Wednesday, September 29, 2010

1969 RBBB #22


1969 RBBB-22, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

Posted by Buckles at 9/29/2010 05:52:00 AM

4 comments:

Eric said...

This is the “’Twas the Night Before Tomorrow,” spec that closed the first half of the performance. It offered a rather curious juxtaposition of famous nursery rhyme characters and outer space. (It was almost as if the production team had hastily revamped an existing spec to take advantage of the Apollo 11 and 12 moon landings, both of which occurred during 1969.) The “space aliens” were depicted as people with huge orange wings (not unlike the “Hawk Men” from the Flash Gordon serials of the 1930’s.) The outer space theme would be used again for the 110th Edition’s spec with vastly superior results in all areas.

29 September, 2010 11:19
Buckles said...

Interesting that you would mention that.
I saw this show the following year 1970 and found the spec to lack a theme as you mentioned.
Great if you liked the color orange.
What was the symphonic tune they played at this point? Impressive piece, in fact I'm humming it right now to the puzzlement of my little dog "Ming the Merciless" sitting in my lap.

29 September, 2010 11:39
Eric said...

The music the space aliens trudged along to was Prokofieff’s march from the opera THE LOVE FOR THREE ORANGES. (You probably remember it as the theme music from the old radio show THIS IS YOUR FBI.) There was also a fragment from THE PROCESSION OF BACCHUS from the ballet SYLVIA by Delibes. Neither of these numbers are what one would associate with beings from outer space. Since John Ringling North was still being listed in the program as “producer,” it is possible that the Felds chose not to give this spec the same creative energy and financial resources that they would devote to their own big 100th Anniversary spec that would premiere the following year.

29 September, 2010 18:12
Roger Smith said...

Having a big spec close the first half provided many a mother the excuse to declare the show over and hustle unruly kids to the street. Some frantic staffer must have picked up on this, too, since I well recall Harold Ronk intoning that this "concludes the FIRST PORTION of our program! And now, INTERMISSION time!" Or, Let's not let the 2nd half concession sales lam out the door.

29 September, 2010 18:42

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