Discover Top Posts Tagged with #fifties tv

Popular Recent

From the Archives: Julie Andrews with Petula Clark and Robert Beatty at BBC Studios for Music, Music, Music! (29 May 1954)

In the summer of 1954, 18-year-old Julie Andrews found herself biding time. Her first — and only — attempt at “straight” theatre, Mountain Fire, had been cancelled during its out-of-town tryout, but the young star had already signed on to sail for America to headline the Broadway production of The Boy Friend — and with it, a whole new world of opportunity.

Julie didn’t, however, spend the summer idle. Instead, she took on a string of radio and television appearances, including the one captured here.

Described as “a musical battle of wits,” Music, Music, Music! was the first of eight TV game show pilots the BBC trialled that summer, with the aim of selecting one for a regular run (The Scanners, 1954, p. 16). The program pitted two teams of celebrities — captained by Julie and Petula Clark respectively — against each other in a series of novelty musical questions and games.

By most accounts, it was not a success. Reported the Daily Herald:

Angry viewers telephoned the BBC last night to complain about TV’s new parlour game, “Music, Music, Music.” I don’t blame them. For a few moments during this 30-minute show there was chaos. The rest of the time was only near-chaos. Chaos came when a tuba, a motor-horn, a drum and a celeste were all played together with the panel members… shrieking and the chairman, David Jacobs, shouting for order… Heaven help us (Phillips, 1954, p. 3).

“Abysmal,” scowled the critic for the News Chronicle, though he did offer some grace to Julie:

My Bouquet... of the Week would go to Miss Julie Andrews – for knowing nothing so nicely. Just go on being your own charming self, Miss Andrews, and don't worry. There was nothing in “Music, Music, Music” worth knowing, anyway (Brittenden, 1954, p. 6).

Not surprisingly, Music, Music, Music! didn’t make the cut, and the BBC opted to greenlight one of the other game show pilots, Tall Story Club (Aynsley, 1954, p. 3). But for fans of Julie’s early career, this fleeting and chaotic TV experiment remains a fascinating curio — a reminder that real talent shines through, even in the noisiest of settings.

Sources:

Aynsley, C. (1954, 28 August). TV chooses new panel game. Daily Express, p. 3.

Brittenden, A. (1954, 2 July). This week it's all games and military might. News Chronicle, p. 6.

Phillips, P. (1954, 30 June). They're annoyed with the BBC. Daily Herald, p. 3.

The Scanners (1954, 25 June). Parade of parlour games. Radio Times, p. 15.

#julie andrews #bbc #fifties tv #uk #petula clark

Wily women in Westerns: Flo and Felizia

Adventuress Flo Burnett in The Furies (1950) and landowner Felizia Kingdom in Wagon Train (1959) ultimately pay a high price for their greed and controlling natures.

In two of her most powerful screen performances, Judith Anderson excels at revealing Flo and Felizia’s moral and emotional complexity. These characters can be cruel, yes, but then so can fate. They scheme, they suffer; we’re shocked, we’re saddened, we sympathise.

#judith anderson #the furies 1950 #the felizia kingdom story #wagon train #fifties #1950s #westerns #old hollywood #classic film #classic movie #walter huston #fifties tv #1950s tv #scheming and suffering

Julie Andrews as “Cinderella” on the cover of Pictorial Magazine and TView, a weekly insert from the New York Journal-American newspaper. 31 March 1957

#julie andrews #cinderella #rodgers and hammerstein #tv musical #1957 #sixtieth anniversary #new york #fifties tv

The red-letter anniversaries are coming thick and fast here in the Parallel Julieverse. No sooner have we finished toasting the 50th Anniversary of Thoroughly Modern Millie, than it’s time to charge the glasses for another milestone in the annals of Julie-history: the Diamond Jubilee of Cinderella. The celebrated tele-musical premiered 60 years ago on 31 March 1957.

It would be no exaggeration to call Cinderella a major cultural event of the late-1950s. The first television musical created by legendary composer-lyricist team Rodgers and Hammerstein, the show was seen by a record audience of over 100 million viewers, enough, it was pointed out, “to fill a Broadway theatre seven days a week for 165 years” (Messing, 61). Even today, Cinderalla remains one of the most widely seen programs in television history (Hischak, 152).

Julie was, at the time, riding high on the success of another Cinderella musical, My Fair Lady so she was the perfect fit to play the fairytale princess. As these production stills attest, she never looked lovelier and the critics were enraptured.

“Perhaps it’s the unassuming simplicity of Mis Andrews, or the crystal clear articulation, or yet again the perfect pitch, that transforms her performance (as in “My Fair Lady”) to the definitive characterization. No two ways about it, she was Cinderella” (Variety, 42).

“Miss Andrews was Miss Andrews, sweet, beautiful and lyrical. Her only minor problem was that she was fully as beautiful behind the broom and under the tiara” (Gould, 49).

“As Cinderella, Julie Andrews was the personification of innocence. Her face, her style, her talent added up to that rare quality that makes a performer a star” (Torre, 5).

So happy anniversary, Cinderella…thank you for sixty years of fol-de-rol and fiddle-dee-dee enchantment!

Sources:

Gould, Jack. “TV: Broadway Musical.” The New York Times. 1 April 1957: 49.

Hischak, Thomas S. “Cinderella.” The Oxford Companion to the American Musical: Theatre, Film, and Television. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Messing, Harold. CBS Television Production of ‘Cinderella‘. (Unpublished Masters thesis). Stanford University, 1957.

“Review: Cinderella.” Variety. 3 April 1957: 42.

Torre, Martha. “Cinderella.” The New York Herald Tribune. 1 April 1957: 5.

#julie andrews #cinderella #60th anniversary #diamond jubilee #1957 #rodgers and hammerstein #fifties tv #musical