VOLUME ONE NUMBER ELEVEN

I will be taking a "hiatus" from posting THE LAKE REGION SOMETHING for a while.  As the new year begins my time is devoted to getting ready for the tax filing season.  And when the deluge begins in February I will not have time to post at any of my blogs.

If I do decide to return to THE LAKE REGION SOMETHING it will not be until the end of April 2019. 

But before I go – one final, appropriately Christmas-themed, THINGS NO ONE EVER TELLS YOU for 2018.

THINGS NO ONE EVER TOLD YOU:

A HALF DOZEN MIRACLES

We all know and love the 1947 film MIRACLE ON 34^th STREET with Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, a very young Natalie Wood, and Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle, written and directed by George Seaton and based on a story by Valentine Davies.  It is on everyone’s list of Top 5 Christmas movies, along with IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE and WHITE CHRISTMAS.

Of course, 34^th Street in the title refers to Macy’s Department Store, located on 34^th Street at Herald Square in New York City.

It was remade in 1994 with Elizabeth Perkins, Dylan McDermott, Mara Wilson, and Richard Attenborough as KK, written and produced by John Hughes and directed by Les Mayfield.  There were two major differences in the remake - Macy's department store declined involvement with the remake, so the fictitious "Cole's" was used instead of Macy’s, and the final court decision in the remake is based on a different reasoning than in the original film.

I remember the 1973 television version with Jane Alexander, David Hartman, Susan Davidson, and Sebastian Cabot.  The store was still Macy’s and the basis of the court decision was the same as the original movie.

There had been two previous tv versions.  A 1955 one-hour television adaptation, originally aired as an episode of “The 20th Century Fox Hour”, starred Teresa Wright, Macdonald Carey (who starred as Dr Tom Horton for almost three decades on tv soap “Days of Our Lives”), Sandy Descher, and Thomas Mitchell.  Ed Wynn played Kris in a 1959 adaptation broadcast live and in color on NBC the day after Thanksgiving.  It also featured Orson Bean.

But did you know that there was a Broadway musical version?     HERE’S LOVE, with book, music, and lyrics by Meredith Willson, best known for writing the book, music and lyrics for THE MUSIC MAN (the first Broadway musical I saw as a child – at age 5), opened on October 3, 1963 at the Shubert Theatre, and closed on July 25, 1964 after 334 performances and 2 previews.  I was in the audience for one of the 334 performances.  

HERE’S LOVE was directed by Stuart Ostrow and choreographed by Michael Kidd.  The cast included Janis Paige, Craig Stevens (aka tv’s Peter Gunn), Valerie Lee, and Laurence Naismith as Kris.  The classic song "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" written by Willson in the early 1950s, was used in the show.

BTW – according to Wikepedia - “Lux Radio Theater broadcast an adaptation in 1947 which starred the original cast including Natalie Wood. In 1948 it was done again on Lux, without Natalie Wood's participation, and it was adapted as a half-hour radio play on two broadcasts of Screen Director's Playhouse, all featuring Edmund Gwenn in his screen role.”  

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS  

AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR. 

LET’S HOPE IT’S A GOOD ONE –

WITHOUT ANY TRUMP!