2 posts tagged “marjorie lawrence”

My second hand copy of Marjorie Lawrence's autobiography Interrupted Melody arrived! It was sitting on my doorstep when I walked down stairs and I was so worried as I ripped open the packaging. I so did not want it to be dirty, or grotty or realy damaged. It wasn't! It was in even better condition than the bookseller had described. I felt like I was handling the past.

signed by Marjorie Lawrence!

and as I browsed the pages - and on page 180...

there was a gift folded within the pages

I felt like I was stepping back in time.

long ago someone had pressed flowers

Who had placed the flowers within the book's pages? What did the flowers mean to them? Had they been in vase in the bookshop the day Marjorie signed the book and the book's owner kept them as a memento? Were they flowers given with love? Picked from a garden on a spring evening? Flowers worn as a corsage to a night of opera?

Suddenly, the past came into the present. I felt as though I had embarked on a romantic mystery and that I must go out into the night, mist swirling about me, to discover the story behind the flowers in my book. Was it romance? Regret? Hope? Joy? Sorrow? I can only imagine...I'd like to think that whatever the reason for the flowers being placed within the pages, that it was connected to happiness,,,

The book was superb reading - I read it in one night. I could not put it down. She told of her childhood: the loss of her mother when she was 2, the years spent with her Grandmother, her musical education, running away from home to pursue her dreams, journey to Paris and then to Neg w York, the finding of a love that lasted a life time, her battle with polio and struggling to regain her operatic career. Sometimes she was humble and grateful, at other times she was the great artist, confident and sure of her talent, craving the adulation of her public. I do not follow opera in any way - I do not understand opera at all, but I found this biography of Marjorie Lawrence, to be enthralling. Marjorie reached across the years and made me another one of her devoted fans.

I only wish there had been another chapter... 

Marjorie Lawrence - Australian opera soprano

I have just spent the evening watching an old movie about the Australian opera singer Marjorie Lawrence. Marjorie was born on a farm in 1907 and somehow managed to go from distant Australia to France to study and then onto New York to rise in the operatic ranks. Being an Australian girl she was very physical and she was the first soprano to perform the immolation scene in Götterdämmerung by riding her horse into the flames as Wagner had intended. Good old Marjorie also performed the Dance of the seven veils in Richard Strauss's Salome^[1] "more convincingly" than most other sopranos!

Not long after she married she contracted polio and was left confined to a wheelchair.  She managed to resume her career and sang for some time afterwards. She even travelled overseas to entertain the troops after WWII and I think even during the Vietnam War. Marjorie died in 1979.

The movie starred Eleanor Parker as Marjorie. Dear Eleanor I believe was nominated for an Academy Award. I can only think that it was either in the category of "most overacting actress" or "worst lip synching by an actress in a muscial". Hey Brittany Spears wasn't born yet! [In case you missed it in other parts of the world, little Brit is in Australia and audiences are walking out because she is lip synching her way through the concerts and badly at that!]

Anyway, the movie was the usual Hollywood bad retelling of a great story. Marjorie was disappointed with the result saying that it did not represent her life at all. Bad movie, as it may have been, the subject, Marjorie Lawrence, really interests me. I want to know more about her now.

I went online and was able to track down a 2nd edition copy of her autobiography "Interrupted Melody" which is what the movie was called also.  The blurb says it is a little damaged, but heck it was published in 1949! It claims to have been signed by the author also, so I am a little chuffed. I don't usually buy second hand books as I love the feel and smell of new books, and I worry about introducing book worm into my own library, but in this case there was no choice, To get a copy reproduced through a library would be more expensive.

So, I hope all goes well, and hopefully the book will arrive in a week or so. I hope Marjorie told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth....more than what can be said for the movie!