Welcome
to the first Tuesday Timeline (and first post) of
November! We're into the final stretch
of 2015, and I hope that you're in for the ride because I've got some fun stuff
planned for the last part of the year!
But
before we get started on all that, I want to take the time to wish my mother a
very happy birthday today! I won't
reveal the age here, but let's just say that it is a milestone of a
birthday! That's all I'm going to say
though.
So,
what subject have I chosen for today's Tuesday Timeline entry? Well, I can tell you that while the
following events for November 3 are interesting, none of them are the main
topic. These are merely for fun.
1493 - Christopher Columbus sights the island of
Domenica in the Caribbean Sea
1534 - English parliament passes the Act of Supremacy
1793 - French playwright/feminist Olympe de Gouges is
guillotined
1817 - Canada's oldest chartered bank, The Bank of
Montreal, opens in Montreal, Quebec
1883 - "Black Bart the poet" gets away with
his final stagecoach robbery during the American Old West
1911 - Chevrolet introduces its first automobile
1918 - Austria-Hungary enters into armistice with the
Allied Forces
1943 - Wilhelmshaven Harbor in Germany is devastated by
an attack by five hundred aircraft of the United States 8th Air Force during
World War II
1954 - The first Godzilla movie is released
1957 - The first animal - a dog named Laika - goes into
outer space, aboard Sputnik 2
1964 - Washington D.C. residents are finally able to
vote in a presidential election
1979 - The Greensboro Massacre takes place in North
Carolina, which sees five members of the Communist Workers Party shot dead by
members of the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis
1986 - Lebanese magazine "Ash-Shiraa" reports
that the United States has been secretly selling weapons to Iran to secure the
release of seven hostages taken prisoner in Lebanon
1991 - Singer Chris Bender is shot and killed in
Brockton, Massachusetts - he was only 19 years old
2002 - Actor Jonathan Harris passes away at age 87
2013 - Africa, Europe, and parts of the United States
bear witness to a solar eclipse
2014 - One World Trade Center opens to the public -
thirteen years after the original World Trade Center was destroyed
And
here are the people who like my mom are turning one year older today; Peggy McCay, Mable John, Lois Smith, Ken Berry, Roy Emerson, Tom Savini, Lulu, Larry Holmes, Anna Wintour, Roseanne Barr, Jim Cummings, Kate Capshaw, Dennis Miller, Adam Ant, Phil Simms, Kevin Murphy, Dolph Lundgren, Mike O'Neill, Robert Miles, Sticky Fingaz, Jane Monheit, Sean Ringgold, Julie Marie Berman, LaMarr Woodley, Beth Kingston, Gemma Ward, Angus McLaren, and Kendall Jenner.
So,
for today's topic, I've chosen a date that could be considered a sad day, given
that this date was the last day that a talented actress passed away...but at
the same time, I have a good story to tell you that is related to a production
that made this actress a star.
First
though, let's set the clock back twenty-five years to November 3, 1990. And, I think it was right
around this time that this memory occurred.
I
remember this date quite well. After
all, it was my mom's birthday. But I
was also nine years old and if I remember correctly, our NBC affiliate was
broadcasting a television special right around this time of year. Upon retrospect, I suppose the network could
have aired this as a tribute to the actress who passed away, but it could also
have been an anniversary tribute for the special itself. The original did air on December 8, 1960.
(Okay,
I just looked it up, and I was close.
The rebroadcast of this special was on March 31, 1991 - about three
months afterwards. I was close though!)
Anyway,
the special that was broadcast was a re-telling of the 1954 Broadway musical
based on the story of "Peter Pan".
And I'm sure that many probably remember the Disney film of the same
name, or have read several interpretations of the story. But the main gist of it all is that a young
boy gifted with the power of flight and the inability to grow old takes Wendy,
John, and Michael Darling to Neverland where they face adventures and take on
the evil Captain Hook.
What
made the NBC special from 1960 special was that the whole show was done in
live-action. Which meant that you had
to have some incredible talent to make the production run smoothly.
