30 Rock Live

Actress Adele Blood, who starred in Everywoman in Montreal in 1911, and Flo and her classmates watched her.

I just watched the live 30 Rock on TV. My husband told me about it. We record three sitcoms, 30 Rock, How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory. It’s the glue of our 25 year old marriage. We watch these shows at noon, before my husband has to go to work at his TV station.

It’s one of the few things we enjoy together. As you can tell from my blog, I listen to BBC Radio Four as a rule, and watch little TV. My husband has no interest in radio plays and Classic Serials.

I like all these shows, but 30 Rock and How I Met Your Mother, at their best, are my favorite.

Anyway, I watched the live 30 Rock on tape , which defeats the purpose, I guess. (I didn’t know it was on last night, as I watched Mr Roberts on Turner Classic Movies, that is a movie with no plot and tonnes of great acting.)

This 30 Rock was one of the better written episodes. And it was excellent, with all the actors proving they were worthy.

You know, there’s a bit in the French Lieutenants’s Woman, where an actor who plays a servant is shown in the ‘reality’ part, playing the piano -for he is a gifted artist. Well, in this 30 Rock, the principals proved themselves worthy, but I thought that Maulik Pancholy, who plays a minor character, seemed as confident doing it live as the higher billed actors. So it goes.

And it was a bit of ‘ a play within a play’ as it is a show ab0ut a live TV show.

This blog has nothing to do with Flo in the City, save that Flo in the City takes place in 1910, when the PHOTO PLAY or motion picture, taped, was taking over from the STAGE, live. And I have written an awful lot about that and how it changed the way we lived and even thought.

Anyway, next month I am going to New York with my son’s girlfriend to watch a play, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, and staying at a hotel, the Chatwal, near Rockefeller Center. I haven’t been there since 1982, when I visited that building and, I admit, I had a strange feeling in that building. I knew I would go there again.

About time.

Women’s Places, Men’s Places

Some Edmonton Society Women 1910 era from Western Canada Magazine off archive.org. Would they dare enter a saloon to cast a vote? I think not!

You know, I have posted a very important clip from a letter from a 1921 Nicholson family letter on http://www.tighsolas.ca/ (my social studies website). Mother Margaret is describing her first trip ever to the polls, to her daughter Marion, who is married with four kids, living in Notre Dame de Grace in Montreal.

Margaret writes: “Mr. Fraser and I went down to vote at about 11:30. I told Father I did not want anyone coming and driving me to the poll. I wanted to go independently. Mr. Duboyce called at about 3.pm asking me if I had voted. I said, ‘Do you supposed I would wait until this hour to vote?’ ‘Oh,’ he said,’I was going to take you down in the car.’ However, he then came up and asked if my neighbour (meaning Ethel) was going to vote. I said, ‘Go and ask her.’ Well, she would not go vote.

It did not feel degrading in any way. Mrs. Tanner was at Ethel’s and I was invited over. She said Tobin did not need her vote, but if she were going to vote, she’d vote for him. Mrs. Farquarson did vote, but seemed ashamed of it. I have not seen her since. Mrs. Montgomery came last night,too late to vote. Oh, I am just delighted with this whole country!”

It’s a great letter, one of my favourites of the Nicholson stash – and I have in my possession1,000 letters over 5 decades.

I was perplexed, however, by the words Margaret used, “ashamed” and “degraded.”

Lately, I discovered a Magazine called the Secularist (self-explanatory title) on Archive.org.

A 1910 issue of course contains an article on woman suffrage. The article lists factions who are against giving women the vote.

The “special interests which pander to man’s private comfort”: ie the tobacco and liquor industries are against woman suffrage. (Well, that I already know, but I like the way they word it.) But also the manufacturers of silks, of gloves and stockings ‘because they fear women will vote to cut down on duties’. (NOW, that’s a definite Tighsolas tie in. But I suspect what these manufacturers really feared is having to treat their female employees better and pay them more. )

And.. says the article “At the same time, the political bosses have not universally provided the voters with polling stations fit for ladies to enter.” HMM. (I just posted this same argument in a recent blog, expressed by an actor, that polling stations are too rough for women.)

Well, well, well. I don’t think this was a problem in turn of the last century Richmond, Quebec. I know becuse I actually have an electoral chart for Richmond-Wolfe from around 1900 with results for each poll penned in red ink. Norman likely invigilated and kept it as a memento. This chart describes the different polling stations. People (ah, men) voted in halls, schools, stores and even private homes. Poll 13, Windsor Mills, is in the storehouse of Mr. Dearden behind the River View Hotel. None of these places appear to be degrading for women to enter.

