It's Eliza Dolittle Day
May 20, 2010
Marc Acito is the author of How I Paid for College and Attack of the Theater People.
In Act One of My Fair Lady, Eliza Doolittle, the Cockney flower girl learning to speak like a lady, fantasizes about meeting the king. Of course, because it's a musical, she sings:
One evening the king will say, 'Oh, Liza, old thing - I want all of England your praises to sing. Next week on the twentieth of May, I proclaim Liza Doolittle Day.
Since I'm not Julie Andrews or Audrey Hepburn " or Marni Nixon, who sang for Audrey Hepburn in the movie, I'll spare you the rest. But suffice to say, Eliza envisions all of England celebrating her glory. The only ones who recognize Eliza Doolittle Day, however, are music theater geeks like me. And while an evening of cocktails and show tunes sounds like fun, it's insufficient to mark the occasion because Eliza's message is all too relevant today.
You see, My Fair Lady is based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, and both pieces explore the ramifications of learning how to speak properly at a time when elocution was valued as a symbol of education and upward mobility.
Listen to Franklin Delano Roosevelt say "the only thing we have to feah is feah itself," and it's almost inconceivable that ordinary Americans trusted someone who sounded like Thurston Howell III. We are now in an age when Sarah Palin speaks to a quarter of the electorate even though she talks like she's translating into Korean and back again. Even the rhetorically gifted President Obama has felt compelled to drop his g's while tryin' to sell health care reform.
Nowadays soundin' folksy has become more important than sounding educated. As Eliza's teacher Henry Higgins says, "Use proper English, you're regarded as a freak." But our country's biggest competitors are learning proper English and, judging from all the Indian call centers, learning it quite well. Our country was built by people striving to move up, not dumbing down. So on this Eliza Doolittle Day perhaps we should all take a moment to think before we speak.
NPR
On this date in:
1861 North Carolina voted to secede from the Union.
1861 The capital of the Confederacy was moved from Montgomery, Ala., to Richmond, Va.
1902 The United States ended its occupation of Cuba.
1908 Actor Jimmy Stewart was born in Indiana, Pa.
1927 Charles Lindbergh took off for Paris from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, N.Y., aboard the Spirit of St. Louis on the first nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
1932 Amelia Earhart took off from Newfoundland for Ireland to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
1939 Regular trans-Atlantic air service began as a Pan American Airways plane took off from Port Washington, N.Y., bound for Europe.
1969 U.S. and South Vietnamese forces captured Apbia Mountain, referred to as Hamburger Hill by the Americans, following one of the bloodiest battles of the Vietnam War.
1970 Some 100,000 people demonstrated in New York's Wall Street district in support of U.S. policy in Vietnam and Cambodia.
1971 The album "What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye was released.
1989 Comedian Gilda Radner died of cancer at age 42.
1993 The final first-run episode of "Cheers" aired on NBC.
1995 President Bill Clinton announced that the two-block stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House would be permanently closed to traffic as a security measure.
1996 The Supreme Court struck down a Colorado measure banning laws that protect homosexuals from discrimination.
2002 East Timor became an independent nation.
2006 The FBI searched the Capitol Hill office of Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., as part of a bribery investigation. (Jefferson was convicted in 2009 and sentenced to 13 years in prison. He is free on appeal.)
2006 San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds tied Babe Ruth for second place on the career list with his 714th home run.
2008 Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor. (He died in 2009.)
2009 A commission published a damning report on decades of rapes, humiliation and beatings at Catholic Church-run reform schools in Ireland.
2009 Suspended NFL star Michael Vick was released after 19 months in prison for running a dogfighting ring to begin two months' home confinement.
@edgarblythe,
First, edgar, an answer to your monkey song. (I had forgotten that)
The biggest monkey of them all, folks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MzJfyltJ4Q&feature=related
No tar balls on my ocean, Texas.
Back later to review My Fair Lady and your history items.
@edgarblythe,
more synchronicity, edgar. Jimmy Stewart did the movie on Lindberg. Here is the trailer.
