In the late 1940s, "(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons" gave a young Nat King Cole the No. 1 song in America. It's a tune that they're humming over at the Kennedy Center, as the performing arts complex gears up for a nostalgic and wide-ranging review of that decade.
For the next six months, the center is arguing that the lyrics, music, dance, film, theater and fashion of the 1940s remain not only remarkable contributions by themselves but a critical yardstick in defining American culture. In almost every genre, the artists that followed are measured against the groundbreaking names of the 1940s. What choreographer is not compared with George Balanchine and Martha Graham? What singers are not compared with Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday? What movies are not put up against "Citizen Kane" and "Casablanca"? What young beauty is not judged in the light of Lauren Bacall and Lena Horne? Don't the sounds of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker inspire today?
The Martha Graham Dance Company's Tadej Brdnik and Miki Orihara in "Appalachian Spring," which will be presented Feb. 17-19.
(John Deane)
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So "Begin the Beguine."
The festival is called "A New America: The 1940s and the Arts." It is the largest event the center has produced in its 33 years, and its most expensive at $14 million. That's a lot of tickets "On the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe."
It all kicks off tonight with a free performance of the Count Basie Orchestra, the descendants of one of the masters of the big band era.
"We are trying to show how inventive the decade was," says Michael Kaiser, president of the center. "There was economic recovery, a sense of optimism, a sense of empowerment. There were bad things, particularly racism. It was not a perfect time in American history. But it terms of art, a lot of people were experimenting."
In 1940 Sinatra debuted with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, and American Ballet Theatre was founded. Agnes de Mille and Aaron Copland joined for the ballet "Rodeo" in 1942, the year of "Casablanca." Broadway welcomed Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!" In 1949 Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" won the Pulitzer Prize, and Rodgers and Hammerstein's "South Pacific" debuted on Broadway.
"All of this affected the rest of the century," Kaiser says.
With so many art forms and so much great material, streamlining all the elements into one package wasn't easy. Nor is the concept neatly defined like the successful festivals on Stephen Sondheim or Tennessee Williams. The series is meant to offer surprises, not just dwell in nostalgia.
In dance, Martha Graham was an undeniable force. In the early 1940s she joined with composer Copland to create a work eventually called "Appalachian Spring." It was first performed at the Library of Congress in 1944 and the following year won the Pulitzer Prize for music. Much beloved, it is now considered a masterwork of the 20th century. The center will present the Martha Graham Dance Company mounting the piece Feb. 17-19.
On the program from March 12 to April 3 is a rare revival of "Mister Roberts," the play by Tom Heggen and Joshua Logan about the crew of a Navy cargo ship. It opened on Broadway in 1948 and won four Tony Awards, including best play and best actor (Henry Fonda). Michael Dempsey will play the lead.
The sweet side of the 1940s dominates the center's menu. Only "Regina" presents a fully dark side. It is the Marc Blitzstein musical drama about a domineering and murderous Southern matron based on Lillian Hellman's "The Little Foxes." Patti LuPone, the Tony Award-winning performer, will star.
A musical was the hardest choice because the classics are still in circulation.
"We didn't want to do the tried and true. There was just a big production of 'Oklahoma!' on Broadway," Kaiser says. "Regina" -- which had only 56 performances on Broadway in 1949 -- was selected because it was offbeat for the times and the tone of the festival. It's not about happy times. In the '40s, "there was deep thinking going on. And Lillian Hellman was one of the great dramatists of that decade," Kaiser notes.
The 1940s left scars for many, from the Greatest Generation to the Hollywood Blacklist.
The emphasis here is not on Pearl Harbor, internment camps, the Holocaust, rationing, GIs who never came home or the House Un-American Activities Committee. Or the heroes -- Joe DiMaggio, Franklin Roosevelt, the Tuskegee Airmen -- or advances like penicillin. Or the physical changes in a country bursting with skyscrapers and Levittown tract housing. These '40s are about the sprawl of the arts and their new world.
Memorable music was part of every form, from the theater to dance to film.
Marvin Hamlisch, the composer, will present a salute to Broadway musicals. He knows the era's catalogue. "I think what is interesting about the 1940s songs, and I am not sure it was because of the war," he says, is "what always happens in show business when something disastrous is going on -- the songs tend to be more optimistic. You even have shows that were working on strong themes, like "South Pacific," and there you have 'Some Enchanted Evening,' and that is what love is all about. It's there. 'You'll Never Walk Alone.' 'Look to the Rainbow' from 'Finian's Rainbow.' Probably the reason for that is in those dark times, people don't want to write something dark."
