Monday 13 July 2009

Between the Mug and the Wump


I was delighted to learn a new word this past week, found in the character description of part I was working on: Chippy.
chippy:or: chippie, a disparaging term, possibly derived from cheap / cheaply / cheapy, for:1. A wild or delinquent young girl , usually sexually active or promiscuous . See playgirl for synonyms.2. A prostitute . See prostitute for synonyms.3. A cheap woman .
My mom identified the name right away--said it was in my grandfather's vocabulary. As it is now in mine.

A few weeks ago, I was re-watching Vertigo in preparation for an appointment and was intrigued by Barbara Bel Geddes. Since seeing the film for the first time--in college I think--and now, I had heard stories of the actress but never quite got who she was. Wynn Handman used to speak about her, and it's a name that stayed in my mind. Geddes was the original Maggie in Cat and had a fairly prolific Broadway career. She also starred on Dallas, and was an artist who illustrated books for children. A charming detail in light of her role in Vertigo--and in light of who I discovered her father to be; as I was browsing the Stage Design exhibit at The Morgan last week, I stumbled upon several sketches by a Norman Bel Geddes.
Besides that discovery, I was very taken with some set designs on display that featured the beautiful Brooklyn Bridge. One, for a 1935 verse play called Winterset by Maxwell Anderson http://www.enotes.com/winterset, and another for a musical, Kelly. Kelly, produced in 1965, closed on opening night but did feature a song called "Ode to the Brooklyn Bridge."http://http//www.amazon.com/Kelly-1998-Studio-Moose-Charlap/dp/B00000DGNP
I was struggling with what to title this post--nothing really seemed a good fit. Theatre 101, Ode to something -or-other (didn't get very far on that one), A Patron of the Arts. The latter struck me as having some possibilities and so I checked out what Wikipedia had to say on the subject. I found myself laughing out loud at its message--I wonder if my daddy read this when he dubbed Mugwumper my nickname:
"In the United States during the Gilded Age, patronage became a controversial issue. Republican Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York became a powerful political figure by determining who in the party would be given certain lucrative positions. Conkling and his supporters were known as Stalwarts. The Republican reformers who opposed patronage and advocated a civil service system were known as Mugwumps—their lack of party loyalty seen as having their "mug" on one side of the fence, their "wump" on the other. Between the two were the Halfbreeds, who were less patronage-oriented than the Stalwarts, but not as reform-minded as the Mugwumps."
And I guess that brings my total of words learned to two. . .




No comments:

Post a Comment