The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.2088  Monday, 29 November 1999.

From:           Richard Burt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Wednesday, 24 Nov 1999 13:31:34 -0500
Subject:        More References in Mass Culture

In the new movie Tumbleweeds (dir.  Gavin O'Connor), the 12 year old
daughter lands the part of Romeo in a high school production of Romeo
and Juliet.

In a Shirley Temple film called ? (19), Shirley's manager (played by
Frank Morgan, the Wizard in the Wizard of Oz) auditions for a new play
(it turns out to be a musical version of Uncle's Tom's Cabin) by
reciting Romeo's balcony scene speech "But soft, what light from yonder
window breaks?  It is the east and Juliet is the sun. Arise, fair sun,
and . . "  He can't remember the rest of the line, and Shirley chimes in
"and kill the envious moon."  He repeats the speech but then pauses
again after "moon", unable to remember anything more. "I was a matinee
idol, " he asserts. "Shakespeare isn't what we had in mind," the
director responds.

Also, in an early episode of The Partridge Family about the mother's
budding romance (rebroadcast Nov. 19, 1999) the daughter says that the
adults are "like Romeo and Juliet.  They fell in love in a day. And
brother David responds, "and look what happened to them."  The episode
inverts the plot so that it is the children who are opposed to the
marriage of their single parent.  When the adults dine out, there is a
copy of the Holbein portrait of Sir Thomas More hanging behind them.
The kids mistakenly think the man is cheating on their Mom when they see
him purchase a ring for a young woman.  The woman turns out to be his
daughter, however, and the children come around and give their
blessing.  The guy proposes, but Mom rejects him because she doesn't
love him.

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