The April 17 gala will feature performances by Barbara Cook, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Elaine Stritch. "Right now I have 30 great songs and we will bring that down to at least 15," Hamlisch says. "I love 'My Ship' [from "Lady in the Dark"] and 'Soliloquy' [from "Carousel"]. I adore 'How Are Things in Glocca Morra?' 'If I Loved You' is still a killer." And maybe, he says, there will be room for "There's No Business Like Show Business."
Classical works of Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, Paul Creston, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, William Schuman and Virgil Thomson have been added to the calendar by Leonard Slatkin, conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra. Jazz, presented by Roy Haynes, Christian McBride, Nnenna Freelon and Dianne Reeves, has been organized by pianist Billy Taylor. One evening of popular music on March 18 will be led by Aretha Franklin with Harolyn Blackwell, Johnny Mathis and Dwight Yoakam. "I'll Be Seeing You," indeed.
"Certainly the symphonic composers were coming into their own," Slatkin says. It was actually his remark at a staff meeting about the "incredible time" for creative output in the 1940s that got the entire center engaged in this idea. "People hadn't looked at this period in a serious way like this," he says. Appreciation for the era's classical music was expanding beyond the academic world, the musicians and small fan base.
"This was a time when all of a sudden there was a realization that there is a kind of art that meets people's needs," Slatkin says. "You had the development of people trying to find symphonic form and acquainting it in American terms. There was the explosion of the concerto with Samuel Barber. And young talents beginning to emerge like Leonard Bernstein. It was an amazing time."
On six evenings, starting Feb. 3, the NSO will look at these riches. It will play Thomson's "Yankee Doodle" Suite, Korngold's Violin Concerto, Bernstein's "Jeremiah" Symphony, Barber's Cello Concerto and Copland's Symphony No. 3. In addition, the NSO will re-create the original version of Schuman's Symphony No. 3.
A sizable part of the music programs will be devoted to jazz. The '40s were a time when, pianist Taylor says, there was a transition from people hearing the music on bandstands to smaller nightclubs. "When musicians came back from the service, they found a different social setting. Many musicians who were able couldn't be bandleaders, yet they could participate with smaller groups on 52nd Street and in Greenwich Village," Taylor says. He was right there at Minton's and the Three Deuces. He was playing piano but also watching Art Tatum, Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. And Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.
"Bebop was one of the fountainheads of what was happening," Taylor continues. "Dizzy, more than any other single musician, because he wrote many of the arrangements and presented the style that become bebop in the most easily accessible manner."
It won't exactly be "A Night in Tunisia" or one of the legendary after-hours jams with Parker, Thelonious Monk and Kenny Clarke, but the band carrying Gillespie's name will play Feb. 11. Taylor's own trio plays March 31 with trumpeter Jon Faddis, one of Gillespie's proteges. "You can't take a period like that and say everything that needs to be said," Taylor says. "We are going to talk about the Dizzy we knew."
Another landmark of the 1940s was the emergence of classic dance companies under the majestic guidance of Balanchine and Graham. The center is bringing American Ballet Theatre to the Opera House for two weeks, beginning Feb. 1, to recapture the core of its repertory from the 1940s. "Giselle" and "Swan Lake" are on the program. "This was the introduction of America finally owning classic ballet. American had its own company doing it," says Kevin McKenzie, ABT's artistic director. "In addition it was doing what no Russian company could do. It added cowboys, sailors, larger emotions."
The New York City Ballet will pay homage to its founder, Balanchine, and Jerome Robbins, an early assistant artistic director, beginning March 2. Included will be Balanchine's "Theme and Variations" and "Four Temperaments."
Several evenings will be devoted to the songs of the 1940s, with Tony nominee Christine Andreas Feb. 10-12 and Emmy winner Megan Mullally March 11 and 12. And then there are the movies and "As Time Goes By." Screenings of some of the indelible movies -- "Meet Me in St. Louis," "Mildred Pierce," "The Philadelphia Story" -- start tonight and run Jan. 30 and Feb. 6.
The festival will also be marked by an exhibition of the glamorous clothes of the decade, done in coordination with the Fashion Institute of Technology. It will be housed at the center from March 18 to April 15.
The night of Feb. 9 will be devoted to a panel discussion led by Dick Cavett, with Kitty Carlisle Hart, Debbie Reynolds and Carol Channing. Hart, now 94, does a show in which she talks about the creative forces of the 1940s -- Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and her husband, Moss Hart. "I like to sing [Berlin's] 'Always' and I make the audience sing. They sing up a storm. We had the best of everything then," she says. "Always," then.
For further information on "A New America: The 1940s and the Arts," visit www.kennedy-center.org/programs/festivals/04-05/forties.
