From the Archives: A Review of the Revival of 'Chicago' (1997)

Monday's post about Big Stone Gap, which mentioned cast member Jasmine Guy, reminded me about how, in the last years of the last century, I reviewed a musical she starred in: a national tour of  Kander and Ebb's Chicago.

Guy played Velma Kelly in the revival of the Bob Fosse musical, on tour at the National Theatre in Washington in the spring of 1997. Notably, this revival is still playing on Broadway -- a continuous run dating to November 14, 1996, adding up to 7,494 performances as of November 30, 2014.

From the archives, here is my review. It appeared in The Metro Herald in May 1997 and contains some contemporaneous references that may be inscrutable to anyone born since 1994.

My Kind of Town . . . Chicago Is

Rick Sincere

Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

Stand aside, Comet Hale-Bopp -- there's a new star rising above the Washington horizon, and she's at the National Theatre! The new star is Belle Calaway, the understudy who took over the key role of Roxie Hart in the new touring company of Chicago, and blew away the crowd on opening night.

Jasmine Guy

Calaway and her co-star, Jasmine Guy, brought the audience to its feet with thundering applause. While Guy slithered sensually across the stage, Calaway exuded energy enthusiastically. A last minute replacement for Charlotte d'Amboise, who is nursing an injury and expected to return to the cast in about three weeks, Calaway evokes the spirit -- and star-power -- of Gwen Verdon, who created the musical role of Roxie Hart in 1975. In fact, Calaway's vocal and dance style nearly replicates Verdon's, a remarkable feat in itself. The question remains: If Calaway -- the understudy -- is this terrific, how good is d'Amboise herself? We'll see in a few weeks.

Chicago features one of the best scores by John Kander and Fred Ebb, who also wrote Cabaret (1966) and the dreadful (but Tony-winning) Kiss of the Spider Woman (1992). Conceived by the legendary director-choreographer Bob Fosse, Chicago is a tuneful and sophisticated musical play. Like Cabaret, it contains hummable and memorable melodies and sharp, crackling lyrics.

Twenty-two years ago, Chicago was shut out of the Tony Awards by A Chorus Line, which at the time was groundbreaking but after its long Broadway run, numerous national tours, and a flop of a movie now seems hackneyed. Despite a respectable run of 868 performances that featured not only Gwen Verdon but the great Chita Rivera (and, succeeding that duo later, Liza Minnelli and Ann Reinking), Chicago had been largely forgotten until an "Encores" concert in New York last year. Its cynical look at the press and judicial system simply did not fit in to American culture at that time. Today -- in the era of two Menendez brothers trials, two O.J. Simpson verdicts, and Court-TV's rising popularity -- it seems more timely and relevant than ever.

This became crystal clear when Billy Flynn, the city of Chicago's hotshot lawyer, first appeared on stage. The National Theatre audience gasped when actor Obba Babatundé strode through the orchestra to sing his first number, "All I Care About [Is Love]" -- for Babatundé bears an uncanny resemblance to Johnnie Cochran, a hotshot lawyer in his own right.

It's difficult to find something not to praise in this production. Ann Reinking's choreography recreates the style of Bob Fosse in a way that deserves hearty appreciation, for the art of the dance has been suffering in recent musicals. (For example, Paper Moon, reviewed favorably in these pages a few weeks ago, had serviceable but unremarkable choreography. This, unfortunately, represents a sad trend in American musical theatre, which was once driven by such creative choreographers as Agnes de Mille, Michael Kidd, Jerome Robbins, Michael Bennett -- and Bob Fosse.) Fosse's style -- a unique blend of modern dance, ballet, athleticism, and sexual energy -- is often attempted but seldom accurately rendered. It lends itself to injury -- not only D'Amboise, but Reinking herself has been sidelined in recent weeks -- and is perhaps the greatest challenge to a dancer. When it is done right -- as it is done here -- the Fosse style is eye-popping and jaw-dropping. "How do they do that?" comes to mind quite often.

Walter Bobbie, the director, has reconceived the show that builds upon Fosse's original concept and takes it to its logical conclusion. A simple set, which includes the orchestra on stage (a conceit that originated with Cabaret), forces most of the action onto a narrow apron, which makes that action so much more intimate to the audience. Costumes are limited to black, white, and shades of grey. The stage itself is largely black, with a few frames in gold and the glinting gold of the brass instruments complementing the blackness. Props are limited to a few chairs and feathered fans (don't ask, just go see for yourself). Lighting is emphasized, with golden and white pools creating focus and definition.

In its original incarnation, Chicago was billed as "A Musical Vaudeville." Today it bills itself as "The Drop-Dead Broadway Musical." Both are true. Structurally, the play is a series of vaudeville-type numbers, introduced by various characters in the style of a vaudeville emcee. These numbers, however, advance the plot and define the characters as effectively as any written by Rodgers and Hammerstein or Stephen Sondheim.