And
certainly the actress who played Peter Pan - Mary Martin - did just that. I still remember watching her on television
being Peter Pan, and I tell you, she was so good in the role that at times I
completely forgot that she was played by a female performer! I was actually quite sad to learn from my
parents that she had passed on not long after I watched the encore performance
of the Peter Pan show during the spring of 1991.
So,
who was Mary Martin? Well, let me share
a few things about her with you. She
was born on December 1, 1913 in Weatherford, Texas, and she had a very happy
childhood being very close to her parents and siblings. And she developed a love for singing from a
very early age - after all, some of her first experiences with singing involved
performing outside of a courtroom where her father worked as well as singing
outside of a fire hall. But singing
always came natural for her. She had a
photographic memory which allowed her to memorize lyrics with hardly any
trouble, and she had the gift of being able to mimic celebrity voices as well
through their singing styles.
It
almost seemed destined that she would be a star from the very beginning!
She
married fairly young, and gave birth to her first child when she was just
seventeen years old - a boy that was given the name of Larry Hagman.
Larry Hagman...where have I heard that name before?
Larry Hagman...where have I heard that name before?
Anyway,
back to Mary Martin. Even though Mary
had gotten married and had a child, she wasn't happy in the marriage at
all. It was suggested to her by her
older sister that she try to teach people how to dance so that she could have a
creative outlet to vent her frustrations, and it lead to her opening up her own
dance studio which was successful - until her studio became the victim of an
arsonist whose motive was that he felt that dancing was a sin.
But
it was this fire that sparked something in Mary. And it caused her to reevaluate everything about her life and how
she wanted more out of it. And in 1936,
with her divorce from her first husband finalized, she relocated to Hollywood
and tried out for everything and anything she could get. She tried out for so many projects that she
was given a nickname - "Audition Mary". And let's just say that for the first few years of her time in
Hollywood, she really struggled to get noticed.
That
is, until 1938 - when she was cast in Cole Porter's "Leave It To
Me". That was the year that she
made her Broadway debut, and she did it by singing the song "My Heart
Belongs To Daddy". It was a song
that could have been considered autobiographical, as Mary had a very special
relationship with her own father. She
reportedly sang it to him at the hospital while he was comatose just before he
passed away.
She
would eventually appear in several other Broadway musicals, such as "South
Pacific" (where she played Nellie Forbush), "Annie Get Your
Gun", "The Sound of Music", and "I Do, I Do". But she never played any of the characters
on film. Although Mary Martin did do a
few films during her Hollywood career, she actually preferred to be on stage,
saying that she felt closer to her audience in a theatre setting, rather than
on a Hollywood soundstage.
And
this brings us to "Peter Pan", the role that most associate with her. She first started playing the role in 1954,
and as mentioned above, she reprised the role in 1960 where it was rebroadcast
in 1989 and 1991. And, if you click
HERE, you can have a chance to watch that performance. Just enjoy it while you can. You never know how long videos stay up
online!
Throughout
her whole career though, Mary Martin earned several accolades and awards. She was inducted into the American Theatre
Hall of Fame in 1973, and received the Kennedy Center Honours in 1989. She is also one of the rare people to have
two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame - one for recording, and one for
radio. And that's not even counting the
number of Tony Awards that she won throughout her entire career - a total of
four in all.
Oh,
and that television performance of "Peter Pan"? She won an Emmy for that.
In
her later years though, Mary still acted - one of her last roles was in a 1986
performance of "Legends", where she acted alongside Broadway legend
Carol Channing - but her career significantly slowed down following a car
accident in 1982 which saw Mary sustaining a punctured lung, a fractured
pelvis, and two fractured ribs.
And
just a year after receiving the Kennedy Center Honours, on November 3, 1990,
Mary Martin passed away at the age of 77 from colorectal cancer. And with that, a Broadway legend faded into
the sky forever.
But
you know...her work will forever be immortalized in so many people. After all, her son carried on the acting
tradition in the family and played an astronaut attracted to a genie and the
most heartless oil tycoon in Texas, amongst other roles.
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