Horrible Gompie

I've written obsessively about Tom Tichenor and the puppets he created for the 1961 Broadway production of Carnival, here and here and also here. But did I know that Tichenor's Carnival puppets were the stars of a children's TV show in the Netherlands? No, I did not.

So: It seems that Jaap Molenaar, a Dutch filmmaker, director, and performer, had a series of children's shows on public TV station NCRV in the Netherlands, in which he played Papa Wirrewarre. From his show Het Koerhuis van Papa Wirrewarre came a spinoff show called Gompie en zijn vriendjes, which concerned a walrus named Gompie, a fox named Ritsaard, a grande dame named Majolica, and a young rogue named Peentje. This show ran six years, from 1966 to 1972.

And somehow, the stars of "Gompie" were a set of the puppet characters Tom Tichenor created for Carnival! Horrible Henry became Gompie, Carrot Top was Peentje, Renardo was Ritsaard, and Marguerite was Majolica.

How did this happen? How did Molenaar acquire a set of Carnival puppets? Was this in any way an "authorized" enterprise, approved by David Merrick or Tichenor or anyone else?

Thanks immensely to the help of Erik Lippe on Facebook, I think we're beginning to unravel this mystery. It seems NCRV also broadcast TV versions of musical comedies in the 1960s. They did Brigadoon in 1964, they did one called Jij en ikke which was a Dutch version of Me and My Girl in 1965, and according to one source they did Carnival at around the same time too. I can't find any detailed info on their Carnival, but Jij en ikke featured Jaap Molenaar as one of the writers, probably a translator. It's not too hard to imagine that Molenaar worked on NCRV's Carnival in the same capacity as well, for which NCRV might have bought a set of Tichenor's puppets, perhaps from a European tour. After the show was broadcast...well, NCRV owned a set of charming puppets, Molenaar was doing children's shows for NCRV...it starts to add up.

It at least seems obvious that Molenaar was aware of the puppets' previous identities. He renamed Carrot Top "peentje", which is a Dutch word for a type of carrot, and also the similarities of Renardo/Ritsaard and Marguerite/Majolica suggest a knowledge of their Carnival names.

As far as I can find, no one has thus far made this Carnival/Gompie connection anywhere on the internet. Does anyone out there know anything more about how this came to pass?

Here are a bunch of photos and video clips from the show, including some book and record merchandising:

Some of the illustrations from this book are viewable here.

It's the Hard-Knock Route for Us?

As I'm rehearsing Daddy Warbucks in the musical "Annie", I was interested to find this panel from Harold Gray's "Little Orphan Annie" comic strip of 11/22/24, within the strip's first year of existence. Martin Charnin and/or Thomas Meehan must have seen this particular strip during their research for the musical, and derived the famous lyric "It's the hard-knock life for us" almost verbatim from it.

Green Jeans in Black Fury

While watching the 1935 film Black Fury, starring Paul Muni, I had to stop and watch a scene again. No, it wasn't to closely study Muni's stagy, overblown performance. It was because there was a familiar face in the crowd:

In an instant I was sure this was the face of Hugh "Lumpy" Brannum, better known to folks in my age bracket as Mr. Green Jeans on Captain Kangaroo! He's not credited as appearing in the movie on the IMDb, but I really do think it's him. Judge for yourself; here are some comparison photos:

Of course, I've searched for evidence that it might be Brannum in the film. Black Fury was released in 1935, and is set in Pennsylvania coal country. Brannum played as a musician with Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians, and died in East Stroudsburg PA, but these Pennsylvania ties seem to be red herrings. According to Wikipedia and Brannum's New York Times obituary, Brannum was born in Illinois (in 1910) and went to college at the University of Redlands in California. After graduating in 1931, he played in dance bands in California, and eventually moved to New York where he was discovered by Fred Waring. The IMDb says Black Fury was filmed in Hollywood, so perhaps Brannum participated as an extra in the film a couple of years after graduating? I dunno.

But anyway...it sure looks like him, doesn't it?

How old are Nora and Torvald?

How old are Nora and Torvald Helmer, the central characters in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House? Ibsen doesn’t say. We know that they’ve been married for eight years and have three children, the oldest of whom (Ivar) has to be around seven. Torvald once refers to Nora as “young”. But other than that, we get absolutely no clues about their ages from Ibsen, who of course is the only person who could tell us.

But we’re not going to let that stop us from trying to figure it out anyway, are we? Of course not. I have developed a pretty good theory which suggests rather specific ages for them, to within a year or so. I propose that in A Doll’s House, Nora is around 29 and Torvald is around 37.

This is based on three things:

1. The ages of the original actors who played the parts in the world premiere on December 21, 1879 in Copenhagen. Betty Hennings was 29, and Emil Poulsen was 37.

2. The ages of Laura Kieler and her husband Victor. Laura Kieler was an acquaintance of Ibsen’s, and the real-life inspiration for Nora. Just before Ibsen wrote the play, Laura had actually done many of the actions Ibsen ascribes to Nora, and Victor’s involvement also corresponds to Torvald’s up to a point. (The fascinating story of Laura’s life, and her complicated relationship with Ibsen, should be a play unto itself.) But to the point: In 1879, Laura was 30 and Victor was 36, within a year either way of Hennings' and Poulsen's ages.

