Though Your Dreams Be Tossed And Blown

‘Old songs are the little houses our hearts once lived in.” Ben Hecht



Stories have shaped the minds and hearts of children from the beginnings of humankind. They first bring enchantment, and then they teach. We learn better when there are emotions involved in the telling. My moral life developed as I heard my mother read bedtime stories to me, then I listened to plays and mysteries and songs on the radio, and later went to movies in the days before the ascendancy of television (1946-1955). The movie musical is a visual story enhanced by the lyrics and melody of its songs that produces strong feelings. Of all the musicals I saw as a child I remember in particular The Song of the South, Dumbo, Show Boat, and at the beginning of my adolescence, Carousel.
The first movie musical I recall seeing was Song of the South, but I don’t remember
much. When I heard decades later that Disney had stopped distributing the film because of objections to its political incorrectness and historical inaccuracy, my mind was flooded with visions of my mother and myself tacking up the movie poster as we sang Zipadee doo dah. I fell asleep looking at the picture all that year. My mother talked about how Uncle Remus wanted us all to be happy and to look on the bright side. When I was six and starting first grade at Catholic school, Mama took down Uncle Remus’ picture and put up a crucifix. I began to have nightmares and woke up saying “Mama, they put nails in his hands. I didn’t mean to kill Him!” The crucifix came down and I left Catholic school, bringing an end to my religious instruction. But I didn’t see the poster for Song of the South, disappeared as well.

I did not see Dumbo until its re-release when I was in school. By that time I had had strabismus surgery. Though the operation failed, I was able to see well enough to go to movies or read. In school children mocked my left eye’s slight shift to the right, so when I saw Dumbo, it was from the perspective of one who had already lived with a lot of teasing for looking a little bit different.
Dumbo is an adorable baby elephant with outsized ears whose mother loves him just the way he is. When the other big elephants in the circus tease him, his mother runs amok and is promptly locked up as a ‘Mad Elephant’ in a jail/cage. Mother and baby are forcibly separated until my favorite scene when a little mouse brings Dumbo to her and she reaches her trunk through the bars of her cell to caress her baby, tenderly lift him up, and rock him to the lullaby ‘Baby Mine’. That scene taught me the beauty of a mother’s resistance in her choice to love her baby, no matter what minor differences he might have. I loved how Dumbo’s large ears allowed him the magical gift of flying. It was a lesson not to judge by appearances.
As I grew a little older I lost interest in cartoons because I detested the screaming of the children drowning out the dialogue and story. I looked for more serious movies and an audience quiet enough to let me hear, so in 1951 I went to see Showboat, paying twenty-five cents.
The history of race in America is complex, and at nine years of age, this was my first movie dealing with the topic. I was drawn to the panorama of people on the river, in the fields, and on deck. While there were other characters and sub-plots, Ava Gardner played the major role of Julie Laverne, lead actress on the Cotton Blossom. As she dances and talks, her beauty pulled me into her story’s twists and turns and I was transfixed. I felt concern for most of the characters, but mostly for Julie. Early in the film the Sheriff comes on board looking for her, and announces that he has received information that Julie’s mother was ‘negro’. The news shocked me since Julie looks like a white person with a tan, so I was confused until the lawman speaks of her husband as white and uses the word miscegenation, giving the explanation that the marriage was against the law. Steve quickly pricks Julie’s hand, putting his mouth to her wounded finger, following the old rule that just one drop of African blood makes you ‘Negro.’ As Steve tries to become black to stay with his wife, my nine-year-old mind said, “Yes, we have a solution!”
When the Sheriff refuses to accept the ruse, Steve and Julie have to leave the boat or risk being arrested. As Julie Laverne, green-eyed and gorgeous, walked down the plank and off the boat a half hour into the movie, my world changed and I wept there in my seat. Seeing her stranded on the shore as the steamboat moves down the Mississippi transformed me. There was supposed to be a happy ending for her, just as there was in Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Secret Garden, and Snow White. Why should she be punished and exiled? As the camera pulls away the audience sees Julie and her husband in a carriage moving off screen. At just that point William Warfield begins ‘Old Man River’ and the song underscores the loss.
There’s an old man called the Mississippi
There’s an old man that I long to see
What does he care if the world’s got troubles?
What does he care if the land ain’t free?
He don’t plant taters. He don’t plant cotton.
And them that plants ‘em are soon forgotten
But Old Man River he just keeps rollin’ along

Here is dissonance: Jerome Kern’s music and Oscar Hammerstein’s words. The heart rises with the melody, but the lyric tells us people suffer, inequity exists, and the world remains indifferent. I began to wait for Julie’s return. What would happen to the heroine?
The next week I found another quarter under the bed, and I walked to the theater with my neighbors. Seeing the Technicolor beauty of Showboat and hearing the songs created a feeling of happiness in me from the first frame, then the plot’s unfairness unbalanced me. I had not felt that twist of emotions so deeply before. My heroine did return, and the movie ends with Julie in the shadows of the dock waving at the riverboat, unseen by her friends onboard.
Showboat taught me to care about the people left behind. The lesson I took from the film was to love Julie, not to judge her. I judged the Sheriff and the old law.