In a nutshell, the plot is this: Chorus-girl Roxie Hart shoots and kills her boyfriend, expecting her Casper Milquetoast husband to take the rap. Instead, she goes to jail and hires Billy Flynn as her attorney, who promises to manipulate the media and the jury to obtain a "not guilty" verdict. Then, as a celebrity murderess, she can go on tour as a -- you guessed it -- vaudeville star. Interacting with Roxie is Velma Kelly (Jasmine Guy), another murderess who has hired Billy and expects the same result. The predatory press itself plays a major role, showing us that not much has changed between 1927 and 1997.

So many performers stand out it is hard to single them out. Carol Woods is at her throaty best as Matron "Mama" Morton, the jail keeper. M.E. Spencer is cloyingly pollyannish as reporter Mary Sunshine. And Ron Orbach is practically invisible -- believe me, that's good -- as Roxie's sad-sack husband, Amos, who does a star turn himself in the amusing number, "Mister Cellophane."

Chicago is not a family musical. It contains adult themes and rough language. It is also a historical landmark of American musical theatre. No one who loves musical theatre can afford to miss Chicago.

Trivia tidbit: the real-life Chicago murder case on which the musical is based (also the basis for the 1942 Ginger Rogers movie Roxie Hart) was covered by a "girl reporter" named Ione Quinby, who later in life was an agony-aunt columnist for The Milwaukee Journal, writing as Ione Quinby Griggs or, simply, "Mrs. Griggs." Whether her choice of a 50-year career as a staple of the back page of the Journal's "Green Sheet" was inspired by the character of "Mary Sunshine" is not known to me.

Remembering Adolph Green at 100

A report from NPR's Jeff Lunden today on "All Things Considered" recalls that today marks the 100th birthday of Broadway lyricist and Hollywood screenwriter Adolph Green, whose works include On the Town, Wonderful Town, Bells Are Ringing, Singing in the Rain, The Bandwagon, and about half of the 1954 version of Peter Pan.  That last show will be presented on NBC-TV this coming Thursday as Peter Pan Live!

The 1954 Peter Pan had one set of songs by composer Mark Charlap and lyricist Carolyn Leigh, which included "I've Got to Crow," "I'm Flying," and "I Won't Grow Up," among others.  (The use of first-person nominative in those song titles must indicate something about the character of Peter Pan's embedded egoism.)

Along with his lyric-writing partner, Betty Comden, and composer Jule Styne, Green contributed a number of songs to Peter Pan, including "Wendy," "Ugg-a-Wugg," "Distant Melody," and the haunting "Neverland," sung in the clip below by Mary Martin in a kinescope of the 1955 live NBC-TV production.  (Kathleen Nolan appears as Wendy Darling in this production, which was directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins.)

In the rare clip below, from a 1957 broadcast on the Dumont network of Art Ford's Greenwich Village Party, Comden and Green sing their duet from On the Town, "I Get Carried Away." Art Ford reminds his viewers that Comden and Green had worked with Judy Holliday in a nightclub act in the 1940s called The Revuers, which led to their collaboration with Leonard Bernstein on On the Town, and that Holliday was then starring in their latest collaboration (with Jule Styne), Bells Are Ringing.

After Green sets up the number, it begins at the 3:30 mark on the video.

Another snippet of Comden and Green and performers can be seen in this compilation of songs from the 1985 Follies in Concert.  They sing "Rain on the Roof" beginning at 2:00 (and, sadly, ending at 2:10).  The video clip also includes the late Elaine Stritch singing "Broadway Baby" and Adolph Green's wife, Phyllis Newman, as part of the ensemble on "Who's That Woman?" as well as Carol Burnett proclaiming "I'm Still Here" -- along with leading players Barbara Cook, George Hearn, Mandy Patinkin, and Lee Remick.

A look at Adolph Green's credits on IBDB shows how prolific an artist he was. In addition to the shows already mentioned, he contributed either book or lyrics (or, sometimes, both) to Billion Dollar Baby, with David Burns and Helen Gallagher (1945), Two on the Aisle, with Bert Lahr and Dolores Gray (1951), Say, Darling (1958), A Party with Betty Comden & Adolph Green (1958 and 1977), Do Re Mi, with Phil Silvers and Nancy Walker (1960), Subways Are for Sleeping, with Carol Lawrence and Sydney Chaplin (1961), Fade Out-Fade In, with Carol Burnett and Jack Cassidy (1964), Hallelujah, Baby!, with Leslie Uggams (1967), Applause, with Lauren Bacall and Len Cariou (1970), Lorelei, with Carol Channing (1974), On the Twentieth Century, with Imogene Coca, John Cullum, Madeline Kahn, and Kevin Kline (1978), A Doll's Life, with what seems like the cast of Sweeney Todd -- George Hearn, Betsy Joslyn, and Edmund Lyndeck (1982), and The Will Rogers Follies, with Keith Carradine, Dee Hoty, and the voice of Gregory Peck (1991).

The list of Adolph Green's collaborators could itself be a book about the history of the musical theatre:  George Abbott, Lee Adams, Richard Bissell, Abe Burrows, Jerome Chodorov, Cy Coleman, William and Jean Eckart, Lehman Engel, Ron Field, Joseph A. Fields, Bob Fosse, Paul Gemignani, Garson Kanin, Michael Kidd, Arthur Laurents, David Merrick, Harold Prince, Burt Shevelove, Irene Sharaff, Oliver Smith, Peter Stone, Charles Strouse, Tommy Tune, Robin Wagner, and Freddie Wittop -- to name just a few.

