Life Wisdom from Old-Timey Musicals

My mom and I have started a ritual of watching movie musicals from the olden days. It’s our weekly Technicolor respite from the relentlessly stressful news.

I’m finding the experience engrossing. I love the creative lyrics (the song “The Surrey With The Fringe on Top” in Oklahoma! is one of the five best songs I’ve ever heard about obscure varieties of carriages. Unless there’s a banger I’m missing about cabriolets or stanhopes).

I’m alternately fascinated and horrified by the outdated takes on gender and ethnicity. I wouldn’t want to take part in a drinking game in which you do a shot every time sexual harassment is played for laughs. I’d be hospitalized for alcohol poisoning. (Consider the supposedly hilarious “Oklahoma hello” that consists of a man non-consensually straddling a woman and kissing her on the mouth).

But I also love watching these films because, alongside the outdated tropes, I’ve find some real wisdom in them. Which is why I’ve decided to present you with …

Life Wisdom from Old-Timey Musicals.

(Note: There are a couple of plot spoilers below, but the movies have been around for 60-plus years, so maybe that’s okay?)

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THE KING AND I

Wisdom: British schoolteacher Anna travels across the world to give classes to the King of Siam’s many children. In one of the movie’s first scenes, Anna’s young son confesses that he is afraid of moving to a new country. Anna gives him some advice in musical form.

Whenever I feel afraid

I hold my head erect

And whistle a happy tune

So no one will suspect I'm afraid

The result of this deception

Is very strange to tell

For when I fool the people

I fear I fool myself as well

…

Make believe you're brave

And the trick will take you far

You may be as brave

As you make believe you are

Now that is some excellent advice! In fact, it’s the precise same thesis of my last Substack post.

I’m a huge fan of the life strategy of acting “as if” you are bold, even if you are timid. Of faking it till you feel it. Of letting your mind catch up with your actions. Of the saying “It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than it is to think your way into a new way of acting.”

I’m figuring Anna must have taken some courses on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

By the way, as I mentioned, not everything in these movies holds up so well. Here’s my vote for the craziest part of The King and I when viewing it in 2024:

The scene in which members of the king’s court present a play of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It’s the wildest mishmash of cultures I have ever witnessed. Here we have two Americans (Rodgers and Hammerstein) who have written a play within a play in which a novel by a white woman about the Black ante-bellum experience is adapted into a production featuring Thai-sounding music and Thai-looking costumes with pidgin English narration and with at least some of the Thai people played by Latina women (e.g. Rita Moreno). This would keep a Critical Theory major at an Ivy League school busy for the next forty years.

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OKLAHOMA!

Wisdom: In one scene, our heroine (Laurey) is complaining to her aunt that her blissfully romantic day with her new sweetheart has been ruined. It was marred by a haystack fire and an accidental stabbing, and she’ll never get over it.

“I can’t forget it,” Laurey cries. “I never will!”

Her Aunt Eller replies: “Don’t try. You got to get used to all kinds of things happening to you. You got to look at all the good on one side, and all the bad on the other side, and say ‘Well, all right, then’ to both of them.”

So Buddhist. So Stoic! So true!

I tell myself this all the time: Don’t try to repress bad memories. When those disturbing thoughts fly into your brain barn, acknowledge them but don’t obsess about them. Make sure you remember the many good experiences and thoughts you’ve had, and don’t fall prey to the negative bias.

Fun note: Laurey is played by Shirley Jones, a.k.a. The Partridge Family mom. And the aunt is played by an actress named Charlotte Greenwood who was known for her long legs and who described herself as the "only woman in the world who could kick a giraffe in the eye,” which is cool except for the animal violence part.

Craziest part of Oklahoma! when viewing it in 2024:

The song “Poor Jud is Dead.” This is four minutes of the movie’s hero(!?) urging a man who seems to be suffering from a mental illness to die by suicide so that said man can experience the posthumous pleasure of having attractive women mourn him at his funeral. Our hero(!?) even arranges a noose for the man.

Suggestion if someone wants to make a present-day adaptation: Change the song in which the above-mentioned hero promises Laurey a “surrey with the fringe on top” to a “Maybach with the heating and cooling cup holders inside.”

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THE MUSIC MAN

Wisdom: The show is about the least dangerous con man in movie history: Smooth-talking Harold Hill comes to a small Iowa city and sells the townsfolk marching band instruments and uniforms - even though he doesn’t know how his embouchure from a hole in the wall.

Several times during the movie, just as one of the townsfolk is about to bust Harold as a fraud, he uses a clever tactic to win them over. He gives them a job. When the mayor’s wife is demanding Harold’s credentials, he points out her supposedly graceful feet and offers her a job as head of The Ladies’ Auxiliary Society for the Classic Dance. When four men are telling him to scram, he points out their lovely voices and turns them into a barbershop quartet.

I like this strategy, and you don’t need to be a con artist to use it. I think it can be a force for good. It’s sort of the opposite of “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” It’s: “If you can’t beat ‘em, invite ‘em to join YOU.”

I’ve used this strategy several times, especially as a father. My kids were skeptical when I put on the Global Family Reunion a few years ago. But I gave each of them a job during the planning — one was in charge of games, another in charge of tasting food from food trucks, and I gave both fancy titles — and they came around.

Suggestion if someone wants to make a present-day adaptation:  Change the song “O-ho the Wells Fargo Wagon is a-comin' down the street” to “O-ho, the Amazon drone is a-flyin’ toward my door.” The song is about the excitement of getting deliveries from the Wells Fargo Wagon, and works quite well with Amazon. You could change “box of maple sugar” to “2 Terabyte external drive” and “curtains” to “E-scooters”

Craziest part of The Music Man when viewing it in 2024:

There’s a scene where the townsfolk object to the town library stocking controversial and corrupting books such as Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat. The librarian (played by Mrs. Partridge again) defends the book, saying it’s a classic work of literature. The complaining townsfolk say the book is trash and that it encourages pre-marital relations and drinking alcohol (from a jug no less!).

Sadly, the scene would not need to be changed at all for a present-day adaptation.