Each time wearing a different face, but somehow the same
A cool story about history that isn't mine.
Last night while reading his secondhand copy of Leonard Maltin's The Great American Broadcast: A Celebration of Radio's Golden Age (1997),![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch realized for the first time since he had bought the book four years ago that it was signed: "For Arthur – who lived this story!" Obviously, immediately curious about the identity of radio Arthur, he flipped to the index to look for candidates and found that Arthur had helpfully annotated himself with a pointer to his photo, a group shot of the Mercury Theatre.
Arthur was Arthur Anderson, who began as a child actor in radio, including The Mercury Theatre on the Air. Onstage, he was Lucius in the 1937 Caesar, singing to Orson Welles' Brutus in his tent the night before Philippi and, once the run had moved from the Mercury to the National Theatre, legendarily fooling around backstage with matches and setting off the sprinkler system—the heavily fictionalized basis for the novel and film Me and Orson Welles (2003/2008), which his castmate Norman Lloyd in 2015 had no compunctions about telling the Onion that he hated. Later in life, he was a mainstay of Friends of Old Time Radio. Like any other actor who lived in New York City, he appeared on Law & Order (1990–2010). For almost thirty years, he voiced the character of Lucky the Leprechaun for General Mills.
He was born on Staten Island in 1922, died in Manhattan in 2016, and by the summer of 2017 at least one of his books had fetched up at the Strand, where Rob would discover it that fall when we stopped in on our way from Morristown to Penn Station after celebrating my birthday with friends and Les contes d'Hoffmann at the Met. He just didn't know the details of what he had discovered until last night. On the facing page from the photo in which the teenage Arthur Anderson can be seen sitting with script in hand, Maltin relates the story about the night an eagle got loose in the studio during The Fred Allen Show, occasioning "a series of choice Fred Allen ad-libs" which he does not quote. In a neat, spiky pencil hand, Anderson has supplied one: ". . . . ghost's beret," Allen's indelible description of the visual effect of the guano left by the non-compliant bird.
So that is the piece of radio history that has ended up sitting on a stack of books on Rob's side of the bed, a tangible part of the life of an actor of the Mercury Theatre and Let's Pretend (1934–54) and a replacement for the Reverend John Witherspoon during the original Broadway run of 1776, which charms me specifically.
I said I missed used book stores.
Last night while reading his secondhand copy of Leonard Maltin's The Great American Broadcast: A Celebration of Radio's Golden Age (1997),
spatch realized for the first time since he had bought the book four years ago that it was signed: "For Arthur – who lived this story!" Obviously, immediately curious about the identity of radio Arthur, he flipped to the index to look for candidates and found that Arthur had helpfully annotated himself with a pointer to his photo, a group shot of the Mercury Theatre. Arthur was Arthur Anderson, who began as a child actor in radio, including The Mercury Theatre on the Air. Onstage, he was Lucius in the 1937 Caesar, singing to Orson Welles' Brutus in his tent the night before Philippi and, once the run had moved from the Mercury to the National Theatre, legendarily fooling around backstage with matches and setting off the sprinkler system—the heavily fictionalized basis for the novel and film Me and Orson Welles (2003/2008), which his castmate Norman Lloyd in 2015 had no compunctions about telling the Onion that he hated. Later in life, he was a mainstay of Friends of Old Time Radio. Like any other actor who lived in New York City, he appeared on Law & Order (1990–2010). For almost thirty years, he voiced the character of Lucky the Leprechaun for General Mills.
He was born on Staten Island in 1922, died in Manhattan in 2016, and by the summer of 2017 at least one of his books had fetched up at the Strand, where Rob would discover it that fall when we stopped in on our way from Morristown to Penn Station after celebrating my birthday with friends and Les contes d'Hoffmann at the Met. He just didn't know the details of what he had discovered until last night. On the facing page from the photo in which the teenage Arthur Anderson can be seen sitting with script in hand, Maltin relates the story about the night an eagle got loose in the studio during The Fred Allen Show, occasioning "a series of choice Fred Allen ad-libs" which he does not quote. In a neat, spiky pencil hand, Anderson has supplied one: ". . . . ghost's beret," Allen's indelible description of the visual effect of the guano left by the non-compliant bird.
