Everything Old Is New Again

The recent death of Jerry Herman (Milk and Honey, Hello, Dolly! Mame, Dear World, Mack and Mabel, La Cage aux Folles) was notable for how so many of the tributes to the winner of three Tony Awards and a 2010 Kennedy Center Honor highlighted the beloved composer-lyricist's unquenchable optimism.












As the final moments of 2019 approach, the old adage "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" ("The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing") holds true. While the year was filled with natural and man-made disasters (people often die when a volcano erupts), a recent meme neatly summarized 2019 with the claim that "The hardest lesson I learned this year was that so many truly terrible people walk among us."

And yet, in spite of all the disappointments and setbacks we've suffered, hope springs eternal. Exciting new talents and driving forces (ranging from Greta Thunberg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Andrew Yang and Pete Buttigieg) are helping to reshape our cultural landscape. An inspiring article by Elizabeth A. Harris in The New York Times entitled "Playwrights Are Finding ‘Television Money’ Helps Pay the Bills" offered hope to some of the theatre world's rising talents. As always, laughter has often proved to be the best form of medicine.

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As part of its December 7th mini-festival (A Day of Silents), the San Francisco Silent Film Festival offered a program of shorts starring two giants of physical comedy: Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Buster Keaton. Although Keaton’s legacy has lasted much longer than Arbuckle’s, it’s important to remember that it was Arbuckle who gave “Old Stoneface” his first job in the film industry.

Both men grew up as child actors working in vaudeville (in 1899 Keaton made his professional debut at the age of three as part of a family act headed by his father). As Arbuckle recalled:

“My first role was a ‘fat part!’ Salary? Fifty cents. When I asked for the job they told me to go home and get my shoes and stockings, but I knew my mother wouldn’t let me come back. So they blacked my legs and feet (I knew I’d get a licking when I got home). My first real professional engagement was in 1904, singing illustrated songs for Sid Grauman at the Unique Theatre in San Jose at $17.50 a week. I played character stuff in Morosco’s Burbank stock company and did everything from clown and acrobatic acts to dramatic and musical. I went all through China and Japan with Ferris Hartman in musical comedy and played the Mikado, Ko-Ko, and Katisha (a female of the species).”

Buster Keaton insisted that his friend and co-star Roscoe’s weight was mostly muscle; silent film star Louise Brooks once compared dancing with Arbuckle to “floating in the arms of a huge doughnut.” Arbuckle claimed that "The audience remarks about my agility on account of my weight, but I’ve never used my weight to get a laugh. You never saw me stuck in a doorway or stuck in a chair."


Watching the brazen teamwork between these two men as captured on film 100 years ago is a sure tonic for the darkest days of winter. In her program note, Imogen Sara Smith writes:

“Roscoe and Buster were both gentle souls who loved practical jokes and making people laugh. They shared a birthplace (Kansas), a history as child performers, and difficult relationships with their fathers. Both emerged from vaudeville, the primordial soup of 20th century entertainment. Vaudeville (and its shameful cousin minstrelsy) also spawned a brand of humor that was surreal, absurdist, mined with irreverent spoofs and wild free association, carried by the personalities and supercharged energy of the performers. Arbuckle once said that Keaton ‘lived in the camera,’ an insight that shows the deep understanding at the heart of their friendship.”

“Keaton was instantly smitten with filmmaking. Fascinated by the camera, he tore apart Arbuckle’s Bell and Howell and reassembled it, not satisfied until he understood how every last gear, sprocket, and shutter worked. Movies clicked with Keaton’s visual and mechanical genius and suited his innate perfectionism. Everything changed when Keaton stepped in front of the camera (a moment we can still watch since, as Keaton loved to boast, his first scene in The Butcher Boy was done in a single take). Watching them romp through a primeval Eden, untroubled by rules or rationality, untouched by fatigue, they are young and free, learning through play the way children do.”

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Without any doubt, 2019 has been one helluva bumpy ride. Since this is the 1,863rd column published on My Cultural Landscape, I've chosen to close out the year (and decade) with a charming, oft-neglected lyric by Carolyn Leigh from 1962's Little Me.

"Here's to us, my darling, my dear.
Here's to us tonight.
Not for what might happen next year,
For it might not be nearly as bright.
But here's to us, for all that we have,
And the road that we've traveled so far,
Skies of blue, and muddling through,
And for me and for you as we are.
And here's to us for nothing at all
If there's nothing at all we can praise,
Just that we're together and here
For the rest of our beautiful days.
Here's to us forever and always."