3. If Nora and Torvald are 29 and 37, and have been married for 8 years, then they were 21 and 29 when they were wed. When Ibsen married his wife Suzannah (in 1858), she was 22 and he was 30. So eight years into their marriage, they were 30 and 38, again just a year away from Hennings' and Poulsen's ages.

Flashing forward to Lucas Hnath’s play A Doll’s House, Part 2, which takes place 15 years after “Part 1”, Nora would be 44, and Torvald 52.

Of course, every production of either play must determine the characters’ ages for itself. But the very close alignment of the three points I raise above seems to suggest that these are more-or-less the ages that Ibsen had in mind.

Lemuel Gulliver: a timeline

As I prepare to play Lemuel Gulliver in Wishing Chair Productions' Gulliver's Travels, I have searched online in vain for a timeline of Gulliver's (admittedly fictional) life. Finding nothing, I have created one myself. I was aided greatly here by Isaac Asimov's terrific The Annotated Gulliver's Travels.

Where possible, dates are in year/month/date format, followed parenthetically with Gulliver's age that year. As a point of reference, it may be interesting to note that Jonathan Swift was born in 1667 and died in 1745.

Here is my timeline:

1661 — born in Nottinghamshire

1675 (14) — goes to Cambridge

1678 (17) — leaves Cambridge, apprentices with surgeon Bates

1682 (21) — goes to study medicine in Leyden

1685 (24) — sets sail as surgeon on The Swallow

1688 (27) — returns, settles in London, opens medical practice, marries Mary Burton (who is probably no older than 17)

1690 (29) — his practice fails, sets sail to the East and West Indies

1696 (35) — returns to England, tries to renew practice

1699/5/4 (38) — sets sail on The Antelope; by this time has fathered Johnny and Betty

1699/11/5 — The Antelope is shipwrecked; Gulliver arrives in Lilliput

1701/9/24 (40) — sails away from Blefuscu

1702/4/13 (41) — arrives back in England

1702/6/20 — sets sail on The Adventure

1703/3 (42) — leaves the Cape of Good-hope

1703/6/16 — Brobdingnag is spotted

1705 (44) — eagle carries Gulliver from Brobdingnag

1706/6/3 (45) — arrives back in England

1706/8/5 — sets sail on The Hopewell

1707/4/11 (46) — arrives at Fort St. George

1708/2/16 (47) — leaves Laputa for Balnibarbi

1708/4/21 — sails to Luggnagg

1709/5/6 (48) — leaves King of Luggnagg

1709/5/27 — arrives in Japan

1709/6/9 — arrives in Nangasac

1710/4/20 (49) — arrives back in England (Gulliver writes he’s been gone 5 years and 6 months, but this is wrong); soon after arrival conceives third child

1710/9/7 — sets sail as Captain of The Adventurer

1711/5/9 (50) — is abandoned on Houyhnhnms Land

1715/2/15 (54) — leaves Houyhnhnms Land

1715/11/5 — arrives in Lisbon with Captain Pedro de Mendez

1715/11/24 — leaves Lisbon

1715/12/5 — arrives back in England; youngest child is now 5 years old (assuming it was born); Johnny and Betty are between 16-27
1719 (58) — poses for frontispiece engraving

1720-21 (59-60) — writes Gulliver’s Travels; Betty is now married with children

1723 (62) — moves back to Nottinghamshire

1726/10/28 (65) — publishes Gulliver’s Travels

1727/4/2 (66) — writes letter to cousin Sympson

Junie B. Jones: The Musical

Yay, my copy of "Junie B. Jones: The Musical" arrived today! We recorded this last year, and I must say it sounds sensational! Kudos to all, especially David Weinstein, Dan Rudin, and Lori Casteel (who is terrific as Junie!).

What you get from Amazon from this link is a 2-CD set, one CD being a Junie B. Jones audiobook, and the other being the studio cast album we recorded. The latter will soon be available on iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify, etc.

One correction from the credits: In the song "Lucille, Camille, Chenille", I am Chenille and the wonderful Chris De'Sean Lee is Camille, not vice versa. Let's set the record straight! (Or in this case, the CD.)

Of Angry Birds and Rath-ful Pigs

I can find no evidence that Jaakko Iisalo, the Finnish designer of Rovio Entertainment's "Angry Birds" franchise, owns up to any influence from Lewis Carroll. But I see a connection!

At its simplest, the goal of the "Angry Birds" video game is to catapult birds through the air in an attempt to destroy fortresses constructed by green pigs.

In Chapter One of Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, Alice reads the poem "Jabberwocky", which famously begins:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves 

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

In Chapter Six, Humpty Dumpty explains parts of the poem to Alice, including that a rath "is a sort of green pig". Furthermore, in Martin Gardner's The Annotated Alice, Gardner states that in Carroll's day, rath "was a well-known old Irish word for an enclosure, usually a circular earthen wall, serving as a fort and place of residence for the head of a tribe."

So the word "rath" connotes both "green pigs" and "fortresses"! Also, "rath" is a homonym of "wrath", which is a synonym of "anger", which again reminds us of those catapulting birds. Is Iisalo a reader of The Annotated Alice?