Considering that Peter Pan Live! goes on the air this week, that there is a current revival of On the Town on Broadway, and the first full Broadway revival of On the Twentieth Century opens early next year, Adolph Green is having a pretty good season for a centenarian who has been dead for twelve years.

'Big Stone Gap' Cast and Author Visit the Virginia Film Festival

Ashley Judd, Adriana Trigiani, and Terry McAuliffe

Last month in Charlottesville, the director and screenwriter of Big Stone Gap (based on her own novel), Adriana Trigiani, brought along several cast members to the Virginia Film Festival for a screening of the movie, which was produced in its namesake town in Wise County.

Just before the screening at the Paramount Theater on the downtown mall, Trigiani and the cast spoke at a press conference about the making of the film, the hospitality of the town's 5,600 residents, and the value of producing an independent film in Virginia.

The actors who participated in the press conference were Erika Coleman, Jenna Elfman, Bridget Gabbe, Jasmine Guy, Ashley Judd, Patrick Wilson, and Paul Wilson. Not present were additional cast members Whoopi Goldberg, John Benjamin Hickey, Judith Ivey, Jane Krakowski, Anthony LaPaglia, and Chris Sarandon, among others (including a large number of non-professional local actors from Southwest Virginia who appear in the film).

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe made a surprise appearance at the end of the presser and posed for photos with the cast.  He used the opportunity to tout Virginia's film industry and the tax credits and other subsidies available to film makers.  (McAuliffe's comments to local news media about the Virginia film industry are reported here.)

A video recording of the entire press conference, including Governor McAuliffe's interactions with the cast members, is below.

During the press conference, Trigiani reveals that she originally conceived of the story as a screenplay but decided first to put it in novel form and then adapt it as a film. She also notes that she has known actress Jasmine Guy since they both worked on the TV series, A Different World, a spinoff from The Cosby Show. (Guy played Whitley Gilbert on the show; Trigiani worked on the writing staff along with executive consultant Bill Cosby and Kadeem Hardison.)

My understanding is that Big Stone Gap did not have a distributor at the time of its world premiere at the 2014 Virginia Film Festival. 

The press conference and screening of Big Stone Gap took place on Thursday, November 6, 2014.

A Look Back at the Making of the First 'Peter Pan' Movie (1924)

With the much-hyped television broadcast of Peter Pan Live!, starring Allison Williams, Minnie Driver, and Christopher Walken, coming up on Thursday, December 4, on NBC, it seems worthwhile to look back on other versions of the classic J.M. Barrie work.  (On Twitter, the show is being promoted as #PeterPanLive.)  This production is a follow-up to last December's virally successful The Sound of Music Live! The cast also includes Broadway veterans Christian Borle and Kelli O'Hara and (relative) newcomers Taylor Louderman, Jake Lucas, and John Allyn as the Darling family.

I have seen Sandy Duncan on stage as Peter Pan and Mary Martin on TV, as well as the 1953 Disney animated production with Bobby Driscoll voicing Peter.  I missed Mia Farrow and Cathy Rigby in the role but, for my money, Jeremy Sumpter was the most heatedly erotic Peter in the movies, but most audiences are not looking for that particular quality in what is usually intended as a children's story.

The first movie presentation of Peter Pan was released in 1924 by Paramount.  It was produced by Adolph Zukor and directed by Herbert Brenon.  Sir James M. Barrie was involved in the project and approved of the casting although -- as the anecdotes recounted below note -- his original screenplay was set aside for one credited to Willis Goldbeck.  The film was shot by renowned cinematographer James Wong Howe.

In 2007,  screenwriter Stewart Stern (Oscar-nominated for Rebel Without a Cause and an Emmy winner for Sybil) appeared at the Virginia Film Festival, where in addition to a shot-by-shot workshop of Rebel Without a Cause he offered opening remarks at a screening of the 1924 Peter Pan.

Stern, then 85 years old, recalls the casting process that resulted in the choice of Betty Bronson as the first screen Peter but he also describes his own experiences in seeing Eva Le Gallienne and Elsa Lanchester on stage as Peter, and the personal touches he received not just from those actresses but also from J.M. Barrie himself.

Here is video of screenwriter Stewart Stern, speaking at the Paramount Theater in downtown Charlottesville on November 3, 2007.  Part I offers some anecdotes about Barrie and the first stage production of Peter Pan and the casting of Bronson in the title role.  (Partial transcript follows the video clip.)

Stewart Stern on Peter Pan - Part I

It always begins with a writer. Sir James Matthew Barrie, who wrote Peter Pan, was a very small Scotsman, barely taller than a child, with a very large head, deep melancholy eyes, a mustache to cover his shyness, and a pipe that made everyone cough.

He rarely smiled but he could wiggle his ears and he mainly trusted children and certain Newfoundland dogs of his acquaintance, whom he would one day roll up into Nana. There were those five little boys in Kensington Gardens whom he fell in love with, and the Davies boys, whom he wisely treated as his superiors, and grew so close to, that in a way he stole them, even as Peter Pan stole the Darling children, and they made up Peter's story together.

