Albee may have been referencing the 1941 movie There's Magic in Music,
which could have been something he caught on Channels Nine or Eleven
back when obscure old black-and-white features were all over TV.
Magic in Music takes place largely in Interlochen Music Camp, where Susanna
Foster, as stripper Tootles Laverne, is hiding out for some reason that now
escapes me. As she enters the primitive summer-camp bunkhouse she is to
live in, she does in fact say, "What a dump!"
I do remember that, in my distant youth, a movie like There's Magic in Music,
loaded as it is with family-friendly classical music and nice-guy kid
prodigies, was at least as common on NY television as a rough-and-tough
soap opera such as Beyond the Forest. |