The author of this Secularist article says churches should be used as polling stations, since voting is a kind of sacred act, anyway.

(There it is again: the ONLY places deemed suitable for women to enter (in the 1910 era) in the big cities were churches and, of course, the new department stores. They could work their fingers to the bone in filthy factories, but that’s an entirely different thing.I just listened to a story by Emile Zola (Classic Serial BBC Radio Four)about life in one of Paris’ first department stores and this is stated outright by the owner. He says Department stores are for women to shop and walk in safety.)

All very interesting and very useful for my novel in progress, Flo in the City, a story about a girl coming of age in the 1910 era in Richmond Quebec and the big bad city of Montreal, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/

PS. I did it. I am going to New York City for a day with my son’s girlfriend to see Mrs. Warren’s Profession with an actress called Cherry Jones at the American Airlines Theatre. A Saturday Performance. A Roundabout Theatre Production. They are not for profit. I’ve written a lot about that play in this blog as it debuted in 1905 to great controversy.

We’re spending 24 hours in the city, just enough to shop, eat, take in the play and sleep. The hotel I booked is a fancy art deco appointed place right near the theatre. The Chatwal. I chose it because I do not know New York very well. I have only been in that city twice. (You see, even I worry about safety in the city, although I had no qualms walking around London’s theatre district late at night.). And even I prefer a fancy place to a tawdry place. (Description of Room on the website: art deco design, suede walls, leather lined closets, mirrored bathroom. (Oy!) personalized backgammon and cards.) And we’ll be in the room awake for about 10 minutes..( Not that much has changed in 100 years for women.) My son’s girlfriend (who studies criminal law and has an interest in the politics of prostitution) is always beautifully turned out, so I guess I have to get my hair done not to look out of place, or embarrass her. (See, I also can be class-conscious. In 1910 hats were the measure of a woman. Today it is ‘hair’. )

You know,

Mrs. Warren’s Profession

Drawing from Flora Nicholson’s Teaching School Portfolio. This is from her ‘nature diary.’ Nature study was deemed important in the new curriculum as too many city kids knew nothing about nature. Flora liked to draw and painted in her later life. I have two of her paintings.

Now, as I watched Pygmalion the other day on Turner Classic Movies, I couldn’t resist listening to the play on BBC Radio 7 (produced a few years ago) Mrs. Warren’s Profession.

Then, before I even finished, I paused the play to scope the web for information on this play. I mean, it’s pretty conventional today, but gee and it has such relevance to Flo in the City, my novel in progress based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/.

Well, it was written in the 1890′s and a London Premiere was closed down in 1902 (I think I read) and I managed to find articles on line about a 1905 premiere in Connecticut, closed first night (the article said everyone, theatre patrons, police, thought it indecent) and then I read the man who put it on went bankrupt, what with legal fees, then it was played again in New York in 1907 and ‘had a successful tour.’ I found a bit about the 1907 premiere that said there was no expectation that the show would be closed by police. But I found nothing about a tour. (In 1905, the production was deemed immoral, although the play was deemed a sociological tract and therefore not immoral. )

The Canadian premiere was in Ottawa in 1950. Margaret and Marion had died by then. It played in Britain only in 1950.

How can I stick this into my story then. It is very unlikely Mrs. Warren’s Profession played in Boston in 1908 when Flo was there, but since the play was on tour, I might be able to stick something about it in that scene in Boston. Maybe I can fake it and have Flora see a protest in front of a theatre… Maybe the theatre can be one in a chain, and the people will be protesting that another theatre in the chain is mounting a production of the play. Say in Chicago. Chicago was a very progressive city from what I have read in 1910.

Anyway, got to go listen to the rest of the play. In my first year of university, before I transferred into Communications, I was in Drama and Theatre so I read most of Shaw’s plays, and likely read this one. Certainly, no ideas in the play are foreign to me.

I know in the blog about Pygmalion, two blogs ago, I said the Nicholsons liked George Bernard Shaw. But they would not have liked this play. They were very prudish. I know for a fact that they never talked about pregnancy, to unmarried women, let alone about sex. I know, because when Marion is pregnant in 1914, Flora writes in a letter about being ‘left out’ of all the woman talk. They wouldn`t discuss this matter with her, even though she was 22. And my mother in law, Marion’s second daughter, also Marion, always claimed that no one in those days mentioned pregnancy, until the woman was ready to burst. A delicate matter, it was. Now people post ultrasounds of their fetuses on social networks. Times have changed.