It was born as a game they played at Barrie's country house, and it just kept making itself up as he and his boys played it – sometimes this way, sometimes that way – and that's how Barrie put it on the stage and that's why it always keeps changing. That's the character of Peter, too: he won't stand still, never remembers what he did last, and he's always finding new adventures to hide his loneliness inside.

During rehearsals, Barrie would sit huddled in the dark of the Duke of York's Theatre in London, his great coat and bowler hat, watching the children with envy as they practiced flying around the stage, until one days someone asked him what the matter was. He said, “I would very much like to fly, too!”

So, they hoisted him up in the magical arrangement that helps you do it, and flew him around the stage in absolute ecstasy, bowler hat, pipe, greatcoat and all, twinkling like a firefly, until they finally sat him down.

Barrie's favorite critic on opening night was a little boy whom he'd taken to the theatre. And he asked him, what part of it did you like best, when the final curtain came down. And the little boy said, “Oh, the part I liked best was tearing up my program into little bits and throwing them down on the people!” And of all the reviews his play received, Barrie liked that one the most.

In about 1920, my uncle, Adolph Zukor, who started Paramount Pictures, decided to make the first movie of Peter Pan. He had to find the perfect Peter to please Mr. Barrie, so a nationwide search began all across America.

Betty Bronson as Peter Pan

Countless screen tests were made and the best ones were taken to London on an ocean liner by the movie's director, Mr. Herbert Brenon, and by another uncle of mine, Mr. Albert Kaufman, who was Uncle Adolph's studio manager. These men would show the tests to Barrie for him to choose his favorite, and among the candidates was a tiny, 17-year-old girl from New Jersey who had come to Hollywood to break into movies and who called herself Betty Bronson. She banged on every door at Paramount Studios until Mr. Brenon agreed to see her, and she told him that she was born to play Peter, she had to pay Peter, she would play Peter, and so Mr. Brenon had no choice but to make a test.

In the London screening room, the two Americans unreeled those tests for Barrie, day after day, and to break up a long afternoon, Barrie invited them to his flat, overlooking the River Thames, for tea.

They were awed to be at the home of such a famous man, a man great enough to be knighted by the king. Barrie left his guests in the big inglenook by the fire, where he wrote, to go and see about the tea. But while they waited in their straight-back chairs, saying very little, for the whistle at the kettle to come from the kitchen, there was such a long, alarming silence, that they went exploring through the flat, and they finally found Barrie frozen at the kitchen door with his shoes in his hands and his face a mask of terrible guilt. “It's housekeeper's day off,” Barrie said, “and I'm not allowed in the kitchen. Mrs. Porter absolutely forbids me to set foot in it.”

Uncle Al said, “Well, I'll go in. I'll make the tea.”

But Barrie said, “No, no, no, no. She'll be able to tell. She puts things around I have to move out of the way and that gives her hints.”

So that was it for tea.

The very next day, a telegram reached Uncle Adolph's desk in New York. It was from London. “Betty Bronson chosen to play the role of Peter Pan. Signed, Barrie.”

In part two of the video from the Virginia Film Festival, Stern describes the magic of Eva Le Gallienne as Peter Pan (in a production she also directed), and the fright that Elsa Lanchester brought to the role. He describes his own two degrees of separation from Sir James Barrie and his particular attachment to thimbles. (Partial transcript follows the video.)

Stewart Stern on Peter Pan - Part II

The film was a huge success and many of the effects in it – the great broom sweeping the fairies away, Captain Hook's Jolly Roger rising up off the mermaids' lagoon and flying the children home – were all Barrie's own ideas for the movie version, special effects way before their time. And it's a wonderful script to read. It's a complete screenplay and filled with fancy but they decided, no, they wouldn't use it – just this and that of it. And so the movie has a more theatrical look than what might have happened if Barrie had had his screenplay used.

Like all very old children who never grew up – this isn't a hook, by the way, it's to do Charlie Chaplin imitations and it's also a reminder that I'm 85, so I'm only half young – anyway, I have loved Peter Pan my whole life. My first Peter Pan when I was little was the great Eva Le Gallienne. She gave special children matinees at the old Civic Repertory Theatre in New York at 11 o'clock Saturday mornings, and then she went on in the rest of the day to play grown-up roles in the afternoon and evening, in plays like Camille, Romeo & Juliet, and Ibsen's Ghosts, and the next morning she was back being Peter Pan.

But they weren't half as exciting as Peter Pan, those other plays, those grown-up plays. So Saturday after Saturday, my mother moved us up to the cheaper and cheaper seats, up to the tip-tip-top of the theatre, where the poorest children sat on benches that only cost 50 cents.

Sitting on those hard seats, miles above the people, we had the best thrill of anyone in the theatre because at the end, Peter Pan flew, not just over the audience way down there but above the balconies that were below us – there were two that were below us, and then the audience down there – but all the way up here, she touched our hands as we leaned out over the railing and shouted good-bye as she flew past us and then zoomed down to the stage. It was the most thrilling thing I've ever seen in my life and it still stays with me.

