"At the time of South Pacific's release, its theme of racial and romantic tolerance was just too much for some. Some members of the military complained that "Carefully Taught" ruined the flow of the musical.

When the show went on national tour in the 1950s, two Georgia state lawmakers were repulsed after seeing it, and said a song justifying marriage between races was offensive. One of them, Rep. David C. Jones, wrote in a letter, "We in the South are a proud and progressive people. Half-breeds cannot be proud."

Scholars suspect that Hammerstein knew he would strike a nerve with South Pacific. He had tucked liberal messages into previous productions.

Larry Maslon, a Broadway historian who teaches at the graduate acting program at New York University, says he has always thought of Oscar Hammerstein as a preacher, "In the way that I think of Abraham Lincoln as a preacher, or Leonard Bernstein as a preacher. Lincoln used the White House, Bernstein used the conductor's podium, and Oscar used the theater," he says.

"And all of his shows offer a kind of benign choice, it seems to me: that tolerance is probably better than prejudice; that enlightenment is probably better than ignorance," he says. "And I think he appealed, in the way that Lincoln did, actually, in his second inaugural address, to the better angels of our nature."

Nearly 70 years ago, Hammerstein's message of tolerance was largely about race and romance. But on so many levels — race, sexual orientation, class, religion, gender — the challenge of reaching across differences is still relevant today."

-- www.npr.org/2014/05/19/308296815/six-words-youve-got-to-be-taught-intolerance

Today on YouTube Theatre:

This movie is so weird! Yes, that's Oliver Hardy as the Tin Man. Kirby says "Don't ask! Just buy it!"

The Wizard of Oz (1925)!

I've been kind of curious about this movie for 25 years! The Hollywood library had it on VHS and I thought about renting it a bunch of times. But I never did. Partly because I've seen the 1939 version so many times that I wasn't sure I wanted to see the same story again in black and white with title cards. And I've never heard anybody say much about this movie, and what little there is in the way of critique isn't very encouraging.

But it's on YouTube! I thought it was time to give a try and finally see it after all these years.

Yeah ...

WOW!

I barely know where to begin.

It definitely falls into the category of "unique cinema experience."

And I can see pretty clearly why the 1939 version became an annual holiday institution on network TV and the 1925 version became a DVD extra.

Yeah, it's so strange. Sometimes in a good way. Sometimes, no.

The good news is that it doesn't repeat the story in the much-beloved version. Dorothy is not an accidental visitor to Oz, she is the kidnaped princess, abandoned in Kansas as a child to be raised by Auntie Em and Uncle Frank. And when the winds come, most of the Kansas cast is blown to Oz with Dorothy. Once in Oz, field hand Larry Semon dresses up as a scarecrow, Oliver Hardy dresses up as a tin man and Spencer Bell dresses up as a lion. Bell, an African American actor, is credited as G. Howe Black. Do you get it? Gee, How Black? Because he's black! And he eats watermelon when he's supposed to be working! And when his head gets hit by lightning it doesn't hurt him because black people are stupid, with thick skulls! Ha ha! If you're not laughing it's because of all this political correctness. Wake up, sheeple!

Would somebody tell him that this flying shed is "whites only"?

It has its moments. I didn't really have any trouble sitting through it. It's worth seeing if you like weird movies that are just weird. Some of the sets and costumes are amazing. Some great special effects and stunts. It's great to watch Oliver Hardy, before he ever teamed up with Stan Laurel, doing his shtick, pretty much the same facial expressions and physical comedy he was later famous for.

Larry Semon, who plays the Scarecrow, seems to have been the creative force behind making the movie. And he must have thought himself a really funny guy! He has several gag set-ups that just go on too long without being that funny to begin with. You will not believe how much time the movie lavishes on the antics of the farmhands before they go to Oz. There's some gags with chickens, a swing, bees, a mud puddle, lightning. Did you know lightning can knock off articles of clothing one piece at a time? And that lightning can make a frightened black man run so fast that he can zip across the sky in mid-air and catch up with a shed being blown to Oz by a windstorm? Did you know that this is allegedly hilarious?

I'm glad I saw it because it does have its minor pleasures. And I was only a little bored by some of Semon's neverending dumb jokes. (I admit I almost gave up during the scene where Oliver Hardy was chasing the magic walking-boxes.) But I'm not going to recommend it. If your curiosity is piqued or you are a diehard Wizard of Oz fan or you have a fetish for the weirdest movies of the silent era, then I guess you can give it a try.

The Kareninas are having another one of their infamous rows. Mr. Karenina just said Don Giovanni is better than Carmen,
and Mrs. Karenina is not having it! I don't blame her for having an affair with an army officer. Such handsome uniforms!

So I watched Anna Karenina (1948) last night. (I was dozing off so I watched the last 20 minutes this morning. What a way to start the day!) This is a movie based on a very famous book about a Russian lady who cheats on her husband and then gets run over by a train. In the movie, she seems to faint in front of the train, and then it passes over her, I guess Russian trains are set higher than trains in the rest of the world. So she's OK in the movie. I was going to say "That's Hollywood!" but it's a British movie.

In my head-movie of the aftermath, people on the platform say "Look! Vivien Leigh fainted on the tracks and the train passed over her!" and they take her up on the platform and give her some hot soup and she revives and decides she doesn't need a man and becomes an activist for women's suffrage. Her husband Ralph Richardson as Mr. Karenina rolls his eyes and then vomits at how degraded she has become. "Having an affair was bad enough. But women voting?" he sniffs.

Vivien Leigh is great in general, but beyond Gone with the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire, I haven't seen that many of her movies. If I'm in the mood for the kind of movie that Vivien Leigh made, I'm a lot more likely to watch one with Greta Garbo. Garbo was beyond great! A lot of her movies are stupid stupid stupid, but I don't care. And then there's the fun Garbo movies! Like Mata Hari (my favorite Garbo movie) and Queen Christina. If Vivien Leigh had made movies like Mata Hari and Queen Christina, I would have seen more of them. (Although I guess Caesar and Cleopatra almost counts. I haven't seen it for a while. I remember it being pretty whacky, with Vivien playing Cleopatra like a spoiled and mischievous suburban teenager.)

Getting back to Anna Karenina (1948), it's watchable and entertaining, and I was never bored with it. Vivien Leigh and Ralph Richardson are fun to watch, and they are aided and abetted by a pretty good supporting cast. (Michael Gough is in it for a few lines of dialogue.) It's a little better than OK. It's not a must-see film unless you really like this sort of thing.

I do have one major quibble. They go to the opera - twice! - and the movie never says what opera they are watching! Intolerable!

So a few days after watching Noah and being reminded of how good Russell Crowe is in A Beautiful Mind, the Sundance Channel was showing Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, so I DVRed it and watched it last night.

Stop picking your nose, Blakeney!

I don't have a lot to say about it. It's really good! Really really good! With an attention to historical detail combined with the swashbuckling spirit of an Errol Flynn movie, mixed in with beautiful scenes in the Galapagos Islands, I found Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World to be irresistibly entertaining.

I'm kind of curious about Russell Crowe's Robin Hood. I love Robin Hood. But I hated the one with Kevin Costner. I don't really like it when they treat the legend too seriously. It's harder to suspend your belief at all the dumb-ass goofy stuff going on when they're trying to throw in a bunch of historical details. It's directed by Ridley Scott, which should be a plus but too often isn't. And Cate Blanchett is Marion. That should be a plus. I guess I won't know until I see it.

For the record, I think the one with Errol Flynn is one of the greatest movies ever made. And I also like the animated Disney version and Men in Tights.

How do the Flynn Robin Hood and the Crowe Robin Hood compare with Sean Connery in Robin and Marian?

I saw Robin and Marian a few months ago. It's OK. Has its moments. It gets lots of points for the beginning because it's the only Robin Hood movie that depicts Richard I as the awful awful person that he was. (Richard's demise in Robin and Marian is actually pretty close to the historical record.)

I also like the "swashbuckling" scenes. It's done very tongue-in-cheek, drawing attention to how ridiculous these antics are, not just for 50- and 60-year-old men, but for anyone.

Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn are both very good. As a matter of fact, it has a great cast! Richard Harris is Richard I, Robert Shaw is the Sheriff, Nicol Williamson is Little John. And Ian Holm is King John! And young Victoria Abril is King John's 12-year-old wife! (Victoria's not 12. I think she's 17.)

Actually, there's a lot to like, but I don't think it holds together that well.

Did you know that the legend of Robin Hood existed for hundreds of years without anyone connecting it to King Richard and the Crusades and Prince John?

The first writer who made this connection was Sir Walter Scott in the novel Ivanhoe in the early 1800s. It's now become an integral art of the legend.

(I used to read a lot of stuff on the Robin Hood legend. It's been a while, but I remember some of the most important points.)

I don't have a problem with Robin Hood being entwined with Prince John, but I absolutely do not like any version that makes Robin a comrade of Richard I during the Crusades. I don't think it adds anything to the legend. By tying Robin so closely to a historical character, it becomes less a legend and more a speculative history. (In the versions where Prince John is the villain, the Sheriff of Nottingham is the main antagonist, and John is more of a background character.)

Also, I think it greatly diminishes Robin Hood as a heroic figure who took part in the Crusades and doesn't seem to notice that he was part of the oppressing force in the Holy Land, and then comes back to England and, now that his people are being exploited, his heroic instinct kicks in. (Both Robin and Marian and the Kevin Costner Robin Hood deal with this issue some. But if he was really a heroic Robin Hood, he would have been Robin Hood in the Holy Land, and he wouldn't have waited until coming back to England!)

So I'm not inclined to be enthusiastic about any version where Robin Hood is a Crusader. It's been done, and not particularly well.

I'll give it a chance eventually. It can't be as bad as the Kevin Costner version, which isn't merely bad, it's really really awful.

But Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe both take themselves very seriously sometimes. It looks like a bad combination to me.