For a whole variety of reasons, I rarely lived with my mother. When it happened, it was always an adventure when something magic might happen. 1955 was one of those years. My birthday is March 2 and the live version of Peter Pan was to be shown on NBC in color in March. Unfortunately, while I was looking forward to seeing the musical, all we had was a tiny black and white TV. An hour before the show, mom dashed in saying we had to go shopping. Despite wails of protest over missing the show, she dragged me off saying it was the only time she had to buy clothes with me for a belated birthday, but we had to stop for an appointment first.
Something struck me as weird when we dashed into a furniture store, but she told me to sit in a lounge chair and wait and she walked off leaving me sulking over missing the musical ... that is until a man came over and turned on the TV in front of where only one child was sitting just in time for the first full color, live television broadcast of Peter Pan.
Unfortunately, no color copy of the 1955 or 1956 broadcast exists, but there is a copy of the 1960 version with a slightly different cast of what I saw that evening. Lucky for you, 50 years later thanks to modern technology, you can get that version on DVD or watch on You Tube or just sit back in your chair now and imagine you are seeing a live musical in full color for the first time with the great Mary Martin as Peter and Cyril Richard as Hook and you have a mother who knew how to make magic.
2 comments:
Jamie, I never saw Mary Martin as Peter Pan on Broadway but I did see her on TV when I was a kid. O loved her and memorized every song. Same goes for "South Pacific." Thanks for your post!
I'm fairly certain I saw a broadcast on PBS of one of the Broadway productions of Peter Pan, but I can't recall whether Peter was played by Mary Martin, Sandy Duncan, or Cathy Rigby.
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