Everything I need to know about history, I learned by watching musicals
I saw The Pajama Game this summer for the first time. Previously I had known three songs from the show, Hey There (You with the stars in your eyes) and Hernado’s Hideaway, from the radio, and 7 1/2 Cents, which I remembered from some PBS variety show special years ago. Possibly Junior High School years ago. 20+ years, easily. In the song, the characters add up all the things they would buy if they got the 7 1/2 cent an hour raise they wanted, including a pajama factory. They do out the math on stage, 40 hours every week, plus 2 and a quarter hours overtime, at time-and-a-half for overtime. . . I may or may not have needed to ask my mother what overtime meant. I definitely needed to have her explain time-and-a-half. How could time be measured that way? Time is time.
If I’d seen the Pajama Game in its entirety at that age, I would also have asked more questions about unions, and slow-downs. I already knew what a strike was, as my first act upon leaving the hospital as a 2-week old was crossing a picket line, and I had grown up hearing the story. So as an adult, I was free to focus on the music (Hernado’s Hideaway is a tango, but what actually makes a piece of music a tango, and distinguishes it from other non-tango forms of music?) and the dancing (apparently this was the first show choreographed by Bob Fosse and they included some of the original choreography) and the costumes (some of which I thought were not true to the 1950s period) and the scenery (were the brick walls molded or painted?) and acting (one character’s accent striking me more as affected Brooklyn than small-town Iowa) and staging (including some creative use of a rolling platform and crossover scenes) and characterization (such as the somewhat incongruous combination of a carnival knife-thrower and an efficiency expert.) I came home and looked up the show, and the lyrics, and the description of the book, 7 1/2 cents that the book is based on. This is how I watch a show now, and I hasten to add, an well-staged version of a show I enjoyed. But then, I’ve finished high school.
For many years, though, it seemed as though I was getting an awful lot of my history education from shows and show-tunes. Sometimes it seemed the musicals did it better. I recall skimming a textbook chapter on the expansion of the American West and summing up the entire thing with the lyrics of “The Farmer and the Cowman,” from Oklahoma! An similar chapter covering the advent of mail-order catalogues was succinctly supplied by the Music Man’s “The Wells Fargo Wagon.” I definitely learned more about the Depression from Annie than from school. Annie was the first show I saw on Broadway, at 6, and I appeared in a summer stock production myself at 12. It was where I first heard of F.D.R. and then proceeded to read children’s biographies of both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. It was the first time I encountered the concept of the Cabinet. Frances Perkins sings. In the finale, the orphans sit reindeer style in front of the president for a song called “We’re Getting a New Deal for Christmas.” It’s not a terribly memorable song, otherwise, not destined for greatness like “Tomorrow,” but he drives them with a pretend whip and says “On Ickes and Wallces! Get along Cordell Hull!” I’m not sure I learned anything else about any of them beyond what I learned when my mother explained the song. I’m not sure I learned anything else about the New Deal, for that matter. I know I learned more about Herbert Hoover and Hoovervilles from the show than school as well. I studied World War 2 in school, but it was from South Pacific that I learned about “Tokyo Rose.” She probably got a mention in the text but not in class. 1776 is my notable exception. I definitely learned more in school about that era than was portrayed in the show, and I always felt the show cast my favorite John Dickinson rather unfairly as the villain of the piece.
I wouldn’t take The King And I as an authority on Thai culture of the 1800s, but it certainly did provide commentary on Euorpean colonialist attitudes. Annie Get Your Gun is arguably not an historically accurate commentary on anything about wild west shows in general or the life of Annie Oakley in particular, but from the show I did learn about moonshine and prohibition. (Guys and Dolls was a later lesson in prohibition.) Of course, listening to the soundtrack of Annie Get Your Gun young - early elementary school young - had its risks. It was years before I understood “Tom, Dick and Harry will build a house for Carrie when the preacher has made them one” meant that the preacher would MARRY Tom, Dick or Harry to Carrie, not build Tom, Dick or Harry a house first. I’m literal. But I listened.
