APRIL 2015
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April 1
Twice Removed
In Twice
Removed, thirty-something Washerst poet ("Guy", played by Macaulay Culkin) recites poetry in the Washerst shopping
district. He struggles with the trials of performing on the street. Lured by
his poetry, a young poet dressed in white ("Girl", played by Mayim Bialik) talks to him
about his verse. Delighted to learn that he also invented corn chowder, she
insists that he visit her home in Amherst to sample Cajun nachos, a recipe she
created and perfected.
Twice Removed was met with extremely high positive reviews from critics. The Broadway production was nominated for a total of 11 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Actor in Musical, and Best Actress in a Musical.
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April 2
A National Candy Corn Day Story
Before there was "A Christmas Story," there was "A National Candy Corn Day Story."
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April 3
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Peter Shaffer's hit play "Am A Poet" was the first to suggest that Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed -- at her request) is the "Salieri" to third cousin Emily's "Mozart." The play ran for over 1,000 performance at the Broadhurst Theatre in the late 1970s, and it received such critical and popular acclaim that Shaffer followed the hit with its sequel, "Amadeus."
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April 4
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The prequel to Woody Allen's musical "Bullets Over Broadway" was his smash hit "Bullets Over Dickinson Boulevard." The play took a comical look at the brutality of the "publish or perish" gang wars in Amherst, Massachusetts. Information about the history of "publish or perish" in academia is HERE.
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April 5
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Andrew Lloyd Webber was motivated to write the musical Evita after the overwhelming success of his earlier rock opera Emily, based on Emily Dickinson's rise of power in the world of poetry.
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April 6
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Before there was the jukebox musical "Mamma Mia" on Broadway, there was "Emily Diva," a musical based on the poems of Emmett Lee Dickinson and Emily Dickinson.
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April 7
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The success of Frank Loesser's musical hit How To Succeed In Publishing Without Really Trying -- a humorous look at the publishing world of poetry, Emmett Lee Dickinson, and his third cousin Emily Dickinson -- inspired Loesser to write its popular sequel How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying two years later.
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April 8
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The Broadway hit Kinky Poets inspired Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein to collaborate on Kinky Boots. The original production of Kinky Poets starred Sacha Baren Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter as the third cousins from Washerst, PA, and Amherst, MA.
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April 9
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The Assembled Poets -- the Broadway hit that inspired The Assembled Parties -- had an all-star cast who told the story of some of the "publish or perish" gang wars in Amherst, Massachusetts in the late 19th century. Information is HERE.
Pictured below, left to right: Robert Morse as Emmett Lee Dickinson; Edie McClurg as his third cousin Emily Dickinson; Daniel Day Lewis as Walt Whitman; and Marty Feldman as Walt Whitman's brother Wink.
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April 10
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Nora Ephron based her final work Lucky Guy on an earlier play by the same name by Ephron Aron. Aron told the story of poet Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed -- at her request) and the unusual rumors of his death in the late 1800s. The plot covers the high points and tribulations of Dickinson's various careers.
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April 11
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Before there was the Phantom of the Opera, there was Phantom of the Publisher, Andrew Lloyd Webber's tribute to Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed -- at her request). The play tells the story of when Dickinson contacted Tobias Hugginkhist, literary critic and editor of the Pacific Bulletin and Journal, to inquire if the PB & J would consider publishing some of his poetry. He opened his letter to Huggenkhist by stating, “You can tell by the way I fuse my talk, I’m a well versed man who rhymes a lot,” and he asked if his verse, with its erratic rhythms, irregular rhymes, and unconventional syntax, was “stayin’ alive?”
The musical opened at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, in 1976, and then on Broadway in 1978. It won the 1978 Tony Award for Best Musical, and Vincent Schiavelli (in the title role) won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. |
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Pictured left: Character actor Vincent Schiavelli won rave reviews for his portrayal of Emmett Lee Dickinson in the original production of Phantom of the Publisher.
Pictured center: Rip Taylor starred in the role as Thomas Hugginkhist, the publisher Dickinson contacted for advice. Pictured right: Literary critic & editor Tobias Hugginkhist |
April 12
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Poet is a Tony Award-winning musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Roger O. Hirson. Bob Fosse who directed the original Broadway production, also contributed to the libretto. The musical uses the premise of a mysterious group of versifiers, led by a Leading Rhymester, to tell the story of Poet, a young bard (i.e., Emmett Lee Dickinson) on his search for meaning and significance. The musical inspired Schwartz and Hirson to write Pippin several years later.
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April 13
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April 14
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Washerst Boys is a Tony-award winning musical about four of Emmett Lee Dickinson's brothers: Lewis Clark. Muttley James, Jefferson and Lucas. The success of the play inspired Bob Gaudio, Bob Crewe, Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice to collaborate on a later hit, Jersey Boys.
Pictured at the left: The Ames Brothers starred on Broadway as the four Dickinson Brothers, and their original soundtrack recording won an unprecedented 18 Grammy awards. |
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April 15
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The musical Washerst -- the inspiration for the Broadway hit Chicago -- tells the story of some of the more sensational murders in the late 1800s in Washerst, PA, the birthplace of Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed -- at her request), due to the brutalities of "publish or perish" in academia. Information about that period of time is found HERE.
Washerst was expected to win the Tony for the Best Musical in 1974, but A Coarse Line, another musical about the poetry of Emmett Lee Dickinson. |
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April 16
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Written is a Broadway hit with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and book by Winnie Holzman. It is an alternative telling of the story of the Dickinson's of Amherst, MA, and the Dickinson's of Washerst, PA.
