High Tor (play)

High Tor

Poster for Federal Theatre Project presentation of "High Tor" at the Belasco
Written by Maxwell Anderson
Date premiered January 9, 1937
Place premiered Martin Beck Theatre
New York City, New York
Original language English
Genre Drama
Setting sections of High Tor

High Tor is a 1936 play by Maxwell Anderson. Twenty years after the original production, Anderson adapted it into a television musical with Arthur Schwartz.

Play

The play is named for a summit overlooking the Tappan Zee portion of New York's Hudson River, near where Anderson lived in Rockland County.[1] The story was inspired by the real life controversy over quarrying the palisades along the lower Hudson.[2] The play also shares the plot element of a ghostly crew of Dutch sailors on the Hudson with Washington Irving's short story Rip Van Winkle.

Anderson began writing the play in May 1936.[3] It was first presented onstage in Cleveland, Ohio, in December 1936, with Burgess Meredith (Anderson's neighbor in Rockland County)[4] and Peggy Ashcroft in the lead roles.[5][6] The production moved to Broadway ten days later in January 1937, where it played 171 performances.[7] Anderson won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for the best American play of the 1936–1937 season. The award included this citation:

In its decision the circle celebrates the advent of the first distinguished fantasy by an American in many years. Imaginative and as comic as it is poetic in both spirit and expression, High Tor is a singular accomplishment, giving rare grace to this theatrical season in New York.[8]

In 1942, Anderson helped organize and served as the chairman of the Rockland County Committee To Save High Tor, which helped raise money to purchase the property in 1943 for the creation of a public park.[9]

Television adaptations

The play was broadcast as an episode of The Philco Television Playhouse on NBC, September 10, 1950, with Alfred Ryder and Felicia Monteleagre in the lead roles.[10]

Musical

Having lost Van to Lisa, Judith (Nancy Olson) meets the spirit of a sailor (Everett Sloane) who tells her Van will return to her by morning.

Anderson first considered a musical adaptation of High Tor for television in 1949.[11] He and John Monks Jr. adapted the play as a made-for-television musical fantasy in 1955, with music by Arthur Schwartz and lyrics by Anderson. High Tor was filmed in November 1955 by Desilu Productions at the RKO-Pathé Studio,[12][13] and broadcast March 10, 1956 on the CBS television network, as a 90-minute episode of the series Ford Star Jubilee. Bing Crosby, Julie Andrews, Nancy Olson, Hans Conreid, and Keenan Wynn starred in the film, produced by Arthur Schwartz, and directed by James Neilson.

Bing Crosby had seen Julie Andrews in her Broadway debut in The Boy Friend, and invited her to appear in High Tor. It was Andrews' first work in a filmed production, and her American television debut.[14] Because Crosby was uncomfortable with the exigencies of live television, he insisted that it be filmed instead.[15] For this reason, High Tor is sometimes considered the first TV movie.

Maxwell Anderson had little interest in television, and considered his adaptation a "potboiling job".[16] Julie Andrews later wrote that she thought her performance was "very stilted", and, "Alas, High Tor was not a memorable piece, and received only lukewarm reviews."[17]

The song score of the show, with story narration by Bing Crosby, was released by Decca Records in 1956.[18]

The young Stephen Sondheim also set a musical version, but the author refused permission, so the musical was never produced. Subsequent copyright extension acts mean the music will be illegal until 2042.

Plot of the musical version

Van Van Dorn (Crosby) owns a summit ("High Tor") overlooking the Hudson River in New York. Van Dorn is under pressure to sell his real estate, and, at the same time, is having doubts about his impending marriage to Judith (Olson). Judith leaves him because she feels that he should sell High Tor, as the profits would provide for their future. A freak rock slide traps Van Dorn and the real estate agents on High Tor; as Van searches for help, he meets the spirit of a Dutch girl by the name of Lisa (Andrews). Lisa and the spirits of Dutch sailors have inhabited High Tor for over 300 years since they were killed in a shipwreck. Of course, Lisa falls in love with Van. Songs include "Once Upon a Long Ago", a duet for Crosby and Andrews, "Sad is the Life of a Sailor's Wife", a solo for Andrews, and "When You're in Love".[19]