Stewart Stern in Charlottesville, Nov. 3, 2007

All children who saw Peter Pan wanted to fly. Until I was ten, I dreamed of flying out my window so many times that one morning I found my bare footprints in the snow on my window sill facing out over New York City, eight floors up. The next my dad had metal guards attached to the window. I could never fly again.

I pleaded with my mom to make me a Peter Pan costume and I wore it everywhere except to school. I'd come home, climb onto my book case in my Peter Pan suit, doing my homework with Peter's rubber dagger stuck in my teeth in case Hook came into the room.

And one day, on Uncle Adolph's golf course, I was up in my usual tree, dressed as Peter and tootling on my pipes, when my father came along with a man I didn't know who had an English accent and wore knickerbockers. When he heard my tootling, as he was about to hit the ball, he said, “Good lord! That's the 'Pirate Song' from Peter Pan. What's it doing in that tree?”

My dad said, “It's just Peter, otherwise known as my son.”

The man peered through the leaves until he found me, and we stared at each other for one long meaningful moment, and I won.

He said, “By George, it is Peter Pan, the real one! Bicarbonate of soda, it is!”

That man with the accent turned out to be Sir William Wiseman, a friend of Barrie's, and a few weeks later a package came in the mail from London, a first edition of Peter Pan and Wendy autographed “To Stewart Stern, kind regards, from J.M. Barrie.”

I wished he had sent me a thimble in it, that silver thing you wear on your finger when you sew a button on, that Peter called a kiss.

My letters from Eva Le Gallienne all had thimbles in them. She'd write, “Bless you, my dear, I send you a very nice thimble.” And my letter from Betty Bronson had thimbles in it, too.

But not Elsa Lanchester's, who came down her flying wire like a black widow spider after its prey and acted the whole part – and she told me this – pretending to be Hitler at the age of 6. Children shook when she came on and they rushed to Captain Hook to comfort them – and Captain Hook was Charles Laughton, her husband.

Stewart Stern is still alive at the age of 92. No doubt, if he watches Peter Pan Live! next Thursday, his TV viewing experience will be warmed by his childhood memories of Peter Pan and the actresses who played him.

Black Friday Becomes 'Green Friday' Where Pot Is Legal

This headline caught my eye: "Va. ABC stores to offer Black Friday discounts." The AP story, posted on the web site of ABC News affiliate WJLA-TV, explains that customers who buy more liquor worth $50 or more will get a ten percent discount, and that customers will also be offered an opportunity today to enter a drawing for a gift card worth $80 to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.


What is the difference between a government-owned monopoly on liquor sales offering special discounts and free booze and privately owned marijuana stores in Colorado offering similar discounts on pot?

The first obvious difference is that Virginia's ABC is a residue of 1930s socialism and prohibitionism, while the Colorado weed stores represent American entrepreneurship at its best.

State-owned liquor stores offer all the innovative thinking that one usually associates with government bureaucracies. Marijuana retailers in Colorado (and Washington state and soon in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, D.C.) have met both their newfound freedom and remaining restrictions with creativity and genuine innovation.

Bloomberg News reporters Duane D. Stanford and Kevin Orland note under the headline "Marijuana Shops Seek Holiday Surge With ‘Green Friday’" that

The legalized pot industry in the U.S. will be worth about $2.3 billion this year and may grow to more than $10 billion by about 2018, according to the San Francisco-based ArcView Group, which invests in the industry.

This “green rush” generated $207 million in recreational pot sales in Colorado during the first nine months of the year, according to the state Revenue Department. In that period, recreational and medical marijuana combined to raise $52.5 million in revenue for the state through taxes, licenses and fees.

CBS News had its own report on "Green Friday," titled "Pot merchants cash in on Christmas cannabis."

In an accompanying story, CBS Moneywatch correspondent Kim Peterson reported:

Black Friday is almost here, and some shoppers are preparing to rush out and buy family and friends a stocking full of marijuana....

Americans freely give each other buzz-inducing gifts of wine or Scotch over the holidays, but buying someone a gift box full of bud? That idea is just sinking in across the state. "People are just starting to consider the notion of, 'Well hey, I can give this,'" Fox added....

Other dispensaries are planning similar Black Friday promotions, and many are taking out ads in local newspapers or promoting their sales online. An edible-pot maker in the state is offering a miniature pumpkin pie laced with marijuana, according to The Associated Press. Stores will also be selling spiced holiday teas, marijuana mint cookies and creams for sore muscles.

Marketing "Green Friday" specials on Black Friday is just one sign of the maturing of the marijuana industry. Matt Ferner and Ryan J. Reilly noted in The Huffington Post earlier this week that

Colorado and Washington state illustrate how cannabis is shedding its stoner image and entering mainstream culture. Marijuana products have been featured prominently in gourmet dinners and in cooking seminars in both states. The drug has become a fashionable substance to offer as a celebratory toast at weddings. Yoga enthusiasts can seek zen at marijuana-fueled classes.

Earlier this year, the Colorado Symphony Orchestra held a “Classically Cannabis” fundraiser, where well-heeled attendees sipped drinks, shook hands and smoked pot from joints, vaporizers and glass pipes, while a brass quintet played Debussy, Bach, Wagner and Puccini.

