This photo is from my high school yearbook, senior year. I know it's not very good - as I mentioned recently, I don't have any photographic skills, But truth to tell, it doesn't look much better in the book.
I'm in the picture, sixth from the left. I have considerably more body fat and considerably less hair now than I did in 1979. But the person to whom I want to call your attention, at least in the first part of this post, is the young woman fifth from the left, the one with her back up against mine.
The teens in that photo have gone our separate ways since 1979, and I've completely lost track of some of them - in fact, I have no memory at all of two or three of them. But I knew most of them pretty well. Many of them, including me, were active in the school musicals. When I went off to college, I put performance in the rear view mirror (except for church choir), and went on to a dull business career. The young woman facing me, to the right of me as you look at the picture, who happened to be my prom date (in a just-friends way), is a doctor now. Another young woman in the photo went to Loyola with me, and it's always a treat to spend time with her. One of the guys is a lawyer now.
But at least five of the fifteen in that photograph went on to pursue careers in the performing arts after high school and college. Two or three of them seem to have made sustainable livings at it. One, the woman with her back up against mine, has done better than most.
If you've seen the Disney animated film The Little Mermaid, you've heard her sing. In fact, she spoke and sang the lead role, Ariel. Her name throughout her professional career has been Jodi Benson. Benson is her married name. In high school, she was Jodi Marzorati. Here is her smash hit song, "Part of Your World". At the time I write this, it's had 96 million views on Youtube. She's had other Disney roles, too - she's been the voice of Barbie in the Toy Story franchise.
I guess I should add that Jodi is alive and, to the best of my knowledge, well. Don't let the title of this post mislead you on that point. Stay with me.
Even in high school, Jodi was bursting with talent. She was a graceful dancer, she could act, she had poise, she was beautiful. And man oh man, could she sing. She sounded like, well, like a Broadway star. And in fact, she has made her mark on Broadway as well - she was nominated for a Tony Award in 1992 for her work in Crazy for You, which was a sort of cobbled-together show with a string of George and Ira Gershwin songs. (Any occasion for getting together and singing Gershwin songs is a good occasion). You can hear her sing "Someone to Watch Over Me" here. She can belt if the song calls for belting, but in both the Disney song and the Gershwin piece, you might note her delicacy, her sensitive phrasing, her clarity. She lets the song breathe. She's a wonderful talent.
In high school, Jodi looked and sang like an ingenue, so you might expect to her to have landed the ingenue lead role in every musical. But it didn't happen. She had her share of good roles, but not as many as you might expect.
There are various stories of famous high achievers who didn't really break through during their school years. Michael Jordan, who now is on the Mount Rushmore of basketball players, didn't even make his high school freshman basketball team. One can only imagine how that coach must feel now. Tom Brady, who might be the greatest quarterback of all time, didn't become a starter at Michigan until his senior season.
But Jodi's case wasn't like those. It wasn't that her talent wasn't obvious then. And it wasn't that the adults in charge of the theater program were foolish or unfair. It was just that there was someone in front of her.
That person was Marin Mazzie. Marin was a year ahead of Jodi (and me) in school. All of the qualities I gushed about Jodi - the singing, the dancing, the presence, etc. - applied to Marin as well.
In high school we did a musical play and a musical revue each year, and the school held open auditions for them. That means that, for three years, every time Jodi walked up the steps onto the stage to sing her audition song, she knew that Marin Mazzie was going to do the same. And Marin was difficult to displace.
I've seen all of my kids pass through high school. From the perspective of a parent, high schoolers aren't mature yet. They're not fully grown. But the potential really starts to blossom during those years. When I was a gawky freshman, Marin was a skinny sophomore. But even as a sixteen year old teen, her singing voice was like a mature woman's. It filled the stage and the theatre.
