Physical evidence

Some read­ers may recall my recent recol­lec­tions, apro­pos a new Warner Archive DVD of Michael Curtiz’s Al-Jolson-starring Mammy, of my teen years in Dumont, New Jersey, where one of my friends was an eccent­ric fel­low who was not only a rabid Jolson fan—in his teens! in the mid-1970s!—but also a rather keen Jolson imper­son­at­or. Many of you read­ers thrilled (okay, maybe you did­n’t really thrill) to my descrip­tion of this indi­vidu­al’s showstop­ping Jolson per­form­ance, in full black­face, at the February 1974 Student Organization Night show, the theme of which was…wait for it…“Phantasmagoria.” Fabulous, no? 

Not many of you expressed credu­lity over the fact that a teen­ager per­form­ing in black­face in pub­lic in 1974 could not only get away with it, as it were, but could also bring down the house. And des­pite the fact that none of you expressed credu­lity over this, I decided to scan a few pages from the 1974 Dumont High School year­book, titled Reveries, any­way, to provide proof of both the per­form­ance and its recep­tion. Because images of per­formers in black­face are con­sidered pretty objec­tion­able by some, even when they are presen­ted in an his­tor­ic­al con­text, I’m put­ting the bits con­cern­ing the epochal event below the fold. The pic­ture dir­ectly on the left is of your humble ser­vant, get­ting into ward­robe and makeup for his high school stage debut as The Professor in a DHS pro­duc­tion of…wait for it…Eugene Ionesco’s The Lesson. Not unike the hos­pit­al in that soap opera in Tootsie, Dumont High School, it occurs to me now, really was one nutty edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tion. Anyway, I pretty much flubbed that role—have you read the play recently? That’s a lot of dia­logue to mem­or­ize. On the oth­er hand, as my pal Doug Brod would say, look at that pun­im! Who could have guessed that sweet, big-grinning fel­low would grow up to be such a feared and loathed cinephil­ic gad­fly and inter­net scourge, recip­i­ent of veiled threats on Twitter, and all kindsa oth­er stuff? Sure can be funny, how life works out and all. So now, on to the oth­er stuff. Brace yourselves. Really. 

 There he is, Aaron Buckbinder, his Jolie ward­robe accur­ate down to the white gloves (I don’t know about those socks, though), wow­ing the crowd with his Jolson med­ley, which songs from it are lis­ted in the pro­gram at right. And, yes, the “entire cast” doing Pippin’s “Magic To Do” was as soul-scarring a thing to wit­ness as there ever was. Still I remem­ber the Fosse “jazz hands” that accom­pan­ied every “join us.” Really, you’ve nev­er seen Fosse “jazz hands” until you’ve seen high-schoolers try to do them.

While we’re look­ing at the pro­gram, let us con­tem­plate all of the poor souls who were tasked with fol­low­ing Mr. Buckbinder. For Aaron really did bring down the house, no lie; when he dropped to one knee and threw out his arms for that final “California, here I come!” the audi­ence was on its feet. Ellen Hyman tried to give as good as she got with a brassy rendi­tion of Buzzy Linhart’s “Friends,” done, yes, in the style of Bette Midler, who cut the tune on her The Divine Miss M a couple years earli­er; the song, as we all know, plays over the end cred­its of the some­what fab­ulous Sondheim/Perkins scrip­ted who­dunit The Last Of Sheila (1973). But, you know. 

And yes, in Act Two Aaron’s young­er broth­er Marc (who would later write, dir­ect, and play a bit role in Gone With The Wieners under the nom du screen “Marc Leland;” no, I am not mak­ing any of this up) took the stage with the acerbic Larry Golden and the chub­bily cuddly Mark Zecca, all in drag, to do an Andrews Sisters routine; and yes, this had some nov­elty and camp value; but no, it did not move the crowd as Aaron’s per­form­ance did. All of which I put down to the power of Jolson him­self, the man who, as Jerry Lee Lewis once observed, was one of the only true “styl­ists” in American pop­u­lar music. I leave you now with the final page of Reveries cov­er­age of S.O. night, fea­tur­ing a shot of the faux-Andrews Sisters and some of the, ahem, “mir­acle play­ers” from the show’s open­ing number.