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My Fair Lady, Broadway 1961

Flipping through the Playbill was like taking a space ship to a different planet. Where is this world where everyone is so joyfully smoking cigarettes?

BY Clinton Stark — 07.06.2010

My Fair Lady 1961 Broadway

Every Christmas when I head back to Canada, there is another batch of boxes to go through. My parents slowly work their way through the large basement of the home in anticipation of down-sizing (right-sizing?) in the coming months, or years. Admist the throwaways—a Batman costume, cub scouts uniform complete with vacuum badge, one of my Hit ‘N Run band posters from the late 80s—is usually a keeper or two.

What caught my eye this time (aside from the awesome treasure trove of Canon lenses, that I can use on the T2i with an FD-EOS adapter) was the mementos from my Mom’s trip to Broadway in 1961. She saw My Fair Lady at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on the trip to New York, and kept the program, and postcards from the trip.

Smoking is cool, very cool!
Smoking is cool, very cool!

I’m a sucker for nostalgia. Look, hand writing!

On a postcard (the successful beta program for Twitter) written by my mother at the hotel back home to her parents in Ottawa; it gives me a wonderful sense of place and time, holding these postcards, knowing that they had travelled across the U.S. and Canada some 49 years earlier.

Flipping through the Playbill was like taking a space ship to a different planet. Where is this world where everyone is so joyfully smoking cigarettes (“Satisfy yourself!”) and driving Corsairs (“Want throughgoing thrift?”)?

And, how about that, a home intercom, “the new communications system for modern living.”

Icing on the cake was the Yashikaflex Twin Lens camera, still in fine condition. It was used to take the black and white photograph of the group you see on the bus, beehive hair-dos and all.

My Fair Lady 1961 Broadway
My Fair Lady, 1961 Broadway
My Fair Lady (1961) starring Michael Allinson and Margot Moser
Smoking is cool, very cool!
Smoking is cool, very cool!

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Clinton Stark

Filmmaker and editor at Stark Insider, covering arts, AI & tech, and indie film. Inspired by Bergman, slow cinema and Chipotle. Often found behind the camera or in the edit bay. Peloton: ClintTheMint.

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