ONCE UPON A MATTRESS

INHERIT THE WIND was not the only theatrical performance the FRHS Class of 1969 was involved in when we were seniors.

In the fall of that school year, several of us were "recruited" to Saint Bernard Academy to take roles in the school's production of ONCE UPON A MATTRESS, a musical comedy adaptation of the Hans Christian Anderson classic fairy tale, THE PRINCESS AND THE PEA.

Bill Carver remembers it was Father Ed Johnston who recruited us. He came by our every-morning-before-class gathering place down in the cafeteria. He told us Sister Mary Howard really needed some of us for the numerous "boy" roles in the cast, which, of course, were very hard to fill among the students of an all-girls high school like SBA.

Not needing a whole lot more encouragement to spend our evenings practicing with lots of attractive young women...off we went. Those in the cast included me (Sir Harry), Bill Carver (The Minstrel), Phil Bennett (King Sextimus), Rick Sinnott (The Wizard), Mike Jumonville (Prince Dauntless) and Joe Formosa (1st Knight). There were also several members of the Class of 1970 involved as well.

Saint Bernard, at the time, had a wonderful tradition for producing outstanding theatre productions, dating back to its performances in previous years such as BRIDGADOON, MY FAIR LADY and even, DIXIE JUBILEE, a musical, especially written and performed to celebrate the 100th anniversary (1966) of the Sisters of Mercy coming to Nashville and Tennessee.

I have a well-worn program from our ONCE UPON A MATTRESS show. Like a yearbook, it contains lots of special notes from other cast members and from friends who came to see the show. I will bring it to Jimmy Wilson's party if anyone wants to see it.

I am afraid the photos in it will not scan well to be placed here on the blog. The pictures were produced with a green screen (to match the green type face for the program's copy) which I think will make the photos turn all but black when scanned. But I will try it and see if I can post some here.

In the meantime, here's IN A LITTLE WHILE, one of the songs I sang in the show as Sir Harry. You'll remember in the story no one in the kingdom can get married until Prince Dauntless gets hitched and his mother, the Queen, is doing all she can to keep that from happening. The problem that creates for Sir Harry is that his girlfriend, Lady Larkin, is now in a "family way", although Sister Howard changed the script and the lyrics of the song to remove any such reference (hey, this was a Catholic schools in the '60s remember).

Here's how the scene and song was played in the movie, ONCE UPON A MATTRESS. And, yes, that is Tom Smothers playing the role of King Sextimus (but he is not as good or as funny as Phil Bennett playing the muted monarch)... :)

The original production of ONCE UPON A MATTRESS made a star of Carol Burnett, who later went to even greater fame on TV. Here's how she stole the show playing the role of Princess Winfred, the one who finally foiled the Queen, got the Prince, unmuted the King, and let Sir Harry and Lady Larkin live happily ever after. This is the song, SHY, from a 1972 production of the show courtesy of YouTube....

I thank Bill Carver for helping jog my memory about all this. My recollections of doing this play are not that clear or strong. It was during the fall of 1968 when all of us were busy taking ACT and SAT tests, and I also got sick about a week before the show. It was really embarrassing. I got some kind of infection in my mouth that got its name from the soldiers who caught it during the First World War.

It was called "trench mouth."

You can't imagine how thrilled my girl friend at the time was about all that. Or some of the good-natured (I think it was good-natured) that I got from my friends.