"Cannabis is being elevated into the pantheon of refined and urbane inebriants, no different than boutique rye or fine wine," said Matt Gray, the publisher of a new gourmet marijuana cookbook.

Could marijuana become legal in Virginia, a state where liqueurs are sold by a government-owned and -operated monopoly?

Bart Hinkle of the Richmond Times-Dispatch thinks it can and should.
"Instead of trying to shake more money out of Virginians’ pockets," he wrote on Tuesday,

the commonwealth should follow Washington’s lead and sell off its liquor business. But it should not adopt Washington’s deceptive practice of trying to claw back its money through hidden fees. So how can Virginia lawmakers scrape up the revenue that would be lost?

Simple: Legalize recreational marijuana, as four other states have. Washington did, and expects to collect $637 million in licenses and taxes by 2019. Colorado hopes to reap $174.5 million over the next three years. By one estimate, legalizing weed in Virginia could raise as much as $500 million for the commonwealth. But even half that would more than make up for ending the liquor monopoly

True, there are many arguments against the state letting people smoke pot. But those same arguments work just as well against the state letting people drink booze — let alone selling the stuff itself.

State Senator Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria) has introduced a bill for the 2015 session of the General Assembly that takes the first step: decriminalizing personal possession of marijuana within Virginia. SB 656

Decriminalizes marijuana possession and changes the current $500 criminal fine for simple marijuana possession to a maximum $100 civil penalty payable to the Literary Fund and eliminates the 30-day jail sentence. The bill reduces the criminal penalties for distribution and possession with intent to distribute etc. of marijuana. The bill creates a rebuttable presumption that a person who grows no more than six marijuana plants grows marijuana for personal use and not for distribution and provides that the suspended sentence/substance abuse screening provisions apply only to criminal violations or to civil violations by a minor. Marijuana is removed from a statute making it a Class 1 misdemeanor to distribute or display advertisements, etc., for instruments used for marijuana and from the common nuisance statute. The distribution of paraphernalia statute will apply only to an adult who distributes to a minor at least three years his junior. The bill also limits forfeiture of property from sale or distribution of marijuana to quantities of more than one pound; currently there is no minimum amount. The penalty for possession of marijuana by a prisoner is reduced from a Class 5 felony to a Class 6 felony.

So far the bill has one co-patron, Delegate Kaye Kory (D-Falls Church). It has been referred to the Courts of Justice committee. When similar legislation was introduced by former Delegate Harvey Morgan, a Republican, it was killed in committee despite not a single person testifying against it.

While Virginia won't be celebrating Green Friday this year, we know that politicians here and elsewhere across the country are watching Colorado closely to see what happens in a regime of regularized, taxable marijuana sales.

'How Many Shopping Days Until Christmas?'

If you landed here because you asked your search engine, "How many shopping days until Christmas?," the answer as this went to press was "27."  If you've landed here after November 27, you can check out this handy countdown clock to find out the accurate answer.

The reason for the headline is more to explore the origin of the phrase "only x shopping days until Christmas."

The conventional story of the origin of "shopping days until Christmas" is that the phrase was coined by Wisconsin-born retailer Harry Gordon Selfridge, founder of Selfridge and Company in Oxford Street (London).  There is renewed interest in Selfridge's life and work due to a popular British TV series about him, starring Jeremy Piven, that has also been broadcast on public television in the United States.

It is clear from both factual and fictionalized portrayals of Selfridge that he was an innovative merchant, but research I have done suggests that he is unlikely to have been the coiner of the now-ubiquitous countdown phrase.

According to Selfridge's Wikipedia entry, which lacks a citation for the point,

While at Marshall Field, Selfridge was the first to promote Christmas sales with the phrase "Only _____ Shopping Days Until Christmas", a catchphrase that was quickly picked up by retailers in other markets. Either he or Marshall Field is also credited with popularizing the phrase "The customer is always right."

The UK-based web site "The Phrase Finder," citing the Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, repeats the same information:

American retailer H. Gordon Selfridge (1856-1947) coined this expression - " __ shopping days until Christmas" while working for Marshall Field & Co. in Chicago. Later he coined the slogan "the customer is always right" when he opened Selfridge's in London.

An Australian web site, WordBooks.com.au, acknowledges that Selfridge may have heard the phrase somewhere else before he used it in marketing his own store's products. Writer Michelle Holland cites another book (Who Said That First?, by Max Cryer) as her source:

The idea of reminding people how much shopping time is left before Christmas is not new. On 19 December 1900 the Los Angeles Times displayed a reminder: ‘There are only (counting today) five more shopping days till Christmas.’ Four days later the Washington Post took up the cry: ‘Only one more shopping day until Christmas.’

At the time Gordon Selfridge was working with Marshall Field and Company in Chicago. He may have picked up the idea from the newspapers mentioned, but certainly he soon instructed his staff to drive the same slogan, which put a real sense of urgency into the shopping lead-up to Christmas. Before long it was used worldwide.

