Corey Robin

Tag: Cabaret

Ravel’s Boléro, from Bo Derek to Fascinating Fascism

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For Americans my age or older, Ravel’s Boléro will always be the music of Blake Edwards’ film “10,” which came out in 1979. Starring Dudley Moore and Julie Andrews, the romantic comedy introduced Bo Derek, she of the braids and breasts, to the world. Thanks to Bo and Blake, Boléro came to be associated with sex of the pure fucking sort, so much so that Allan Bloom singled the music out for criticism (along with “rock ‘n roll”) in The Closing of the American Mind. More innocent times, those were. Last night, at the New York City Center, my daughter and I saw Boléro performed as a ballet. A ballet is what the music was originally commissioned as, but it’s […]

Darkness at Noon: The Musical

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John Judis alerted me to this PBS show on the Jewish origins of the Broadway musical. Among other things I learned from it: Ethel Merman, born Ethel Zimmerman, was German, but so terrified she’d be outed as a Jew was she that people would think she was Jewish that whenever she said she had been praying for the success of a show, she would quickly add, “In church!” She was also so scared she’d have nothing to eat at Jule Styne’s seder—he promised her she wouldn’t have to eat any Christian babies—that she brought a ham sandwich with her. In her purse. [This paragraph was revised from the original version of this post.] The original last line of “If You Could See Her Through My Eyes” […]