Have You Seen A Child The Color Of Wheat...The Color Of Dawn?

"Amahl and the Night Visitors" has already been featured here in Tulgey Wood but Christmas calls out for another look at this wondrous TV special. In December 1953, one year after the opera (the first ever to be commissioned especially for television) was presented as the first installment of the Hallmark Hall of Fame, Life magazine ran this spectacular full-color spread. Posted here at the right is a unique glimpse (in color yet) of the original production. Since its first live telecast on Christmas Eve 1951, Amahl had been re-presented on NBC once again, broadcast live with the original cast on Easter Sunday (April 13) 1952. That same month Rosemary Kuhlmann (Amahl's mother) and Chet Allen (Amahl; the boy soprano was proclaimed a star on the historic page-one New York Times review of the original broadcast) reprised their roles in a New York City Opera production, conducted by Thomas Schippers and sets by Eugene Berman (both from the first telecast); it was this stage production of which Life took the photographs for the article reproduced at the right. Enjoy these historical and very rare photos (click on the images for a larger view) of Gian Carlo Menotti's TV opera as a Christmas Eve treat.

Happy St. Nicholas Day

Today, December 6, is St. Nicholas Day, and that means another visit to Holland, the land of Hans Brinker. Hans is the inspiration for one of the most delightful and popular presentations of TV's Hallmark Hall of Fame. In addition to sterling talent already mentioned here, the spectacular Hallmark Hall of Fame production also featured a teleplay by Sally Meet Me in St. Louis Benson and musical arrangements by the great Irwin Kostal (Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks), for it's from a bygone era when network TV featured musicals created especially for the medium. Incredibly, in a musical theatre (TV division) worthy of St. Nicholas himself, the long-forgotten songs by Hugh Martin (also of Meet Me in St. Louis film fame) have been released on a CD (including a 16-page booklet about the Hall of Fame production), which you can discover here.

Bedknobs, Broomsticks And The Borrowers

Tonight, November 29, 2009, the Hallmark Hall of Fame broadcasts its 237th presentation, "A Dog Named Christmas." This venerable television instituation of course has an annual December (or in the case of tonight's installment, late November) presentation to promote its excellent line of Christmas cards (including licensed Disney and Peanuts greetings and other creations), so in the spirit of the Spirit of Christmas Past, let's take a look back at a Yuletide Hall of Fame broadcast from December 14, 1973 (at which point the Hallmark Hall of Fame had already been on TV for 22 years), The Borrowers, featuring a typically stellar and eclectic cast, including Eddie Albert, Tammy Grimes, Beatrice Straight, Barnard Hughes, and Dame Judith Anderson. Nominated for a slew of Emmy Awards, The Borrowers took home the Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Children's Programming for Art Direction and Set Decoration. The interiors were filmed on location in a one-hundred-year-old Victorian mansion—an elegant setting for the special effects-laden story of the tiny people who "borrow" items from the giant world around them to construct a world of their own underneath the floorboards of an eccentric old woman's house. Interestingly, the program was produced by two of Charles Schulz's Peanuts associates—Walt DeFaria and Warren Lockhart (Warren was president of Charles M. Schulz Creative Development, a role in which we can well imagine he dealt with Hallmark Cards)—but most notably here at Tulgey Wood, The Borrowers was based on the book by British author Mary Norton, who also wrote The Magic Bedknob and Bonfires and Broomsticks, which were combined into Bed-knob and Broomstick, upon which Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) was based. You can still read my online article about Bedknobs and Broomsticks at the D23 website. Check it out here.