SPECIAL: Dancing at The Marathon again

Filmed July 1974

I had my first piano lesson when I was 7 years old. Was that because I had shown an early talent for music? No way! It seemed to me at the time, everyone my age took piano lessons — unless there wasn’t a piano in their home and then they took violin lessons. A mystery to me now is that we had a piano in our home – an upright Baldwin. An even greater mystery is that my mother could read music and play piano. As I’ve written, she was born in Russia in 1899 and was brought to this country well within the first year of her life. Since she was the oldest of 5 siblings (all girls), mom had to quit school after the eighth grade to help in the family-owned grocery store. To my regret now I never asked her how she learned to read music and play the piano. I know piano lessons weren’t in their family budget.

My first piano teacher was a gray-haired lady (I’ve forgotten her name), who came to our house once a week. The lessons cost 50 cents. Again remember – it was the Depression. She also taught my cousin Sarane, who lived in the other half of the duplex where we resided. For my daily practice sessions, if I had to play an exercise 10 times, mom would put 10 raisins at the left end of the keyboard. As I completed each playing of the exercise, I would move a raisin to the right end of the keyboard. After I had completed all 10, I would get to eat the raisins. Mom also showed this to my Aunt Rose, Sarane’s mother, and Sarane also had raisins at the ends of her keyboard.

I’m not sure how long I continued with that first piano teacher. I think the change was after we moved to the KC apartment when I was 9 years old. My next teacher was Ruth Swingen (now there’s a musical name). Her studio was in one of the suites above the dress shop on the northeast corner of Federal Avenue and 1^st Street North. That was the first time I played on a baby grand piano. I think it was a Steinway. The cost for each weekly lesson was $2.00. It was still the Depression, and I’m impressed that $2.00 was coming out of my dad’s $40.00 weekly paycheck

Miss Swingen held several student recitals during the year. They were held in homes with a baby grand piano (usually the home of one of her students) before an audience of applauding parents. Through the years I performed in many of them. By then I was well past those ‘raisin’ exercises, so some of the selections I remember playing were Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, Chopin’s Minute Waltz, Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude, Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C Sharp Minor and numbers from Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite: Anitra’s Dance, In the Hall of the Mountain King and Ase’s Death. That last one was not one of my mother’s favorites. It was a mournful dirgelike funeral march.

The recitals ended with Miss Swingen performing at the baby grand. One evening she played Liszt’s 8^th Hungarian Rhapsody. I shouldn’t say played. She attacked that grand piano. It was a powerful, electrifying performance and I was mesmerized, I vowed that someday I would attack that Liszt opus. And I did!

I continued with Miss Swingen until at the age of 19 I left for Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to pursue a degree with a major in Music. I was only at Coe College for 2 quarters. Because of the war and my always impending involvement in it (I was enlisted in the ROTC, subject to being called to active duty at any time) my memories of that period are not sharp – except for Max Dahler, the professor in the music department who would be my piano instructor. His approach to the piano was the total opposite of Ruth Swingen’s. Whereas she (as I stated above) attacked the keyboard boldly, aggressively, he stressed the importance of approaching the instrument less forcefully, of pressing the piano keys so as to achieve sounds, not loud but deep, clear, with a rich resonant quality.

That was quite a change for a 19-year old who had spent 10 of his 19 years, more than half his life, in that totally aggressive approach to the piano. For 6 months I strove to understand Professor Dahler’s theory as I practiced daily on one of the practice room baby grands. But time ran out. Six months later I was called up and was on my way to Basic Training in California, 34 months in the army, followed by the major change in my life early in January, 1947, when I entered the Pasadena Playhouse College of Theatre Arts.

As I look back now, 72 years later, I realize there has been a very strong correlation between theatre and music in my work. A script is like a music score. The words the actors speak are lyrics. And there is an intense relationship between my approach to drama and what Professor Dahler was introducing me to during those Coe years. But actors I worked with replaced the keys of the piano. And they must be accomplished actors to achieve performances that are not loud but deep, clear, with a rich resonant quality. Today I truly believe that the 6 months I spent with Professor Dahler has had a profound affect on my approach to my work.

I can direct high-powered dramatic scenes like the book=burning scene in THE FIRESTORM on THE WALTONS (http://senensky.com/special-fire-storm-rages/). But my favorite scenes are the small ones, the soft ones, the ones many directors refer to as the boring ones. Here are the climactic scenes (beautifully written by Nigel McKeand) from THE MARATHON on THE WALTONS (http://senensky.com/the-marathon/). John-Boy (Richard Thomas) on a spur of the moment decision has entered a 7-day marathon with Daisy (Deirdre Lenihan), a girl he met in the 5 and dime store. Here they are in the wee hours of the morning, a couple of days into that 7-day marathon.

Normally a recording session for music was in postproduction after the composer had written his background score. But THE MARATHON was kind of a mini-musical, so we had an extra recording session before filming began. I knew what I wanted for the musical background for that ‘raincloud’ scene – just a lonely piano plaintively playing in the wee hours of the morning, so at that pre-filming recording session I had them record what you heard. Now for filming we couldn’t have the playback music while Richard and Deirdre were doing their scene, so we had the music playback for the long dolly shot that preceded the scene and cut it off as their dialog began. The background music was added to their scene in postproduction.

Barely halfway through the 7 days with 80 hours to go, John-Boy is visited unexpectedly by his father at 4:00 in the morning …

… and John-Boy makes a decision.

I made one other request at the pre-filming recording session. I knew what I wanted for the background music for the final shot in the marathon hall. Out of the Warner Brothers vast music library I picked I’VE GOT A RIGHT TO SING THE BLUES and had the recording session’s small combo record it. Because there was no dialog in the scene, we were able to film Richard’s and Deidre’s close-ups with the music playing. (That’s what they did back in the silent film days!)

…performances that are not loud but deep, clear, with a rich resonant quality!

I do not have a piano in my home. I have not played on a piano since I left Coe College in 1943. I would loved to have been able to play jazz, but that was not my talent. And although I didn’t recognize it then, I realized years later that I did not have a musician’s ear. Although I had accomplished the technique of playing a piano, I was not a musician. But those early years gave me an understanding and appreciation of music that I have used extensively in my subsequent career. And I do tender to Max Dahler my belated gratitude.

The journey continues