Promise Made, Promise Kept

My father was in the U.S. Army so we moved quite a bit. From 1964 through 1966 we lived in Germany. At that time the Armed Forces Network did not have a television service, at least in our area. They had radio, but their programming had to be divided among many different types of programming to satisfy different tastes. Of course there was a base movie theater, and I probably went to the movies more in that two-year period than any other time in my life.

One form of entertainment we availed ourselves of was the large collection of records at the base library. My mother would check out many original Broadway cast albums. I can’t remember all of the things I heard from those records, but one family favorite was from a 1961 Broadway show named Carnival. However, we only checked the record out; we could not buy it. The star of Carnival was Anna Maria Alberghetti who, by the mid 1970’s, was more well known for Good Seasons Salad Dressing commercials.

Who has the croutons?

The male lead was played by Jerry Orbach, later known for playing Lennie Briscoe on TV’s Law and Order.

The Jerry Orbach story.

The original story, The Man Who Hated People, was written by Paul Gallico. It was adapted and made into the movie Lili in 1953 starring Leslie Caron. It tells of a young woman, orphaned in World War II (or was it World War I?), who finds her way to a travelling carnival. After unsuccessfully trying a couple of different jobs in the carnival, Lili ends up working with the puppet show. While she loves the puppets, she grows to hate the puppet master – a bitter former dancer who was injured during the war and could no longer dance. I won’t spoil the ending but you can probably guess how things turn out. The film also featured Mel Ferrer, Jean-Pierre Aumont, a pre-Miss Kitty Amanda Blake, and Zsa Zsa Gabor doing something other than a game show.

In 1972 my mother was thinking about that Original Cast album of Carnival. She went to a local record shop and ordered it. It took a while but it finally came in. I was a junior in high school at the time. Late one night during the Christmas break I was listening to that album.

Everyone makes promises to themselves, often fuelled by the knowledge that the opportunity to fulfill that promise will never come up. As I listened to Carnival, I promised that I would do what I could to be in the musical if I ever had the chance.

A couple of weeks later I was sitting in class. The morning announcements came on.

“Auditions for the Spring musical, Carnival, will be held on January 17.”

Oh fiddlesticks, or words to that effect. I knew I had to audition. I had promised myself. That was less than three weeks before so I could not make excuses to get out of it. I knew what I would be doing after school on the afternoon of the 17th.

I had been in a play before. In summer school between the 7th an 8th grades I took a drama class. I enjoyed that so it was not as if I were going outside of my comfort zone. However, that was just acting. There was no singing or, shudder, dancing involved. But a promise is a promise. I would have to do it.

At the audition we read lines from the play. The chorus teacher checked out our singing ability. She asked me if I would volunteer to be in the school chorus the next year. When I did not respond, she asked me if I would be willing to be drafted to be in the school chorus the next year. (While I would not have volunteered, I would have loved to have been drafted – but that never happened.) I don’t remember the dance audition but, since I did not break any bones, I must have done as well as most of the other people.

Since I was a newcomer, I did not get the lead role (the Jerry Orbach part) although I would have really liked it. That part had some of the most powerful songs in the show and I could just imagine myself belting them out on stage. Another good thing about that role is than he did not dance.

Paul (Jerry Orbach) singing to his puppets.

I ended up getting a named part, Angelo, and a line (“Hey Marco, there’s someone here to see you”). A week or two after rehearsals began, someone got an after-school job and had to drop out. Since there was no conflict with his part in the chorus and my part, I was also given his part. A couple of weeks later it was felt that one of the Roustabouts (the male dance group) was an even worse dancer than I was so I was given most of his scenes as well.

The show opens like a quiet morning then bursts out like a sunny day.

The show goes on.

It was fun being in the chorus and singing. To this day I still think in terms of the harmony I sang rather than the main melody of the song.

Lili singing with the puppets then joined by the chorus.

Carnival was the first of three plays I was in during my high school years. They were fun and I would do them all over again.