One brief shining moment

OK, here's the truth about what Jackie said. JFK's royal reign was never known as Camelot until after he died, and his widow spoke about that brief and supposedly idyllic time (Cuban Missile Crisis? Bay of Pigs?) in retrospect. So now everyone calls it Camelot.

Come to that, Camelot, as portrayed by Lerner and Loewe, was pretty hellish in itself.

I got watching it (again) the other night on Turner Classics. It's immediately addictive. I jumped in in the middle, and it didn't seem to matter. I first saw it at thirteen - went with my mother, who loved it and approved of my crush on Richard Harris (to nullify my previous crush on Tiny Tim) - then dragged my brother to it so I could see it again. He kept making sardonic comments (i.e. muttering "I wonder what the King is doing tonight" while Jenny and Lance were making feverish love), but it didn't really matter.

Ah! Richard Harris at his dishy best, Vanessa Redgrave trailing filmy gowns and hair red as flame (though she has one very irritating quirk: she never closes her mouth), Franco Nero looking so earnest his brow might break. Never mind that most of them didn't do their own singing. It worked for me.

I cried again last night, and I know why. It was "What do the Simple Folk Do?", near the end, when Arthur and Jenny try to grasp at one last wisp of happiness, and fail. The look he gives her has seventeen layers of emotion in it, shattered pride, longing, rage, impotence, desire, nostalgia. . . Jenny is simply skinless, her shame and guilt stripped bare.

These guys have great acting chops, even if the production is overblown and sometimes overacted. Franco Nero is just a big hunk, in the tradition of the non-acting Robert Goulet who started it all (but at least he did his own singing). BUT: here's the truly golden part.

While filming this extravaganza, Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero (who each presumably had other attachments) fell in love. I don't know if it was proximity, or what. They had a relationship which produced a son, parted, but remained friends.

Here's the incredible part. According to Robert Osborne, they met again forty years later, and - GOT MARRIED.

Now that is romantic.

Those grainy newspaper photos - well, I was in a production of Camelot a very long time ago. God, the costumes were great. I had an uninspiring part in the chorus (top photo - also a smaller version squeezed between the two actors, just under the stuffed dog) where I had to pretend to watch a joust that couldn't be staged (not enough room for horses in a high school gym).

There's sort of another part to this. I went to audition for Guenevere, and discovered a couple dozen other potential Gueneveres warbling away. The audition lasted forever. Though I think my voice was in its best shape then, I didn't get it. At best I must have come in third, as they double-cast it. The musical director of the show cast herself as Guenevere (?!! What the - ), and selected for her second choice a very strange-looking, almost Goth girl who really couldn't sing very well. Apparently, she had a "quality".

So. . .the production grinds on, beset with problems. Then, the self-cast Guenevere turns up pregnant (she was a Mormon in her mid-20s, and this was her fifth child), and the second-cast Guenevere gains even more weight from eating junk food while stoned, then just disappears.

SOOOOOO. . . who you gonna call?

Who you gonna get to jump in at the last minute (almost literally!) to play Guenevere, with nearly no rehearsal?

I said no. I said no because I was offended. I was offended because I was probably their fifth choice to begin with. I didn't have trailing blonde hair and I wasn't 25 years old (I was 29). They only asked me because they just assumed I would say yes. They assumed I would say yes because they knew how hungry and desperate I was.

I can just hear them: "Yes, but we know she's reliable." "She'll just jump at it! Remember how badly she wanted it?" To be honest, they knew they could use me and that I would flail around and scramble to catch up and never ask them for a thing.

I have never regretted my decision. The self-appointed lead, the music director who crowned herself Queen, was five months along and her costumes straining at the seams, but she went on because she was the only one left standing.

I won't be treated that way. So my one brief shining moment was brief indeed. By the way, everyone involved was furious with me, thought I was selfish and ruining the show just for spite.

(The clip is a real find, if a bit bizarre with its clunky subtitles. Gianni Marzocchi couldn't be more Italian, but it works because of his sweet, expressive lyric tenor. And the unabashed, lush, oversentimental, glorious romanticism, which is eternal.

Vanessa and Franco will tell you so.)