A careful search on NewspaperArchive.com turns up several uses of the phrase several years before the 1900 citations from the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post. The earliest usage I can find was in 1891 but it was frequently used in the 1890s in locations as various as Boston and Cedar Rapids and in various small towns in the Midwest (Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and Mansfield, Ohio, for instance).

The earliest example I can find from Gordon Selfridge himself comes from 1909, the first Christmas season that Selfridges was open:

London Standard, December 16, 1909

Yet I was not able to find any uses of the phrase in Chicago newspapers during the time that Selfridge worked for Marshall Field. The earliest instance appears to be from the front page of the Chicago Heights Star on December 17, 1908 -- about two years after Selfridge had moved to London to build his own department store.

Chicago Heights Star, December 17, 1908

One Illinois newspaper used the phrase in 1897 -- but that was in Jacksonville, a central Illinois city some 235 miles southwest of Chicago and unlikely to be familiar to Selfridge.

Jacksonville (Ill.) Daily Journal, December 8, 1897

Four years earlier, a Massachusetts merchant, Hollander Bradshaw Folsom, used the phrase in a large advertisement for a variety of products it had on offer:

Boston Sunday Post, December 10, 1893

That Boston Sunday Post advertisement may be the first time the phrase "only __ shopping days before Christmas" appeared in print.

Two years before that, the same retailer posted this reminder in the Boston Globe: "NOTICE--Please bear in mind that only 16 SHOPPING DAYS now intervene to Christmas, and that during the last ten days all of our floors are jammed."

Boston Sunday Globe, December 6, 1891

I believe that Boston Sunday Globe ad is the earliest use in print of anything close to "shopping days until Christmas," although it is expressed in more flowery language.

In 1894, the Herms Dry Goods Company advertised in the Portsmouth (Ohio) Daily Times, admonishing readers to "Do Your Xmas Shopping Now" because there were "Only 18 Shopping Days Before Christmas."

The Daily Times (Portsmouth, Ohio), December 4, 1894

On the same page in that same newspaper was the beginning of the serialization of Stephen Crane's novel, The Red Badge of Courage, up to chapter III. The Daily Times was one of 200 small town dailies that serialized Crane's story that month and helped establish his fame as a writer. Now a high-school lit-class staple, The Red Badge of Courage wasn't published in book form until the following year. (Charlottesville connection: Crane's handwritten manuscript is preserved in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia.)

Advertising in the Boston Sunday Globe in 1895, Jordan, Marsh, & Co. claimed to have "the Grandest Aggregation of Holiday Goods in New England" and reminded readers there were "Only 8 More Shopping Days Before Christmas":

Boston Sunday Globe, December 15, 1895

By the turn of the century, the phrase was ubiquitous. Here are some examples:

The Daily Northwestern (Oshkosh, Wisc.), December 11, 1899

Mansfield (Ohio) News, December 12, 1899

Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Republican, December 23, 1900

Washington Post, November 27, 1904

That last example, published exactly 110 years ago today, is puzzling in that it warns about "only 24 shopping days until Christmas," when it should be 27 days.  The advertiser, Galt & Bro. Jewelers, was at one time the oldest continuously operating business in Washington, D.C.  It closed in March 2001 after nearly two centuries of operation.  It was once managed by Edith Galt, who became the second Mrs. Woodrow Wilson and effectively president after her husband's debilitating stroke.

To summarize:  The claim that Harry Gordon Selfridge coined the phrase "___ shopping days until Christmas" rests on flimsy ground.  Knowing that Selfridge was a notorious self-promoter, the assertion that he first used it while he was at Marshall Field & Co. in Chicago in the late 19th century may originate with him in one of his expansive chats with journalists (like this 1932 interview with The Milwaukee Journal, in which he lays claim to "the customer is always right").

The earliest near-usage I was able to find was in the Boston Globe in 1891.  (I searched as far back as 1860.)  The earliest precise phrasing I found was two years later, in the Boston Sunday Post. The phrase became common in the 1890s in New England and the Midwest but I found no evidence of Selfridge using it before 1909, even in Chicago newspapers that would have published ads for Marshall Field. That doesn't mean no evidence exists -- just that I could not find it.  If anyone can find an earlier usage attributed to Selfridge, I welcome feedback.

Upcoming: Ten-Year 'Blogoversary' / Requested: Your Comments

Nine years and 11 months ago today, I posted my first blog entry, which said, in part:

It took a while, but I've been sucked into the world of bloggers.

I have two primary purposes in publishing this blog: (1) to comment on current affairs and cultural events, including theatre, music, movies, and books and (2) to archive some of my old writings on what-were-then-current affairs and cultural events (you know the rest).

In the near-decade since then, I have accomplished all that and more.

My own blog presence has expanded to include Book Reviews by Rick Sincere, Where Are the Copy Editors?, and Sub-Saharan Monitor.

By invitation, I joined the terrific team of political reporters and commentators at Bearing Drift.

I began submitting articles to Examiner.com, sometimes drawing unexpected attention (from, for instance, teachers' unions and Senator Mark Warner).

To be sure, my blogging has become more spotty over the years. My first full year of blogging, 2005, included 317 individual posts, nearly one per day.