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi265356313/
and one of my favorite songs from My Fair Lady.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVmU3iANbgk&feature=related
George Bernard Shaw would have approved
I don't know how Shaw felt about music, but the musical play and film do the story justice. He may have gotten angry that the ending was altered, but I favor it, at least for a musical film.
I watched the Lindbergh film. It was pretty good.
I first watched My Fair Lady at a theater in Seattle. While the other sailors I knew partied, I went to the show. Since then, I have seen it in its entirety several times.
@edgarblythe,
Ah, edgar that was beautiful. Don't know Sophie B., but she has a great voice.
You're right about Shaw, Texas. Cockney is alive and well and spoken frequently. Just ask Barry the Brit.
I cannot tell you how beautiful the ocean was today- clear blue and birds swept along the foam of the high tide. Wish I could have walked along the sand today. Didn't need music; the ocean created its own. Close to being this, however.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3--LxXzYJjo&feature=related
More bad news concerning B Michaels
Bret Michaels has suffered what doctors call a "warning stroke," or a transient ischemic attack, according to his Web site.
The rocker, 47 -- who is still recovering from a brain hemorrhage -- was "readmitted to the hospital this week after suffering numbness on the left side of his body, predominately his face and hands," according to a statement posted on his site.
While undergoing tests -- including an MRI and CT scan -- doctors also discovered he has a hole in his heart.
The news is "devastating...to Bret and his family," says his neurosurgeon, Dr. Joseph Zabramski. Michaels has two daughters, Raine, 10, and Jorja, 5, with ex girlfriend Kristi Lynn Gibson.
Continues Dr. Zabramski, "The good news is that it is operable and treatable and we think we may have diagnosed the problem that caused the...warning stroke; however we feel it is highly unlikely this is connected to the brain hemorrhage he suffered just a few weeks earlier. Once again, it is great that he quickly reacted to the severe numbness and got to the hospital immediately."
The sunshine song was appropriate today. Got one for later this evening:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeFPc22WkUE
Merle Haggard
@edgarblythe,
I like Merle doing When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold again, edgar.
Hey, buddy. Give Me the Night. That's what George likes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YozorhCvytI&feature=fvw
You want the night; you got it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq44bTWfhf4
This is from before he signed with RCA and became a star
@edgarblythe,
Wow! I had no idea that Harry did that one, edgar. That's from Roberta so we shall dedicate that to our Roberta. It's beautiful. Thanks for the new moon and the star, Texas. Keep us posted on Bret.
Time for me to say goodnight, and I think that I shall do so with one of my favorite classical composers.
So tragic was the man's life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlZzURk969s&feature=related
From Letty with love and a sigh
That's a good one by Schumann, letty
Morning Ms Letty,Ed and all WA2K peeps.U.S. opera diva Renee Flemming releases a CD of modern songs titled Dark Hope.Here's a track I heard at work last night....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI65rdrVTdg&feature=related
Endlessly.
Staying with the girls,here's our Tracy....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcf3f49zAnQ&feature=related
Stand By Me.
BTW she's playing a strumstick
.
Climbing the apples with Sophie and a few friends....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46Y9aA0vvfc
Sophie Ellis Bextor feat. Spiller - Groovejet ( If This Ain't Love) Live - (as it should be
)
Laters WA2K.
Good morning WA2K folks.
edgar, Love Tim Hardin's If I were a Carpenter. Thanks, Texas.
Barry the Brit is always gone before Letty shakes the sleep from her eyes.
The only one that I knew was Tracy Chapman's Stand by Me. Never heard of an instrument called "the drumstick" but it was awesome.
Two songs for the morning, y'all.
First, Cafe Del Mar.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdCRtQTL6LM&feature=related
Now, since it's Mr. T's birthday, here's a tribute to him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkI7WmB7ebc
AMC showed the movie The Last Hunt, but I only saw a few minutes of it. The music from that movie, especially one, is impossible to find. The ending was fantastic, however.
