Posts Tagged ‘musical theater’
“The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of doubt.”*…
Jamie Catherwood with the story of an inspired Catholic priest and hard-earned belief…
Two days before the wildly popular World’s Fair in his city came to an end, on October 30, 1893, a disturbed office seeker shot and killed the Mayor of Chicago in his own home… This devastated Chicago and America more broadly. This high-profile assassination detracted from a triumphant World’s Fair, which showcased American strength and global prominence.
For whatever reason, it really devastated… Catholic Priest, Casimir Zeglen. A local newspaper reported:
“the sensitive priest was shocked more than most people, because it occurred to him that there must be some way to create bullet-proof clothing that would protect people who, by their position, are most vulnerable to fanatics.”
And so… Zeglen began designing a bullet-proof vest… Around this time, there were a few publicized cases of men being shot in the chest and surviving because a silk handkerchief in their breast pockets, folded a few times, had stopped the bullet. This inspired Zeglen to explore the application of silk on a larger scale: bulletproof vests. He spent two years experimenting and tinkering, and in 1897 Zeglen received two patents from the USPTO for his invention: “armor protecting against bullets from a handgun.”
Although he was not always the target, Zeglen frequently placed himself in the line of fire during public demonstrations (Source)… How much conviction must you have in your own research to willingly place yourself in harm’s way? And that’s just it. True conviction can only come from deep research and long hours. Doing the work.
I’d never let someone shoot me while wearing a silk vest unless I’d spent thousands of hours researching, building, iterating, and studying everything there is to know about bulletproof materials.
Yet Zeglen had done just that. Backed by meticulous research and years of trial and error, Casimir Zeglen demonstrated his invention before the new Chicago Mayor – four years after the assassination of his predecessor – and the Chicago Police Department…
“A Story of Conviction & Bulletproof Priests,” from @InvestorAmnesia.
For more on Zeglen, see here; for more on other early bulletproof vests (and the dramatic photos they spawned), here.
* Rollo May, The Courage to Create
###
As we do the work, we might recall that it was on this date in 1946 that Annie Get Your Gun opened at the Imperial Theater on Broadway. With a score by Irving Berlin and a book by Dorothy Fields and her brother Herbert Fields, it told the fictionalized story of Annie Oakley (1860–1926), a sharpshooter who starred in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, and her romance with sharpshooter Frank E. Butler (1847–1926).
It was huge hit, running for 1,147 performances, and spawned revivals, a 1950 film version and television versions. Songs that became hits include “There’s No Business Like Show Business“, “Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly“, “You Can’t Get a Man with a Gun“, “They Say It’s Wonderful“, and “Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better).”
Ex post facto salvation…
Candy Barr (July 6, 1935 – December 30, 2005) was an American stripper, burlesque exotic dancer, actress in one pornographic movie, and model in men’s magazines of the mid-20th century.
Born Juanita Dale Slusher in Edna, Texas, the youngest of five children, at age 16, she appeared in one of the first [full length] pornographic movies, Smart Alec (1951). Later, Barr established herself in burlesque and striptease with her trademark costume—cowboy hat, pasties, scant panties, a pair of pearl handled cap six-shooters in a holster strapped low on her shapely hips, and cowboy boots. Married three times, and widowed once when she shot her second husband, she was also involved with Jack Ruby and Mickey Cohen. Later in her life, she was honored by Texas Monthly as one history’s “perfect Texans,” and was inducted into the Hall of Fame of Exotic World Burlesque Museum.
Ms. Barr shares another distinction with the likes of Groucho Marx, Truman Capote, Frank Zappa, and rapper Eazy-E: they were all posthumously baptized into the Mormon Church.
Some time in 1842, the prophet Joseph Smith introduced to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints a temple ceremony called Baptism for the Dead, followed shortly by a full complement of salvific ordinances-by-proxy for dead ancestors, which he justified again in 1844:
A man may act as proxy for his own relatives; the ordinances of the Gospel which were laid out before the foundations of the world have thus been fulfilled by them, and we may be baptized for those whom we have much friendship for.
Joseph Smith on May 12, 1844
History of the Church, 6:365–66
But the original spirit of the ordinances seems to have given way to a general enthusiasm for conversion, and members of the Church began trying to ‘redeem’ everyone they could identify. Some members took a shortcut and performed proxy baptisms and other ordinances for any name they could find– which meant that a lot of famous people got baptized. Indeed, it appears that some time in the early 1990’s there was a fad, or at least a hobby, of finding famous people to baptize.
Famous Dead Mormons is both a tribute to the practice and a catalogue of celebrity souls– like Candy’s– saved after the fact.
As we wonder if this amounts to an E Ticket to the Rapture, we might wish a patriotic birthday to George M. Cohan; he was born on this date in 1878. A playwright, songwriter, dancer, actor, theater owner, and producer, Cohan is best remembered as the composer and lyricist of songs including “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and “You’re a Grand Old Flag” (which may explain why some sources strain to locate his birthday tomorrow– on July 4). Cohan is not believed to be a baptized Mormon.
source: Library of Congress
How to prepare for a *real* emergency…
That readers are perusing this missive suggests that The Rapture did not in fact happen as advertised. But that humankind (well, the sinners among us anyway) dodged a bullet today doesn’t mean that the threat of Apocalypse isn’t real. Indeed, no less an authority than the CDC has weighed in with a Twitter Alert:
Of course, the Law of Unintended Consequences being what it is, this Tweet seems to have created one kind of disaster even as it attempted to ameliorate another: the response to the message– clicks through to the featured URL– immediately crashed the CDC’s servers.
Some semblance of normalcy has been recovered; readers can once more reach “Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse.”
As we reconcile ourselves to the fact that the Zombie craze may well last at least until after the release of Brad Pitt’s upcoming World War Z— and that’s not yet even in production, we might recall that on this date in 1972 Heathen! (an original musical with music and lyrics by Eaton Magoon, and book by Magoon and Sir Robert Helpmann) both opened and closed on Broadway.
You must be logged in to post a comment.