TuzigootJournal: Carmel Culture

Dear Family and Friends:

Another weekend report:

This turned out to be our Carmel Culture weekend. Susie saw an ad for a dance program done to the music of George and Ira Gerschwin. This was Friday night, in Carmel's Sunset Center (The Cultural Heart of Carmel-By-The-Sea). Susie's a great dance fan -- as in This Bus Brakes for Dancing With The Stars -- and we both enjoy Gerschwin music, so we went. Mostly ballet it was, with a couple of tap dance numbers. The leaps, lifts, and spins the dancers can do -- I'm getting a little technical, I know -- are pretty amazing. And the music, recordings of many classic artists, kept it all moving with familiar tunes and kept me awake.

On Friday I had gone to lunch with some of the NPS profs and mentioned to one of them about our Friday plans. She invited us to join her and another NPS prof and his wife Saturday night in Carmel for "Bea-ing Lillie!" Dinner, too, beforehand at an Italian restaurant in Carmel. Sure, we said, we'd like to go.

The other prof is Don Gaver, the only prof at NPS who I really knew before we came. We've been on committees and programs together over the years. He has emeritus status and I didn't see him on campus at all when we got here. We had an e-mail exchange early on and he said he wanted us (couples) to get together, but then I didn't hear again. I got busy and didn't contact him. About half-way into the term I asked colleague, Pat Jacobs, where Don was, figuring he must be traveling, and she said he broke his hip right at the start of the quarter and was having a difficult recovery and rehabilitation. He's been on campus a few times recently; we've had some good visits on technical stuff and I went to lunch with Pat and Don week before last.

"Bea-ing Lillie" is a long-running tribute by Laynne Littlepage to Bea Lillie. Littlepage had a show, "An Evening with Bea Lillie," for 20-plus years -- some of you may have seen it -- and has recently re-vamped it into "Bea-ing Lillie." In the first act she appears as herself, Layne, talking about Bea and doing some of her songs, then in the second act she plays Bea (as I understand she did for the entirety of the original show).

I just vaguely knew who Bea Lillie was. As the website says: "Before Lucille Ball or Carol Burnett, Lily Tomlin, Tracey Ullman or Whoopi Goldberg, there was Beatrice Lillie." Noel Coward called her "the funniest woman of our civilization." Her career ran from the 1920s to the 60s; she won Tony awards in 1958 and 1964 (why wasn't I paying attention?) and died in 1989.

Anyhow, there was lots of funny stuff. One story and song: Bea tried to buy rights to a song by Rogers and Hart, but they wouldn't sell. She got even with Rogers by appearing on Fred Allen's radio show and doing a parody of Rogers and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!" Their show was called "Picadilly." Lots of crazy lyrics: "Oh what a beautiful noninclement afternoon!" You can buy these old radio shows, but I couldn't find any free transcripts on the internet. Apparently Rogers threatened to sue and Allen and Lillie came back with a wicked parody of "Sound of Music."

The theater that hosted this show, The Carl Cherry Center for the Arts, is very small -- living room size, seating maybe 30 people -- tucked away in the trees along a narrow street a few blocks away from the main part of town. As the web site says: We invite you to discover the Carl Cherry Center for the Arts and its ever-changing display of artistic delights, reflecting the bohemian inventiveness that gave Carmel its original charm. You could tell we were in serious art territory by the paintings of nudes hanging (in several senses of the word ifyouknowwhatImean) on the walls.

Meanwhile, Saturday noon, our artistic sensibilities turned to literature and the John Steinbeck House in Salinas, restored and operated as a charming little restaurant. This is where Steinbeck was born and grew up.

I've been trying to immerse myself in Steinbeck's world since we've been here, but haven't read nearly as many of his books as I'd hoped to. We did visit the Steinbeck Center in Salinas a month or so ago and have tracked down this cottage he lived in in Pacific Grove:

And here's a Cannery Row mural showing Steinbeck, on the left, and crew.

Of course, Steinbeck wasn't very well-liked in Salinas when some of his books were published -- two of them were burned in Salinas! He sided with the migrant workers in the 30s and 40s against the growers, bankers, and political power structure (droll understatement there). As an Okie, I grew up with the impression that Steinbeck somehow maligned our good state, only to have its reputation resurrected later by Rogers and Hammerstein (How's that for full circle?). Now I think "Grapes of Wrath" is one of America's greatest novels. The Steinbeck Center shows that Salinas forgave him. I may have mentioned earlier about the great exhibits pertaining to his books, including clips from the ones that were made into movies.

One Steinbeck site I've wanted to find was the Corral de Tierra, which means "walls of earth." This is the Spanish name for a scenic, idyllic valley between Salinas and Monterey that Steinbeck wrote about in "Pastures of Heaven," a collection of short stories set there. I did read and enjoy that book -- his characters were something short of idyllic. We had been close to the Corral one day, but I didn't realize where we were -- I was looking for Pastures of Heaven signs. Well, armed with knowledge and a map, we found it. Here's a picture from the website: