I am pleased to have you join me for day two of the 30 day film challenge. Welcome!
So, the Day 2 challenge is a film you watched over and over as a child. Now, this is not an easy one because in my childhood there were no videotapes (neither BETA or VHS) nor Laserdisc nor TiVo nor Roku nor DVRs. We only had broadcast television (ours received through an antennae at the top of the hill behind our house) and their subsequent reruns. Movie theaters were great but too far away and too cost prohibitive to go over and over. But, never fear! Great shows were often rebroadcast annually.
My favorite was “Peter Pan” starring Tony award winning actress Mary Martin (also the mother of actor Larry Hagman). In doing research, I must not have seen it as many times as I thought (it was tied up in many, many copyright and legal issues), but it has remained crystal clear in my memory from the several times I did see it.
Of course, living in the corner of a small community tucked away in the mountains, I never even knew anything about broadway. Mary Martin was a stage actor and loved a live audience. Thankfully, this was one of the few productions she agreed to film in a studio.
I found the movie on YouTube. I had forgotten it was a musical, but I started watching it and the M*A*G*I*C was still there. From Peter Pan trying to stick his shadow on with a bar of soap to clapping to save Tinkerbell to teaching Wendy to fly, I was mesmerized. I am even thinking about buying it on DVD.
“Do you believe? Oh please, please believe. If you believe, wherever you are, clap your hands and she’ll hear you. Clap! Don’t let Tink die. Clap! She’s getting better. Clap! Clap! She’s getting stronger. Oh, she’s all well now. Oh thank you, thank you, thank you . . . . “
There were later revivals of Peter Pan with Sandy Duncan and Cathy Rigby in the role of Peter, but none could compare to Mary Martin in my opinion.
Sometimes I feel like Wendy. I grew up, but the child in me still lives. If only I could fly…
I decided to take on this challenge for July after reading about it from SandmanJazz. Check out his blog and his entry for the second day of the challenge. Maybe even join the challenge!
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