I listened to a lot of record sound tracks as a kid, and listened to a lot of audio cassette tapes as an adolescent. And I saw a lot of shows. I was in Annie one summer and The King and I the next, and saw most of the other shows that reparatory company performed for both seasons. Later I ushered for a summer stock group of college students, seeing a show a week for free for two years ranging from the Mikado to On the Town. (They’re the same group that did the Pajama Game.) During those years, I did a lot of reading of the plays and books on which many of the shows were based. It wasn’t all historical. I read Green Grow the Lilacs, which was the inspiration for Oklahoma! I read Pygmalion in the school library and compared it to the dialogue of My Fair Lady. The summer I saw Camelot, right after my first year of college I read about 2000 pages of Arthurian Legend, about half of it in the Mists of Avalon. I tried to read Tales of the South Pacific, but even though I love Mitchner’s historical fiction novels, I don’t care much for his short stories. Or anyone else’s short stories. I tried some of Damon Runyon for Guys and Dolls but gave up there as well.
I wonder sometimes what a musical-based history class would be like. Students could watch a show and then delve into reading inspired by the era. There’s a whole lesson just in the lyrics of “Kansas City,” from Oklahoma! as they list one “newfangled” city experience after another. One could explore advances in construction “they went and built a skyscraper seven stories high!” or the advent of indoor plumbing, “you can walk to privies in the rain and never wet your feet!” This look at city development could be followed with the descriptions of New York City provided by Annie and On The Town a decade apart. Man of La Mancha could take one into all sorts of directions for the Spanish Inquisition. (NO ONE EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!) (Yes, I know that’s not Man of La Mancha.) Mame could lead to exploration of educational theory in the early 1900s. The Pajama Game could spark a whole unit on the industrial revolution and unionization. Certainly it would have been a better unit on the topic than the one I had in 8th grade.
I liked history class, most of the time, but it often seemed to focus on wars and government, without as much attention given to the lives of people who were neither president, royalty or army generals. I’ve always been interested in the lives of people who were never president, royalty or army generals during the times that major wars were waged and governments were run. Shows seemed to pick up some of this slack. While it’s not strictly true that everything I needed to learn about history was included in some Broadway musical or other, the questions that shows raised and my quest for the answers undoubtedly increased my historical knowledge.
And of course, now as then, a show can always spark a quest into the show itself, and it’s place in musical history. What about the original Fosse choreography, and were those costumes really period, anyway?
If I’d seen the Pajama Game in its entirety at that age, I would also have asked more questions about unions, and slow-downs. I already knew what a strike was, as my first act upon leaving the hospital as a 2-week old was crossing a picket line, and I had grown up hearing the story. So as an adult, I was free to focus on the music (Hernado’s Hideaway is a tango, but what actually makes a piece of music a tango, and distinguishes it from other non-tango forms of music?) and the dancing (apparently this was the first show choreographed by Bob Fosse and they included some of the original choreography) and the costumes (some of which I thought were not true to the 1950s period) and the scenery (were the brick walls molded or painted?) and acting (one character’s accent striking me more as affected Brooklyn than small-town Iowa) and staging (including some creative use of a rolling platform and crossover scenes) and characterization (such as the somewhat incongruous combination of a carnival knife-thrower and an efficiency expert.) I came home and looked up the show, and the lyrics, and the description of the book, 7 1/2 cents that the book is based on. This is how I watch a show now, and I hasten to add, an well-staged version of a show I enjoyed. But then, I’ve finished high school.
