Welcome back.  One of the commentators to the last in this series reminded us of the realist school of literature, which had its own special sympathy for the working class.  I may get there eventually: If I do, I'll probably head way back to Theodore Dreiser.  But currently I'm interested in artists who present working class characters as heroes: men and women who are happy in themselves, and proud enough to call out those who would denigrate them from positions of authority above them.  I promised a little more West Side Story a la Carol Burnett, but I want to go back a bit first.  My paths are seldom straight in the desert, but then they're not highways for the Lord, either.

I'm going to backtrack a bit to the mid-nineteen forties in order to introduce or re-introduce you all to Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel.  I don't know how one transforms Budapest into a New England Village, but R&H did it. Two characters are worth analysis, both of them working class, but each representing a different aspect of the character of the working class as seen from mid forties' sensibilities.  Carrie Pipperidge, Millworker, falls in love with Mr. Snow, a fisherman who owns his own boat:

Alas, embedding has been disabled, but you can see the clip by clicking here.

Love does strange things to the sensory organs:  Fish becomes her favorite perfume.  Enoch Snow is the epitome of respectability, and ultimately becomes rich and takes snob lessons.  Julie's path to love is less direct, and the outcome more grim.  Billy Bigelow, carney barker and carousel operator, and boy toy for Mrs. Mullin, owner of the carousel, gets fired out of her jealousy.  Julie, for refusing the stop seeing Billy, gets fired as well.  Julie and Billy live together; Julie gets pregnant by Billy, and the soliloquy records his elation at the news that he's going to be a father.  



Not to leave the story in mid-air, Billy, certainly born under an unlucky star, gets involved in a disastrous robbery intent in an effort to support his family, commits suicide, and from "the other side" redeems himself by supporting his daughter in the face of the whole town, for whom bastardy is an unforgivable crime.  

So we have Billy, unlucky ne'er do well, redeemed by kindness and an unwillingness to bow to the social pretensions of the middle and upper classes:

My boy, Bill! He'll be tall
And as tough as a tree, will Bill
Like a tree he'll grow
With his head held high
And his feet planted firm on the ground
And you won't see nobody dare to try
To boss him or toss him around!
No fat-bottomed, flabby-faced,
Pot-bellied, baggy-eyed bully
Will boss him around.

And I'm hanged if he'll marry his boss' daughter
A skinny-lipped virgin with blood like water
Who'll give him a peck
And call it a kiss
And look in his eyes through a lorgnette...

Two things strike me here.  Enoch Snow and his wife become corrupted in their social feelings by the wealth that accrues to them as they climb the ladder of success, while Billy Bigelow refuses to kowtow to the petit bourgeois who seek to manipulate him or own him body and soul.

Roughly the same time we have a second musical whose radical sentiments are partly disguised in its fantasy setting: Finian's Rainbow.  I have a bias towards this show, and not just because I played Mr. Shears of Shears and Robust back in college.   I looked avidly for a clip from the stage of the song I'd like to discuss next, but couldn't find it.  I did find a tired-looking Fred Astaire singing When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich.  So here it is for you.

Embedding has been disabled for this clip, too, but clicking here ought to bring it up.

If you look up the lyrics, be a little careful: Most of the standard lyrics sites seem to use voice recognition software and they have the words wrong, wrong, wrong.  Pardon me for stretching this but here they are as they should be.  (Other good stuff at this website, too).

When the idle poor
Become the idle rich,
You'll never know
just who is who
or who is which.

Won't it be rich
When everyone's poor relatives,
becomes a "Rockefellerative",
and palms no longer itch!
What a switch!

(Female Ensemble-)
When we all have ermine
And plastic teeth,
How will we do determine
Who's who under me?

And when all your neighbours
are upper class,
You won't know your 'Joneses'
from your 'Ass-tors'.

Let's toast a day,
The day we drink that drinky' up
But with the little pinkie up.
The day on which
The idle poor
Become the idle rich.

When a rich man doesn't want to work,
He's a bon vivant.
Yes, he's a bon vivant.

But when a poor man doesn't want to work,
He's a loafer, he's a lounger
he's a lazy good for nothing!
He's a jerk!

When a rich man loses on a horse,
Isn't he the sport!
Oh, ho, isn't he the sport!

But when a poor man loses on a horse,
He's a gambler, he's a spender,
He's a low life, he's a reason for divorce!

When a rich man chases after dames,
He's a man about town,
Oh yes, a man about town!

But when a poor man chases after dames,
He's a bounder, he's a rounder,
He's a rotter, and a lotta dirty names!

When the idle poor
Become the idle rich,
You'll never know
just who is who
Or who is which.

No one will see
The Irish or the Slav' in you,
for when you're on Park Avenue,
Cornelius and Mike
Look alike!

When poor twiddle Dum
Is rich twiddle Dee,
This discrimination will no longer be.

When we're in the dough
and off of the nut,
You won't know your banker.
from your butt-ler.

Let's make the switch.
With just a few annuities,
We'll hide those incongruities
In cloaks from Abercrombie Fitch!

(Company-)
When the idle poor
Become the idle rich!
   

So, today's point: in the immediate post-depression, post-war era the rich weren't sacrosanct, and the workers objects of pity.  Authority for authority's sake was something to be flaunted on occasions and not treated as a sacred object.  Which brings me back to what I promised at the outset of today's installment.   Carol Burnett takes on West Side Story, and my favorite bit of ridicule of authority from the fifties.  Gee, Officer Krupke.

)

 

For those who have trouble with the videos loading, here are links to

Soliloque from Carousel

Officer Krupke, from West Side Story


One more on musicals should just about do it...I'd like to muse about A Chorus Line and Les Miserables...then maybe a little tv?