Marin also went on to a career in the performing arts. Like Jodi's, it was distinguished. Marin moved to New York as a young woman, and stayed there for the rest of her life. And if you have followed Broadway closely for the last 30 years, you may have heard of her. She became a star. Possibly she was best-known for her work in Ragtime - she played the role of Mother in the original Broadway cast. She was nominated for a Tony for that work. You can hear her sing "What Kind of Woman" from that show here. Marin was nominated for Tonys two other times, for her work in Stephen Sondheim's Passion, and in the 1998 revival of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate. Here she is singing "So in Love" from that show.
Marin passed away last year, too soon. She had battled ovarian cancer for a number of years.
During last night's Tony Awards telecast, in one of those In Memoriam segments they do on awards shows, the American Theatre Wing announced that a Special Tony Award would be given posthumously to Marin, in recognition of her advocacy for patients with ovarian cancer - and surely also in recognition of her luminous career. I also ran across this nice video, featuring Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Kelli O'Hara and other Broadway royalty, talking about how Marin influenced them and touched them. I admit I teared up - and so did some of them. Granted, they're all professional actors. But as best as I can discern, they were sincere in this video. I don't think I ever met Marin again after she graduated in 1978, but it seems she never lost the heart, the kindness and the sincerity that was cultivated in the soil in which I also happened to be planted.
We all try to find our ways as we go from childhood to our teenage years to adulthood. I didn't know what to do when I came out of high school. I had figured out by then that I didn't have an ounce of stage talent. I didn't know where my talents lay. I had been in high school musicals because it was fun and I loved the music. After graduation, I went to business school, got married, had a passel of kids. In the course of wondering what I should do, I've ended up doing things, and it's added up to a life. It turns out my particular talents, such as they are, are in marriage, fatherhood, project management, and (perhaps) ministry. I still doodle on the piano in church once in a while; yesterday I sang the solemn dismissal for Pentecost. That's the extent of my performing arts these days.
I've kept up with a handful of people from my high school days. I go to the reunions every 10 years. I don't think Jodi made the last one. We have another one this year. I hope she comes. I'd like to remember Marin with her.
Glad to see you back, Jim.
ReplyDeleteSounds like you had some talented classmates. I am also looking at a class reunion this summer, the big 5-0. I don't think any of my classmates made it into show biz, but everyone had their talents. The class of '69 has lost quite a few of their number. I didn't always make it to the reunions, but going to make this one. You blink your eyes and suddenly half a century has gone by.
Katherine, thank you. Life demands have kept me away from the blog. I'll try to check in a bit more this week.
DeleteI'm glad to hear you're going to your reunion. My own life has sort of progressed in discrete pieces, like beads on a string. I progress to a new bead and leave the previous one behind. I think it's important to reconnect with older beads whenever possible. It provides my life with a sense of wholeness or unity that otherwise would just be disjointed.
A lot of my classmates left the small city in which we attended high school (Rockford, IL) after graduation. So there is this sort of split between left town / stayed in town groups Not everyone who went off to college stayed away, but seemingly most of them did.
"Reconnect with older beads." I seem to do that at funerals a lot. After my mom's service, three of us girls from the neighborhood decided to get together once in awhile. That has been fun and instructive. No one knows you like the people who can remember when you were six and have the pictures to prove it.
DeleteThe mean girls run out high school reunions, so I have never gone. Kept up with college friends, but many have died.
So much talent in one suburban Chicago school. We expected it in New Jersey, so close to New York. (At one point every working Annie on Broadway and the road came from within 20 miles of my house.) I begin to understand why a Republican capitalist has such a great love for the theater. (I sometimes dangle a song title when I write just to see if you will respond with the link.)
ReplyDeleteI didn't know about Marin Mazzie's death until I saw a mention of the tribute in a pre-Tony Awards story. She left luminous memories, and a heck of a touching tribute video.
Tom - re: the working Annies - I really believe that talent isn't all that unique. If you get a hundred people together at random, quite a few of them will be able to sing, and one or two will be able to sing really well, or at least have the right raw materials to be developed. I've pondered from time to time how our school at that particular moment had that burst of entertainment-biz success stories (and the two about whom I've written in this post aren't the only ones - there are one or two others about whom I might blog at a future date). Part of it might be that it's not just pure talent alone; it's talent plus ambition plus capacity for work plus capacity for risk-taking plus people skills plus supportive parents, spouses and partners plus who knows what other attributes add up to the total "package". Sorry to say, I think good looks and an aesthetically pleasing body type are probably a big part of it.
