| re: Ages and these characters | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 11:12 pm EST 12/29/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Ages and these characters - jeffef 01:32 pm EST 12/29/21 | |
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| There ia 20-years age difference between Jones and Howard. Certainly not too much for them to have the same parents, but I think something so much less common by the early 1960s than it was perhaps in earlier times. Especially if the Paroos are Catholic, we can easily imagine a backstory of Mrs. Paroo having had upwards of ten children. We may imagine a tragic history of stillborns and children who died before reaching adulthood in that time of high childhood and teeenage mortality. Of course, that is making the show much more serious, but we know that Willson started with something more serious in mind. Now I start to wonder if there was more backstory in the early drafts. One days perhaps I will read the McHugh book. If we saw or heard references to other children of Mrs. Paroo between Marian and Winthrop, it would perhaps have lessened all this talk of Winthrop being Marian's son. :) It need not all have been as tragic as what I suggested above. Most of them might simply have moved away from intolerant River City. The gay twin brothers, for example, realized they would be happier in a bigger city. Joking, but only sort of. In any case, simply a mention of other siblings who had moved away would help it make more sense to us nowadays. And perhaps in 1957, it was more easily understood that such families were not uncommon, especially in earlier decades but certainly still even in the 1950s and in New York City, with lots of huge Irish Catholic families with children who were 20 years apart in age or even more. I see a new Spielberg film version of The Music Man with a Tony Kushner screenplay providing backstory, including the gay twin brothers who moved to New York. |
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| Previous: | re: Ages and these characters - jeffef 01:32 pm EST 12/29/21 |
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