A Broadway Experience A Child Would Remember

About a month ago Ellie took three-and-a-half-year-old CJ to her first live play, a local Omaha production of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella. Like many young girls CJ is enraptured by stories of princesses. So Ellie was not too surprised that CJ sat intently absorbing the three hour production (her equally young friend bailed out at intermission). 

Experiencing live theater at any level is a treat best appreciated at the youngest age possible. Ellie, for example, tasted live theater when she was barely five years old. It was  a staging of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Coat at the Emelin Theatre in Mamaroneck. She and eight-year-old Dan squealed loudly when they recognized the actor playing an Elvis-inspired pharaoh was a counselor from their summer camp. (Eight years later Ellie’s first dramatic roles in “real” Broadway plays came in two productions of Joseph, the first as the vampy wife of Potiphar in her eighth grade play, and then as one of Joseph’s brothers in the first Play Group Theatre rendition in Westchester. 

For the next four years PGT and Ellie were almost inseparable. After Joseph, Ellie took on leading roles as Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors, the baker’s wife in Into the Woods, Wendy in Peter Pan and Ti-Moune in Once on This Island. (In non PGT productions she was Rizzo in Grease and split the role of the Leading Player in Pippin.)

Ask most adults who grew up in the 1950s and early 1960s about the shows they remember seeing and they invariably will call out names like Howdy Doody or Leave It to Beaver, Winky Dink, Captain Kangaroo or The Lone Ranger. 

I, too, watched those television shows. I have fond memories of them and enjoy the nostalgic times friends reminisce about them. But the shows that made the biggest impression on me, the ones I most recall from that golden time, were Broadway shows. 

In the short span of five years, from the time I was nine to 14 years old, I saw at least six Broadway shows and two operas (Tosca and La Traviata) at the Metropolitan Opera House. 

My earliest Broadway memory—seeing Sam Levene in the comedy Make a Million. For the record, I cannot recall any of the plot. But I do remember sitting with my siblings in the balcony while my parents sat in the orchestra. (An interesting footnote: Make a Million was co-written by Norman Barasch. For those not aware, Gilda’s maiden name is Barasch. She is unaware of any family connection to Norman.)

If you’re not familiar with Sam Levene, let me assure you he was a bonafide star of the theater and movies. Google his name if you don’t believe me. 

My Broadway experience was heightened by the renowned original casts I witnessed. In 1961, Phil Silvers and Nancy Walker in Do Re Mi. Later that year Camelot featured Richard Burton, Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet. 1961 was a stellar theater-going year for me. I also saw Robert Weede, Mimi Benzell and Molly Picon in Milk and Honey. The next year, Alfred Drake in Kean, followed in 1964 by Zero Mostel and Maria Karnilova in Fiddler on the Roof.   

The inspiration for this whole story is to tell you Ellie and Gilda took CJ to a Sunday matinee of a Broadway revival of Once on This Island. Yes, it could be argued that CJ is a tad young for the play’s message. But Ellie has been showing CJ a video of her performance 20 years ago as Ti-Moune. CJ is familiar with the plot and the songs. 

Ellie and Gilda reported she sat on the edge of her seat, enthralled, throughout the performance. She had a day to remember: a subway ride, a walk through Times Square after dark, dinner out in a restaurant, and her first Broadway play. It’s hard to imagine it could have been any better.

Family Reading

In anticipation of our recent trip to Israel we received a request from Gilda’s cousin. She’s an ex-patriot living on a kibbutz, having emigrated to Israel after graduating high school four decades ago. A grandmother now several times over, Tzvia, nee Harriet, would rather not repeat with the new generation what she considers an omission of parenting, namely, not reading to her offspring English language children’s books to increase their facility in her native tongue.

We were happy to oblige her request to bring books for newborns-to-elementary school age children. We picked out about 20 of our favorites, including Frederick, Corduroy, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, and a handful of Sandra Boynton classics.

I’ve mentioned before our preference for giving books as children's presents, accompanied by a short poem I penned several years ago:

Children outgrow clothing,
They tire of toys,
But the memory of reading
Books with your parents
Lasts forever.


Reading to Dan and Ellie was among the most glorious and rewarding of parenting activities. One reading session stands out, about the time Ellie was 10 and Dan 13. Like most young girls, Ellie loved the animated Disney movie, The Little Mermaid. As part of Disney’s promotional campaign for the film, I received a copy of the video and a handsome, illustrated bound version of the Hans Christian Andersen story. After watching the video several times, Ellie asked me to read the book before bedtime.

Ellie, Gilda and Dan piled onto our queen-sized bed for the command performance. All went well until I started reading the last page. In the movie, Ariel was transformed from a mermaid into a woman so she could marry her human sweetheart. But as I gazed down a few paragraphs, I stopped reading. The kids and Gilda wondered what was wrong. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Gilda’s quizzical look.

She was sitting right next to me. I whispered, “She dies.” Gilda said, “Huh?” “She dies,” I repeated. By now Dan and Ellie suspected something was not right. When I told them the original outcome of the story, like their parents, they couldn’t believe it. How could she die?

Perhaps Hans Christian Andersen wanted to give children a life lesson, that not everything turns out for the best. Or perhaps he wanted to nip in the bud any thoughts different cultures could successfully mingle. Whatever.

The Little Mermaid is one of his most endearing and enduring stories, commemorated by a statue of the mermaid in the harbor of Copenhagen. It’s a comely statue, a big tourist attraction but one without the impact one might expect. Indeed, Gilda and I were less than impressed when we saw it during a trip to the Danish capital, as the backdrop to the statue is an industrial portion of the harbor.

About eight years after the family reading, in a repertoire theater production, Ellie played Ti Moune, the lead in Once on This Island, a musical with significant parallel plot lines to The Little Mermaid. Ti Moune is a peasant on a Caribbean island who falls in love with an upper class islander she saves after an accident (Ariel saved a prince from drowning). As in The Little Mermaid, her would-be husband loves her dancing, but, alas, marries someone else. Just as in the Andersen story, she’s given a chance to save her own life by killing him; she resists, proving love is stronger than death.

On the wall above my desk there’s a picture of Ellie dancing as Ti Moune. It’s among my favorite pictures of her.