In 1956 I took myself to see Carousel, paying fifty cents of my babysitting money when I was fourteen. As the movie opens the orchestrated calliope pumps out the opening waltz with its dizzying changes, and the audience leaps into a day at the fair. Carrie chats about Mr. Snow, her intended, as she and Julie Jordan walk along. We see in the contrast of Carrie and Julie the difference between domesticity and desire. Sexual yearning exists in both males and females, but girls like Julie Jordan want a mate or the right partner.

Julie persuades her girlfriend to go home early in order to get a chance to talk to the carousel barker, Billy Bigelow. In the movie this young man is not so young, and even seems a little seedy with ill-fitting checkered pants. Most girls can identify with Julie Jordan, the ingénue portrayed by the young Shirley Jones. Yet here in the very first scenes something is off, something is wrong with Billy Bigelow that I could see, but Julie could not.
She starts to sing in a light voice a rising melody setting a new and hopeful mood. As Billy speaks he is skeptical and worldly, but I caught glimpses of the endearing qualities Julie sees. She is feminine and gentle, perhaps a little too trusting. As portrayed by the handsome baritone, Gordon McRae, Billy is older, worldlier, saying we are all just 'specks' on a little planet in a larger universe.
On a night like this I start to wonder
What life is all about…
The sky’s so big the sea looks small.
And two little people, you and I,
We don’t count at all.

Hard words, but when Julie begins singing, she is all bright faith where Billy is rash and a little too tough. The story shows the attraction of opposites. So begins the great duet of Carousel, If I Loved You. As the song progresses, one speaks and the other listens. They don’t sing together—they don’t harmonize their parts; each is tentative, wondering whether to lead or to follow- to go on as a separate individual or try being together.

If I loved you
Words wouldn’t come in an easy way
Round in circles I’d go
Longing to tell you, but afraid and shy
I’d let my golden chances pass me by.

This song expresses the dilemma of whether an individual should explore his/her own potential or become part of a couple, a partner in a larger community. Are we tiny motes in a cold night sky or part of the force of nature in a great cosmos? Each phrase is tentative, the melody rises to question and take a chance on the unknown. They both consider the chance of embarrassment if love is not returned or of losing love by not saying anything. If silence is a risk, so is speaking out.
Off you would go
In the mist of day
Never ever to know
How I loved you
If I loved you
Billy and Julie meet and marry; Julie gets pregnant just after Billy loses his job. He dies while taking part in a robbery. This entire relationship takes place in less than two months. The play leaves Julie to face motherhood alone with no money. The films skips ahead fifteen years when Heaven lets Billy visit earth for one day to see his daughter, Louise in time to see local children tease her for being the daughter of a thief. The village doctor speaks at her graduation and tells the youngsters not to be held back by the success or failings of their parents, but to stand on their own and try to be happy. Both mother and daughter hear the advice to hold on, walk on with hope in their hearts.

I was uncomfortable when Billy slaps Julie, and she later claims it didn’t hurt at all. But with this minor quibble aside, I loved the movie. It shows how young women often pick the wrong mate, but carry on to raise their children. Carousel lets us know that love involves risk and teaches us to keep on trying even if our marriage or mate fails us.
Thinking about these films more than fifty years later makes me wonder how memory functions, what we remember and why. Musicals attract our attention through many senses, and the songs and stories stay on our minds, be they good or bad.
Once a memory takes hold, we can question its effects on our later lives. We can ask whether life imitates art or art imitates life. Many believe that memory is selective—the story we choose to tell ourselves, but no one explains why some themes reverberate through our lives and others do not. Why did I focus on people who were different, rage at segregation, marry a black law student when mixed marriage was still against the law? Why did I not anticipate the consequences? When my husband slapped, it hurt, so I left him and found a job to support my children. I took classes for years, and by the time I finished becoming a teacher and a school counselor, I was a grandmother of five. Still I had the satisfaction of finishing the education I had set my heart on.
Did my experience as a child at the movies play a part in my adult choices? Did seeing Dumbo, Carousel, or Showboat set me on my path? Maybe, maybe not. Did these films play a part in shaping my idealism? Absolutely. Their images of courageous women (and mother elephants!) shaped my conscience and kept me going when my dreams were “tossed and blown.”

The songs in these musicals taught me about life and death, love and tolerance. It is the feeling in songs that these movies convey so well, more than just costumes or plot lines. These four movies: Song of the South, Dumbo, Showboat, and Carousel celebrate life while acknowledging its losses and sadness. The courage of the characters left me wanting to change what evil I saw in the world, and led me to care about others no matter their differences.