The other day, I was watching the film version of "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers." While they were eating lunch, Marty and Casey joined in watching the movie.
With that opening, I'm 99-percent certain that I'm describing a situation that was only happening in my household at that moment -- a father and two sons watching "Seven Brides" -- any place in the country...if not the world.
It becomes 100-percent when you add on the part of the father -- me -- providing commentary on the fact that you usually don't see the guy that plays Benjamin (Jeff Richards) dancing is because he was really a former baseball player that is only in the movie because he was under contract to MGM. Or, that similarly, while Howard Keel was a tremendous singer, he wasn't a dancer. Or, that while a number of the other brothers came from a ballet background, Russ Tamblyn's background was really in gymnastics. Or, that the barn raising scenes involve some of the most difficult dancing ever committed to film.
The boys didn't watch the entire movie, but the fact that the hung out watching a significant chunk of it says something about the household in which they are being raised.
It's not quite to the level of what I was exposed to. When I was a kid, CBS's annual showing of "West Side Story" was treated as a holiday in my family. I knew the Romeo and Juliet plot and cried for the first time over the demise of Tony before I could even form full sentences. My father and sister took me to a showing of "The Sound of Music" when I was about 4-years-old...and the movie is over 2 1/2 hours long. I saw "Jesus Christ Superstar" on stage for the first time when I was six. I honestly don't remember a time when there wasn't a movie soundtrack or Broadway cast recording not played on a regular basis in my childhood home. When I lived in Los Angeles, if I had occasion to meet an actor from one of those musicals (Dick Van Dyke, Buddy Hackett, Shirley Jones, etc.), there was always a certain charge that I got, like being a kid again...and I made it a point to go to every showing of those films that American Cinematheque put on, as well as things like the sing-a-long "Sound of Music" at the Hollywood Bowl.
To this day, I do things like watch "Superstar" around Easter every year (yes, the Norman Jewison film version of Rotten Tomatoes/Golden Turkeys fame). I watch "1776" on Fourth of July weekend and "White Christmas" multiple times over the Christmas season. I have two different versions of "West Side Story" on DVD...as well as copies of pretty much every major musical dating back to the 1950's. I have both the Todd-AO and Cinemascope versions of "Oklahoma." What I'm saying is that this has been my way of life.
While I'm sure that there are other households where stuff like this happens, I'm not sure how many of them are in the Midwest and have no daughters living in them.
My kids aren't as schooled in this stuff as I was, but they still are growing up to not think twice about people breaking out into song. With the "High School Musical" trend in tween entertainment -- something that seems to still continue as far as I can tell with the shows that the boys sometimes watch -- they're able to tie back to the origin of some of what they're seeing. When a recent Nickelodeon show (Big Time Rush) included a number of references to The Beatles, it didn't take them much to get it.
So, when they do things like try to ape Donald O'Connor's "Make 'Em Laugh" moves from "Singin' In the Rain" or when Casey sat through three performances of "Godspell" last summer, I always feel a pang of pride that a family tradition is being carried on.
It might make things easier if either of them could sing or dance, but that's the problem with real life...no Marnie Nixon track to overdub you.
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