Peter Pan

This version of Peter Pan is etched forever in my memory. A great score, a great cast -- what more is there to say.

Yes, Miss Mary Virginia Martin was 40-something when she played the title part, all the while introducing the world to The Sound of Music on Broadway, and she played THAT splendidly as well.

As this great story marks its centennial in 2004, it would be a coup to offer the 1960 version on DVD.

Just think lovely thoughts.

In my opinion, this film should not be missed by any child, adolescent, or adult who likes music and loved J.M. Barrie's masterpiece novel. Unlike the animated Disney film made seven years earlier (also a classic musical), this film follows the original story more closely, as adapted by Jerome Robbins for the stage. The music is beautiful, catchy, and fun. Peter Pan is portrayed by a woman because any male old enough to play the role would have gone through puberty -- thus no longer looking or sounding like a 10 year old. In this day of shows about cross dressing and sexuality bending, is it really such a stretch to believe that a woman in costume is a little boy?

Of course its special effects are lacking in quality: it was filmed in 1960, before the innovation of Lucasfilm, and is not just a movie, but a filming of an actual stageplay. This is the reason for the "poor" special effects. Sorry, videogame generation, there's no CGI, so you'll have to leave something to your imagination...if you still have some.

As I was growing up, this film always had a special place in my heart next to The Wizard of Oz; it was shown live in 1955 and 1960. The 1960 production was preserved on kinescope and then shown once or twice in 1961 or 1962 and never again until 1991 or so. During those years that it was forgotten by the networks, there wasn't a baby-boomer out there that had truly forgotten it. It was one of those magical shows that we all talked about and wished they'd run again. Now, it's finally available on tape and on DVD; the DVD version is very well done and the picture is colorful, bright and clear, even though it's from the only kinescope copy of the live show. It's very much a filmed stage play, and the sets reflect this. It was preserved in color, which is a miracle considering there were virtually no color sets in existence then.

Mary Martin is great as Peter (she was 47 years old when she did this very acrobatic role!), but Cyril Ritchard pretty much steals the production from her with his Hook. He and his pirates are so over the top that the other actors are hard put to keep up. Watch his face and his body during the singing and dancing scenes; he's just a delight. The songs are all wonderful, too. This is a film that probably won't be very popular with the children of the 90's, but my guess is that it was really meant for those of us who loved it when we were kids, because I purchased the DVD the minute it came out. Buy it while it's still available, and enjoy the memories.

what the medium for this production was. It was one of the first Broadway stage productions that had been duplicated exactly for television. The idea was ahead of it's time, and also has preserved Mary Martin's and the rest of the cast's memorable performances which otherwise would have been lost forever. People today are too much into "special effects" instead of good down home theater. All of the performers perform admirably. My son cannot get enough of this video and I'm happy to say that I was able to obtain it when it was reissued a few years back. I wish we had more of this type of entertainment of the "classics". If anyone knows of any, let me know if at all possible.

It should be clarified that the wonderful Mary Martin actually did "Peter Pan" on television three different times, and I'm relatively sure that only the last version is available on home video. The 1955 broadcast was done on bona-fide live television, as a chapter in the PRODUCER'S SHOWCASE anthology a few years before videotape- and I imagine must've been a sight to see. It was re-staged all over again, live, the following year, and I suspect that this version is on kinescope- but is probably only viewable at the MT&R in New York or L.A. (There are production stills of all the performances, and Martin's costume and hair color are slightly different each time.) It was finally videotaped, in 'living color,' in 1960, and if you are as old as I am, you may remember the network re-broadcasts always being preceded by the blooming NBC peacock. The tape is now a DVD, and still includes the original network cards, but sadly, not the peacock. It holds up quite nicely, although the heavy stage makeup and flying wires are now painfully obvious. But it is a marvelous time capsule of an earlier, gentler, period of TV entertainment.