DeleteIn the case of my particular high school, there also happened to be a couple of extraordinary adult mentors and teachers who coached these kids at the right time. I also think that being part of a group or community is important for performers in particular - that they develop and get better by pushing, supporting, inspiring and competing with one another.
And I'm sure pure dumb luck is part of it - being at the right audition for the right part at the right time with the right directors. The film La La Land from a few years back, which truth to tell I didn't love (for Pete's sake, why don't they cast singers for singing roles?), made an important point about the audition-luck factor.
For what it's worth: we weren't suburban. This was in Rockford, IL, which wasn't, and still isn't, absorbed into the Chicago metropolis yet. It's off by itself, in north-central Illinois, a few miles south of the Wisconsin border - in some ways, more a part of Wisconsin than Illinois. This was the Catholic high school in that small city. In the 1970s, and still today to some extent, there was an arts community, not large but pretty vibrant, in that town.
Rockford! A Republican conservative from Rockford loves theater. If you had said Kankakee you couldn't have floored me more.
DeleteI agree with you totally about La La Land. They had me with that opening dance number and then, one step at a time, lost me with, highly visibly, the odd casting.
Another way of saying what I think you are saying is that talent is everywhere. But it takes so much luck as well in show biz. One of my favorite ironies: In 1979, Beth Austin was featured in "Whoopee" with Charles Repole (for whom a great future was predicted) while, just around the corner, Mark Syers had created the role of Magaldi in "Evita." Beth is from Trenton and Mark (who died in an auto accident) was from just up the road in Washington Crossing. I mentioned Beth to Mark, and he told me a story that I confirmed in the library at the Trenton Times. The Times, at one point, ran an annual talent contest, and Mark and Beth were in it the same year. She finished second, if I recall correctly, and he finished third. The girl who won the contest went on to a husband and kids and became a power in Trenton schools. She came out of "retirement" once while I was there, to help showcase a young composer. She could still belt. But she had found something else to do.
I think the "package" (vs. talent) is increasingly important. I enjoyed the documentaries about back-up singers and studio musicians (50 Feet From Stardom and The Wrecking Crew), some of whom became recognized in their own right (Darlene Love and Glen Campbell) and most who didn't.
DeleteMany of these folks weren't the right shape, size or color, or just didn't have the right agent.
But they made people with less talent look pretty damn good.
I wouldn't miss any HS class (1958) reunion. We had #60 last year and out of a class of 50 (VERY small town in SW Wisconsin)+ 17 who were with us at one time or another, 22 showed up. #65 may not happen as most of us will be in our early to middle 80s then. No one was famous for anything. Most didn't even leave the area. Happily married, farmed, worked in factories and a few had professional jobs (they were the ones who left the area, such as I). It's not who we became as much as who we were and are.
ReplyDeleteI got out and never went back. One of my classmates went to Marquette (business) at the same time I was there, and we sort of kept sort of in touch. Many, many years -- like 40 -- later, my wife and I were in Williamsburg, and as we were entering St. Bede's Church, my wife mentioned to the usher that I was an usher in West Palm Beach. The usher looked at me and said, "Tom?" We had dinner that night, but that was the only contact I ever had with my old class.
DeleteThat's nice to hear, Jimmy. My mom's class reunions were like that. Once people got into their 80s, their elderly children started to bring them, and I met some really nice people.
DeleteSome people go to reunions, some not. I haven't gone to a H.S. or college reunion yet. I felt no connection, I guess. But I feel different about my workmates. We have an old farts lunch on the second Friday of every month and I make it to most of them. There's a real shared life experience. I spent more day to day time with some of them than my parents and relatives. It's a community that now encompasses the living and the dead. Probably a closer connection than with my parish, though actually most of us are practicing Catholics.
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