So that is the piece of radio history that has ended up sitting on a stack of books on Rob's side of the bed, a tangible part of the life of an actor of the Mercury Theatre and Let's Pretend (1934–54) and a replacement for the Reverend John Witherspoon during the original Broadway run of 1776, which charms me specifically.
I said I missed used book stores.
no subject
I have a few faculty book discards--mostly not their own work--from the free-stuff windowsill of my former dept. Books in which other people have written a little, not too much, are the best.
no subject
I don't know what provenance we were expecting, but Arthur Anderson was not it!
I have a few faculty book discards--mostly not their own work--from the free-stuff windowsill of my former dept. Books in which other people have written a little, not too much, are the best.
Evidence of time and importance: agreed.
no subject
All I ever get are birthday inscriptions I wish the person had kept, not parts of history.
Though even those are their own part of history.
And something I miss, as well.
no subject
I didn't recognize his name at first when
All I ever get are birthday inscriptions I wish the person had kept, not parts of history.
I always hope in the case of something like that that it wasn't the person themselves who gave the book away, but their inheritors after the fact.
Though even those are their own part of history.
And something I miss, as well.
*hugs*
no subject
I always hope in the case of something like that that it wasn't the person themselves who gave the book away, but their inheritors after the fact.
"For Angus - will you ever forget the bloaters?"
*hugs*
Nine
no subject
no subject
We think so!
(Excellent icon.)
no subject
And I love the picture. How old was Welles- 21 or 22? and already taking lead roles in his own theatre company. What an extraordinary man!
no subject
It was a wonderful thing to discover in the middle of the night.
And I love the picture. How old was Welles- 21 or 22? and already taking lead roles in his own theatre company. What an extraordinary man!
He was twenty-two in the fall of 1937. That Caesar is one of the stage productions I want a time machine for.
no subject
no subject
I'm still delighted about it! And it wasn't even my find!
no subject
no subject
Arthur Anderson!
no subject
I never even thought about Lucky the Leprechaun having to be voiced by someone--to think it's the same person who starred with Orsen Wells (that's a beautiful photo--Arthur has an appealingly androgynous look in it).
And the story of the eagle! How would an eagle get in?? Then again, a friend of mine who keeps chickens reported that a red-tailed hawk got into their chicken house and was chowing down on one of the chickens--right there in the chicken house--and as with the Fred Allen Show eagle, it was very hard for my friend to extract.
I feel like the serendipity of this book finding its way to you both will lead to poetry or a story one day.
no subject
And it lived in our house for four years and we had no idea!
I never even thought about Lucky the Leprechaun having to be voiced by someone--to think it's the same person who starred with Orsen Wells
"I never got free cereal," we found him quoted as saying, "but they gave me lots of green money."
(that's a beautiful photo--Arthur has an appealingly androgynous look in it).
There's another, more often reproduced photo of the same scene, but I like this one best. He looks like a Renaissance angel, even if he's just a kid with a ukulele.
And the story of the eagle! How would an eagle get in??
It came with a guest on the show! He was a lecturer on falconry; it was supposed to be majestic and provide an opportunity for its trainer to impart some information on the topic of raptors. It was not supposed to dive-bomb the audience and poop dramatically on the stage. The rest of show was lost to chaos, if not to history, and Fred Allen wrote an incredible letter to the studio which
Then again, a friend of mine who keeps chickens reported that a red-tailed hawk got into their chicken house and was chowing down on one of the chickens--right there in the chicken house--and as with the Fred Allen Show eagle, it was very hard for my friend to extract.
Yikes. I hope the hawk was removed without further loss of chicken.
I feel like the serendipity of this book finding its way to you both will lead to poetry or a story one day.
From your fingers to whatever permits me enough time in my life to write something creative finally.