Walt Disney was yet another fan, and he bought film rights from the Barrie estate in 1939. In mid-twentieth century America, Peter Pan was in the air, figuratively and literally. Photo: Boris Karloff as Captain Hook via Wikimedia Commons Darling and including a handful of songs by Leonard Bernstein. Arthur got first dibs on playing the part on stage, in a successful 1950 Broadway production featuring Boris Karloff as both Captain Hook and Mr. Living in Hollywood in the 1940s, Martin became fast friends with another actress and devotee of the story, Jean Arthur whenever they were invited to a costume party, whoever was first to call the other on the phone got to go as Peter.
In my dreams I often did, and it was always the same: I ran, raised my arms like a great bird, soared into the sky, flew.” “When I was a child, I was sure I could fly. “I cannot even remember a day when I didn’t want to be Peter Pan,” she wrote in her autobiography. One youngster who got a bad case was Mary Martin. Peter Pan fever strikes kids intensely but randomly. So is flying, which is central to the play and which suggests the kind of freedom that, in our real lives, we only taste in dreams. But this casting convention dates from the first production, in 1904, and speaks to the play’s subtle but profound exploration of topics like gender, sexuality, identity, and even mortality, and is doubtless part of its deep appeal to so many children. If may seem odd that Martin played and now Williams is playing Peter-a boy who stops aging precisely at the moment before reaching puberty, and who has a playful but tender romance with a real girl, Wendy. Building on the success of last year’s live The Sound of Music, starring Carrie Underwood, it will present with an all-new live Peter, starring Allison Williams (“Girls”) as Peter and Christopher Walken in the role of Captain Hook.Īllison Williams as Peter. NBC hopes to recapture the magic on December 4.
Mary martin peter pan full movie tv#
It was an even bigger sensation, attracting 65 million viewers-still the fourth biggest audience of all time for a scripted TV show.
Several months later, NBC broadcast the production live on television. She and Charlap went on to write the score (with a little help from some songwriting veterans), and on October 20, 1954, Peter Pan-with Martin as Peter-opened on Broadway to enraptured audiences and rave reviews. Leigh, who at that point had only seen one musical in her life, recounted years later, “I remember singing a line to Jerry, ‘If I can live a life of crime, and still be home by dinnertime,’ and we got a nod of approval from him.” Leigh told Halliday she had a new partner, a young composer named Morris “Moose” Charlap, and in short order the two had a meeting with Martin, Halliday, and Jerome Robbins, who was to direct and choreograph the show. So I arranged to call him back at his office, and I did and it was him all right.” “Naturally, I thought somebody was kidding,” Leigh told a reporter. The next morning the phone rang in Leigh’s apartment, and a man who identified himself as Richard Halliday said that he and Martin wanted her to write the lyrics for Peter Pan.
It turned out that the words were by a young New Yorker, Carolyn Leigh, and the music by the veteran West Coast jazzman Johnny Richards. Right on the spot, they decided they’d hire whoever had written the song to compose the score for their production. Barrie’s 1904 play Peter Pan (original subtitle: “The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up”). On the car radio came Frank Sinatra’s new hit, “Young at Heart.” It was perfect! That is, the song had the exact sentiment and feel they wanted for the pet project they’d long been planning, a musical version of J.M. One day early in 1954, Mary Martin and her husband, Richard Halliday, were driving on the Merritt Parkway, near their home in Norwalk, Connecticut. Ben Yagoda | Longreads | December 2014 | 12 minutes (3,094 words)ĭownload.
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