For many years, though, it seemed as though I was getting an awful lot of my history education from shows and show-tunes. Sometimes it seemed the musicals did it better. I recall skimming a textbook chapter on the expansion of the American West and summing up the entire thing with the lyrics of “The Farmer and the Cowman,” from Oklahoma! An similar chapter covering the advent of mail-order catalogues was succinctly supplied by the Music Man’s “The Wells Fargo Wagon.” I definitely learned more about the Depression from Annie than from school. Annie was the first show I saw on Broadway, at 6, and I appeared in a summer stock production myself at 12. It was where I first heard of F.D.R. and then proceeded to read children’s biographies of both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. It was the first time I encountered the concept of the Cabinet. Frances Perkins sings. In the finale, the orphans sit reindeer style in front of the president for a song called “We’re Getting a New Deal for Christmas.” It’s not a terribly memorable song, otherwise, not destined for greatness like “Tomorrow,” but he drives them with a pretend whip and says “On Ickes and Wallces! Get along Cordell Hull!” I’m not sure I learned anything else about any of them beyond what I learned when my mother explained the song. I’m not sure I learned anything else about the New Deal, for that matter. I know I learned more about Herbert Hoover and Hoovervilles from the show than school as well. I studied World War 2 in school, but it was from South Pacific that I learned about “Tokyo Rose.” She probably got a mention in the text but not in class. 1776 is my notable exception. I definitely learned more in school about that era than was portrayed in the show, and I always felt the show cast my favorite John Dickinson rather unfairly as the villain of the piece.
I wouldn’t take The King And I as an authority on Thai culture of the 1800s, but it certainly did provide commentary on Euorpean colonialist attitudes. Annie Get Your Gun is arguably not an historically accurate commentary on anything about wild west shows in general or the life of Annie Oakley in particular, but from the show I did learn about moonshine and prohibition. (Guys and Dolls was a later lesson in prohibition.) Of course, listening to the soundtrack of Annie Get Your Gun young - early elementary school young - had its risks. It was years before I understood “Tom, Dick and Harry will build a house for Carrie when the preacher has made them one” meant that the preacher would MARRY Tom, Dick or Harry to Carrie, not build Tom, Dick or Harry a house first. I’m literal. But I listened.
I listened to a lot of record sound tracks as a kid, and listened to a lot of audio cassette tapes as an adolescent. And I saw a lot of shows. I was in Annie one summer and The King and I the next, and saw most of the other shows that reparatory company performed for both seasons. Later I ushered for a summer stock group of college students, seeing a show a week for free for two years ranging from the Mikado to On the Town. (They’re the same group that did the Pajama Game.) During those years, I did a lot of reading of the plays and books on which many of the shows were based. It wasn’t all historical. I read Green Grow the Lilacs, which was the inspiration for Oklahoma! I read Pygmalion in the school library and compared it to the dialogue of My Fair Lady. The summer I saw Camelot, right after my first year of college I read about 2000 pages of Arthurian Legend, about half of it in the Mists of Avalon. I tried to read Tales of the South Pacific, but even though I love Mitchner’s historical fiction novels, I don’t care much for his short stories. Or anyone else’s short stories. I tried some of Damon Runyon for Guys and Dolls but gave up there as well.
I wonder sometimes what a musical-based history class would be like. Students could watch a show and then delve into reading inspired by the era. There’s a whole lesson just in the lyrics of “Kansas City,” from Oklahoma! as they list one “newfangled” city experience after another. One could explore advances in construction “they went and built a skyscraper seven stories high!” or the advent of indoor plumbing, “you can walk to privies in the rain and never wet your feet!” This look at city development could be followed with the descriptions of New York City provided by Annie and On The Town a decade apart. Man of La Mancha could take one into all sorts of directions for the Spanish Inquisition. (NO ONE EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!) (Yes, I know that’s not Man of La Mancha.) Mame could lead to exploration of educational theory in the early 1900s. The Pajama Game could spark a whole unit on the industrial revolution and unionization. Certainly it would have been a better unit on the topic than the one I had in 8th grade.
I liked history class, most of the time, but it often seemed to focus on wars and government, without as much attention given to the lives of people who were neither president, royalty or army generals. I’ve always been interested in the lives of people who were never president, royalty or army generals during the times that major wars were waged and governments were run. Shows seemed to pick up some of this slack. While it’s not strictly true that everything I needed to learn about history was included in some Broadway musical or other, the questions that shows raised and my quest for the answers undoubtedly increased my historical knowledge.
And of course, now as then, a show can always spark a quest into the show itself, and it’s place in musical history. What about the original Fosse choreography, and were those costumes really period, anyway?