christmas to New Orleans in half a century, and the first ever to Houston, Texas. Yet Irving Berlin's song, "White Christmas" is the most universally popular Christmas song in history and has no boundaries. The morning after he wrote the song Berlin usually stayed up all night writing the songwriter went to his office and told his musical secretary, "Grab your pen and take down this

song. I just wrote the best song I've ever written hell, I just wrote the best song that anybody's ever written!" He was right. Bing Crosby's version of "White Christmas" sold more than one hundred million copies. It has been recorded by Frank Sinatra in 1944, '47 and '54, Louis Armstrong in 1952, Elvis in 1957, Perry Como in 1959, Ella Fitzgerald in 1960, The Beach Boys in 1964, Wolfgang Petry in 2004, and Girls Aloud in 2005, and the end is nowhere in sight'. The song "White Christmas" was introduced by Bing Crosby in the 1942 musical Holiday Inn. It went on to receive the Academy Award for Best Song. It has often been noted that the mix of melancholy "just like the ones I used to know” with comforting images of home "where the treetops glisten" resonated especially strongly with listeners during World War 11. In 1942 alone, the single spent eleven weeks on top of the charts; it returned to the #1 spot again in 1945 and 1947. The song was also the title theme for the 1954 musical White Christmas, starring Crosby, Danny Kaye, and Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen, became the biggest-gross-" ing film of that year. Now along comes a new musical based on the movie that is bringing buzz that it will take a perennial place with A Christmas Carol and The Nutcracker as a holiday tradition. It is under license to R&H Theatricals, the music and show business arm of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, who produced Berlin's classic, Annie Get Your Gun. The stage production's original director Walter Bobbie observes of today's pop culture, "Everybody is so hip and so cool and so glib and so flip-

pant." White Christmas, a warmhearted chestnut offering such catchy Berlin times as "Count Your Blessings," "How Deep Is the Ocean," "Blue Skies" and Tve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm," couldn't be more alien to the sensibilities of "Chicago," MTV and the put-down humor of TV sitcoms." The show is indeed a reminder of the power of music paired with story. Each show will again feature a Theme Buffet on select Friday evenings and may be purchased as dinner—theatre packages. Season subscriptions go on sale July 26, 2006, offering early subscribers a multitude of special events, a staged reading of Floyd Collins, and second stage production of Steel Magnolias. Call the box office for information at (800) 8004942 or visit AmishAcres.com. Several songs are held over from the movie, including the title song that Crosby immortalized in his mellow baritone, the tender "Count Your Blessings" and the campy "Sisters" that Clooney and Vera-Ellen perform with baby-blue feathered fans. But the stage production also interpolates earlier songs by Berlin: "I Love a Piano," first written in 1915 for the stage musical "Stop! Look! Listen!", "Let Me Sing and I’m Happy," sung by A 1 Jolson in the 1930 film "Mammy", and "Let Yourself Go", introduced by Fred Astaire in the 1936 movie "Follow the Fleet." All of these songs plus more make it an Irving Berlin extravaganza, which is sure to satisfy every audience member. Season subscriptions go on sale July 26, 2006, offering early subscribers a multitude of special events, a staged reading of Floyd Collins, and second stage production of Steel Magnolias. Call the box office for information at (800) 800-4942 or visit AmishAcres.com.