Song list

See also High Tor (album)

Reception

The reviews were not good although the show did achieve a rating of 29.4 against the competition of a Jimmy Durante show (13.7). Daily Variety opined, inter alia: "Somewhere in the double translation - from stage to tv-pix terms and from dramatic to musical comedy form - much of what made ‘High Tor’ a Broadway success seems to have got lost. What emerges on the home screens in this film, said to have cost upwards of $500,000, is essentially, a listless exercise, with rather undistinguished musical and murky philosophising, leavened only by the stingiest pinches of comedy."[21] Jack Gould writing in The New York Times said, "Bing Crosby badly miscast himself in undertaking a filmed musical version of Maxwell Anderson’s fantasy, “High Tor,” presented on Saturday evening over Channel 2. The motion picture, especially made for television use, was embarrassingly awkward and inept, a dismaying “quickie” unworthy of the Old Groaner’s time and talents.[22]

Radio adaptation

High Tor was presented on Lux Summer Theatre June 1, 1953. The one-hour adaptation starred William Holden.[23]

References

  1. ↑ "Actor Is Building Rockland Homes", The New York Times, June 6, 1937, p. 91.
  2. ↑ "Last Threat to Hudson Scenery at Mt. Taurus, The New York Times, June 26, 1932, p. XX18.
  3. ↑ Maxwell Anderson, Dramatist in America: Letters of Maxwell Anderson, 1912–1958, University of North Carolina Press, 2001, p. xlvii. ISBN 978-0-8078-4940-8.
  4. ↑ "Actor Is Building Rockland Homes", The New York Times, June 6, 1937, p. 91.
  5. ↑ "‘High Tor’ Acclaimed at Opening in Ohio", The New York Times, December 31, 1936, p. 20.
  6. ↑ Maxwell Anderson, High Tor: A Play in Three Acts, Anderson House, 1937.
  7. ↑ Internet Broadway Database.
  8. ↑ “Award of Critics Given to ‘High Tor’”, The New York Times, March 29, 1937, p. 21.
  9. ↑ Dramatist in America, pp. liv, 126.
  10. ↑ "Sunday Night Drama", The New York Times, September 10, 1950, p. 109.
  11. ↑ Dramatist in America, p. lxii.
  12. ↑ "Desilu Producing 2 More TV Films", The New York Times, October 19, 1955, p. 67.
  13. ↑ "Historic Peak: 'High Tor' Reproduced For TV Presentation", The New York Times, November 27, 1955, p. 153.
  14. ↑ Julie Andrews, at Internet Movie Database.
  15. ↑ Other reasons it was filmed: "High Tor will not be telecast live, the usual form for a large-scale show. It will be produced as a color film, which will permit later theatrical exhibition overseas and this will bring additional revenue to its originators." Oscar Godbout, "Hollywood Notes", The New York Times, September 4, 1955, p. X9. It was actually shot in black and white. "Christmas Can Stay — Radio and TV Are for It", The Washington Post, December 11, 1955, p. J3.
  16. ↑ Dramatist in America, p. 315.
  17. ↑ Julie Andrews, Home: A Memoir of My Early Years, Hyperion, 2008, pp. 185–186. ISBN 978-0-7868-6565-9.
  18. ↑ "Ford Star Jubilee Presents Bing Crosby" (advertisement), The Washington Post, March 10, 1956, p. 47.
  19. ↑ Macfarlane, Malcolm. "Bing Crosby - Day by Day". BING magazine. Retrieved February 18, 2016.
  20. ↑ Pairpoint, Lionel. "The Chronological Bing Crosby on Television". BING magazine. Retrieved February 18, 2016.
  21. ↑ "Daily Variety". March 12, 1956.
  22. ↑ Gould, Jack (March 12, 1956). "The New York Times".
  23. ↑ Kirby, Walter (May 31, 1953). "Better Radio Programs for the Week". The Decatur Daily Review. p. 40. Retrieved June 30, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.

External links

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