GENESIS: LUCY, LUIGI AND THE LIBRARY

There were three factors that led me to write Buttercup. The first came from my daughter’s love of “I Love Lucy”. I was looking for gifts to give her for her birthday and came across the “My Favorite Husband” radio programs, which starred Lucille Ball and were written by the same Bob Carroll, Jr., Madelyn Pugh, and Jess Oppenheimer of I Love Lucy fame. The shows were just as hilarious (many were repeated nearly verbatim on I Love Lucy.) The second factor was getting Sirius Satellite Radio and listening to the Radio Classics channel. I was amazed at how many of the TV shows that I watched growing up originally started out on the radio. It got me to thinking about the transitions from radio to TV. Also, I was amazed to hear “Fred Flintstone” (Alan Reed) as Pasquali on Life with Luigi. Many radio actors who had ‘faces made for radio’ often made the transition out of radio to cartoons. This transition from radio to other media really intrigued me. Finally, I had worked with producer/director Victoria Racimo on ‘radio plays’ presented on stage at our local library. I thought it would be a unique format in which to present a story of the death and life after death of a radio program.

And so I wrote “The Last Buttercup”.  It is a story of a (fictitious) nationally syndicated radio program call “Our Little Buttercup” that began in 1941 before Pearl Harbor.  “Our Little Buttercup” is the story of a couple (April and Charles Cooper) and their lovable troublemaking daughter, Buttercup. The mother, April, was played by singer/actress Shirley Cross who began the show as a up and coming star. The father was played by an experience comedian and vaudeville star, Dennis Jackson. The ‘star’ of the show was Kim Baker as Buttercup. Kim Baker was modeled on Fanny Brice (who played Baby Snooks on radio) in that she was a hit vaudeville comedian/singer/actress.  The show gained popularity and remained a hit into the 50s. The setting of the story is the broadcast of the last season of the program in 1958. The ratings have dropped dramatically and unbeknownst to the cast, the show is not going to be renewed. The cast has to deal with it in various ways, trying to determine what will become of their careers in this new world of television. At this time in 1958, we find that Shirley’s career has taken off with several hit movies and records and that Dennis’ and Kim’s careers have stagnated.

The format of the play is that the real audience is treated as if they are the audience of the live broadcast. So they see the warm up act. In addition, they would see things happening backstage during musical interludes and intermissions. There would be the story of the show being broadcast and the backstage drama of the cast trying to resolve the problems of the show’s closing.

Before I wrote the ‘radio show’ itself - that is, the episode of “My Little Buttercup” that would be broadcast, I decided to write several other episodes so that I would have some more familiar interactions between the characters and it would feel (at least to me) that the show had been on for a while. So I wrote three episodes - each one focusing on the interactions between two of the characters. I wrote “The Booksale”, which focused on the relationship between Charles and Buttercup; “The Sunday Dress”, which focused on April and Buttercup, and “The New Car”, which focused on April and Charles. At this point, I felt pretty comfortable with the format and the interactions so I wrote the episode that would be used in “The Last Buttercup” - “The Audition”. Armed with all of this, I presented the material to Victoria. She liked it and agreed to produce/direct it!

EVOLUTION: THE LAST BUTTERCUP ISN’T THE LAST!

Victoria showed all of the scripts to the library and they liked them. The library folks and Victoria decided that they wanted to present all of the shows - that is, the first three episodes that I wrote as well as “The Last Buttercup”.  It was agreed that I would write backstage stories for the other three episodes and that they would be presented over two nights - two episodes playing one weekend and then the remaining two episodes playing the next weekend.

I decided that I would use the opportunity to describe the characters growth over the course of the show. “The Booksale” would be the premiere broadcast of “Our Little Buttercup” in 1941. It would show a nervous newcomer, Shirley, starting work with the old pros of Kim and Dennis. The second episode, “The New Car”,  would take place during the war. In this episode, Kim (who was Jewish as was Dennis - both had changed their names) would come to grips with her own denial of what was happening to the Jews in Nazi Germany. The next episode, “The Sunday Dress”, would take place in the McCarthy era, with Dennis being on the blacklist because he had attended a Communist Party meeting once with a producer. And then the final episode, “The Audition” would be the original story of “The Last Buttercup” taking place in 1958. The backstage stories of the Holocaust and McCarthyism had comedic moments but were also intended to add some history to the play and to counterpoint the comedy that was happening on stage. It seems that most comedians and comedies are born out of this darkness and indeed this is true of my own life and comedy. All of the backstage stores were resolved happily at the end. However, Victoria felt that they were just too dark for the type of show she envisioned. So, I went back to the keyboard. I left the timeframes the same but wrote three new backstage stories that were based on personality interactions rather than dealing with the times. Victoria agreed with these.

The programs were scheduled to run in May. However, it turned out that the library wasn’t available for two weekends and we only got it for one weekend. This was very problematic because people wouldn’t return to the same venue for two nights on the same weekend - that is they wouldn’t come to see episodes 1 and 2 on Friday and then episodes 3 and 4 on Saturday. So, I went back to the keyboard again. Victoria and I agreed to drop one of the episodes, pare down the backstage stories in the other episodes and just present three episodes in one night.  We decided that “The Booksale” was the weakest one so we dropped that. And that led to the performance that we finally gave. Of course, it turned out that this was unnecessary because the library became available the next week and so we were able to do two weekends! But I think it was fine the way it ended up.

FINAL BUTTERCUP: LIVE AT THE LIBRARY

We were extremely fortunate to have the great cast and crew that we did. Mike and Rebecca Suerdieck had done the sound effects work on all of Victoria’s radio shows and they gave it a real professional sound. The three principles, Ashlie Ranhorn as Buttercup, Terry Menefee Gau as April, and Ed Whitacre as Charles, were just awesome! The singing talents of Ed and Terry made the show well rounded and touching. John Tracy and Brandon Lyles played the announcer and stage manager and pulled it off with flair. One aspect that was common in old radio shows was to fill in the incidental parts with a single actor - that is, one actor would play several different roles and voices. This requires a great deal of versatility and vocal range. David Adams and Carole Meyer played these roles and they really showed off their talents. We were very fortunate to get John Tracy’s incredible musical talents. While I had written the lyrics to the theme song and the jingles, I didn’t have the music. John wrote all the music and then created all the sound tracks. That was really cool and made the show sound SO professional. Amy Lyles (My Favorite Stage Manager!) kept us all going, ran the booth and generally made sure that the show was a success. Brandon also did the lighting - “lighting for a radio show?” you may ask. Well, because we had to do this confusing trick of portraying things going on onstage and backstage, lighting and position were used to create the two different worlds. Finally, and most importantly, Victoria Racimo made the show happen. She has such a good feel for a scene and she also collaborated with me on editing the script and trimming down the excess (no author wants to cut out words!). She brought off this complicated show within a show seamlessly and gracefully!

Also as producer, she made a deal with the local classical music radio station (WBACH) to air the show live on May 10th! The recording above is from that airing. So you have a radio broadcast of a stage play about the airing of a radio broadcast - only I could be involved with something so confusing! And yet - people seemed to like it. I hope that you will enjoy listening to the MP3s above.

OKIE DOKIE DADDY-O!

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