That number declined to 200 in 2006 and to 187 in 2007, before rising again to 257 in the election year of 2008. The number dropped again to 211 in 2009 and 101 in 2010, before a series of double-digit years in 2011 (53), 2012 (22 -- my first year with Bearing Drift), 2013 (59), and just 38 posts so far this year.

While we're doing the math, it's noteworthy that -- by coincidence, not design -- this is my 1,500th blog post on this site.

While thinking about my upcoming tenth anniversary as a blogger -- December 17, 2014 -- I thought I'd invite readers to point out their own favorite entries.

In the comments section, below, tell me what you've liked best among the 1,500 posts on Rick Sincere News & Thoughts (a title I've never really liked, but I got stuck with it early on). If you want, tell me what post you liked least, and why.

If you're really appreciative, feel free to leave a tip (left-hand sidebar) or buy something through my Amazon.com affiliate program.  Or check out my Amazon author page.

Finally, to honor my "blogoversary," I'm going to try to post something at least once each day through the month of December. The last time I did that was October 2013.

So -- what do you think? Don't hold back. Feel free to say anything.

Stating the obvious in a single newspaper headline

Charlottesville's Daily Progress wins the prize for stating the obvious in its banner headline on Sunday, October 12.

There, above the fold, was this shattering piece of news:

That's right:  "Not all churches open to same-sex marriage."

Next week we'll learn that "Not all halal butchers sell pork" and "Not all Unitarian-Universalists believe in god."

To be fair, the web version of the newspaper's article has a better, more explanatory headline -- but most readers of the Sunday Daily Progress read what's tossed on their lawns in the pre-dawn hours.

Does Georgetown University Have the World's Smallest Athletic Facility?

As an alumnus of Georgetown University, today I received an email alert that tomorrow there will be a live webcast of the groundbreaking ceremony for a new athletic structure on campus.

According to the email,

This exciting milestone marks a historic moment in Georgetown’s tradition of athletic excellence.

The new four-story, 144-square-foot facility is named for legendary Hoyas men’s basketball coach John R. Thompson Jr., and is supported through the generous philanthropy of Georgetown’s alumni, friends and donors.

Imagine that! A four-story building that has only 144 square feet of space. Twelve feet by twelve feet, spread out over four floors. A handful of study carrels for grad students are bigger than that.

Is this a dollhouse or a miniature gymnasium?

Just in case a corrected email goes out that says the John R. Thompson, Jr., Intercollegiate Athletic Center is not intended for dwarf bowling tournaments, I have attached a screenshot below:

Hoya Saxa!

Fuzzy memories of elections past

An odd letter made its way into the Charlottesville Daily Progress today.

The letter, submitted by Albemarle County resident Hubert Hawkins, makes an argument about retaining Virginia's tradition of open primary elections, in which any voter, regardless of party affiliation, can participate in either the Democratic or Republican party's primaries for nominating candidates for the general election. (Virginia voters do not register by political party, so "party affiliation" is determined by the voter's own individual preference and observations of primary voting patterns and recorded financial contributions to candidates and party committees.)

Mr. Hawkins tries to undergird his point by reminiscing about the only time he crossed party lines to vote in a Republican primary:

Years ago when Oliver North opposed John Warner in the Republican primary, I was a Democrat who never sought to meddle in Republican elections. But I knew that my senator was going to be a Republican, no matter who won the party’s primary, because my party had no competitive candidate. So I voted in the Republican primary, fearful of what outcome might ensue from the victory of such a controversial character as North.

I have never regretted my vote, and I have always been grateful that Virginia law allows all voters to participate realistically in the future of the state and nation without restrictions on what party they may have belonged to.

The problem with that example? Oliver North never challenged John Warner for the Republican Party of Virginia's nomination for the U.S. Senate, in a primary or through any other method.

John Warner, Larry Sabato, and Mark Warner at UVA, June 2014

John Warner ran unopposed for the GOP nomination in 1990, and he had no Democratic opponent in the November election. Nancy Spannaus, a devotee of political cult leader Lyndon LaRouche, was the only other candidate on the ballot that year. Warner beat Spannaus by sweeping every county and city and earning 80.9 percent of the vote.  The absence of a Democratic general election candidate that year may be what Mr. Hawkins is trying to recall in his letter to the editor.

In 1994, Oliver North sought the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate and winning it in a convention against former Reagan administration official James C. Miller III. There was no primary election that year, and John Warner was not on the ballot. North went on to lose the general election to incumbent Democrat Chuck Robb in a three-way race that also included independent J. Marshall Coleman. That election was the subject of a popular documentary film, A Perfect Candidate.

In 1996, Jim Miller challenged John Warner for the nomination in a primary election but Warner won and went on to face Democrat Mark Warner in the general election.

After serving one term as Virginia''s governor, Mark Warner eventually won John Warner's U.S. Senate seat in 2008, after John Warner decided to retire.  The two of them remain on friendly terms (as seen in this video from earlier this year) and, in fact, John Warner has endorsed Mark Warner's re-election bid this year.

Regardless of what one thinks about the merits of Mr. Hawkins' argument about open primaries, it's important that the person making that argument have his facts straight. For that matter, it is the responsibility of the newspaper's editors to ensure that such factual errors do not make their way into print.