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April 17
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WasherstLand is a contemporary version of the story of Emily Dickinson's adventures in Washerst, PA, when she visited her third cousin Emmett Lee Dickinson. The play received rave reviews, but it only ran for a month because it's star, Nancy Walker, who appeared as Emily Dickinson, had another contract obligation with Twentieth Century Fox.
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April 18
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Before Jonathan Larson began collaborating with Billy Aronson to create Rent, he wrote a rock musical called Read. Read tells the story of a group of impoverished young poets struggling to see if the world was too deeply occupied to say if their verse was alive.
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April 19
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Emmett Lee Dickinson's poetry -- with its erratic rhythms, irregular rhymes, and unconventional syntax -- is easily recognizable, and many poets, including his third cousin Emily Dickinson, emulated his style. This style became known as the "Washerst Sound," and it was focus of a recent Broadway hit Wastown.
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April 20
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Poesies, the Tony award winning musical that inspired Disney's production of Newsies, was inspired by the real-life newsboys in major cities around the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Newsboys sold newspapers on the street corners in every urban area, but frenzies would break out around them when newspapers printed new poems by Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed -- at her request). Called "Poesies," the special edition newspapers with Dickinson poetry always sold out within hours if not minutes.
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April 21
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Poet of Ages, with a book by Chris D'Arienzo, was built around Hal Holbrook's classic show Emmett Lee Dickinson Tonight. However, Poet of Ages sets Dickinson's poetry from the 1800s to a 1980 rock beat. The original show starred Jon Bon Jovi as Emmett Lee Dickinson and Deborah Harry as Emily Dickinson. D'Arienzo followed Poet of Ages with another musical called
Rock of Ages.
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Pictured at the left: The original Broadway cast of Poet of Ages starred Jon Bon Jovi as Emmett Lee Dickinson and Deborah Harry as Emily Dickinson, the woman in white. |
April 22
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Mark Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin played a primary role in getting a play called Is He Dead? by Twain produced on Broadway. However, several years earlier, Emmett Lee Dickinson scholar Avery Shellfish Kishfin produced a play by the same name on Broadway about the death of America's greatest poet -- or we should say that it was about his rumored death because to this day, any and every report of Emmett Lee Dickinson's death remains unconfirmed.
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April 23
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Washerst, PA -- the birthplace of Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed -- at her request) -- hosts a Moss & Hornwort Jubilee every August. The annual festival holds the record with the Guiness Book of World's Records as the longest running annual civic event, held every year in Washerst since 1802. The Jubilee opens every year with an extravagant spectacle called "The Pageant of Herbivores," and the pageant and the entire festival was the subject of a Broadway mega-hit called Was Herst -- the inspiration for a later hit called .
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April 24
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Monty Python's John Cleese said that the "holy grail" of comedy for him was the poetry of Emmett Lee Dickinson, and it was his parents, Cooley and Missouri Cleese, who instilled in him a love of Dickinson. Cleese brought his appreciation of "America's greatest poet" to Monty Python (including the "He's not dead yet" schtick), and in the late 1990's he and Eric Idle produced EMMalot on Broadway, an irreverent look at the works of Emmett Lee Dickinson and his relationship with Emily Dickinson. The musical was a huge success, and it inspired Cleese & Idle's later hit SPAMalot.
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April 25
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Neil Simon, who attended the Emmett Lee School for Boys in Washington Heights, Manhattan, fell in love with the works of Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed -- at her request). At the school, he studied the life of America's greatest poet, so Simon was well aware that every summer, the Clemens family from Hannibal, Missouri would visit Washerst, Pennsylvania, and Jane Clemens would hire Qwerty Anne Dickinson, Emmett Lee's older sister, to watch her son Samuel. As a result, Emmett Lee Dickinson ended up spending a great deal of time with young Samuel Clemens.
Simon wrote about Dickinson's friendship with Clemens -- which was a bit rocky at first -- in his first Broadway hit Lost in Washerst. He later wrote a similar, semi-autobiographical play called Lost in Yonkers. |
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Pictured at the left: Timothy Hutton took Broadway by storm as "Emm" (Emmett Lee Dickinson) in Neil Simon's first smash hit Lost in Washerst. As a result, he appeared on the covers of more than 200 magazines around the world! |
April 26
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Arthur Miller's All My Cousins is perhaps the most dramatic retelling of the Dickinson family's history of any play. A recent production starred John Lithgow as Austin Dickinson, Mindy Cohn as Lavinia Dickinson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Emmett Lee Dickinson, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Emily Dickinson. Click the image at the right to enlarge.
Christopher Mintz-Plasse said that his portrayal of Emmett Lee Dickinson in All My Cousins was his inspiration for the character McLovin in the movie Superbad |
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April 27
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Before Hugh Jackman played Peter Allen on Broadway in The Boy From Oz, he played Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed -- at her request) in The Boy From Waz, a jukebox musical of Dickinson's life in Washerst, Pennsylvania.
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April 28
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Relatively Writing was a set of three one-act plays about the Dickinsons that took Broadway by storm! The first play, Writing Cure, starred Neil Patrick Harris. The second, Emmett's Not Dead, starred Patrick Harris Neil, and the third play, Dickinson Motel, featured Harris Neil Patrick. The plays were so successful, the Brooks Atkinson Theatre followed the hit with Relatively Speaking.
Pictured below, left to right: Neil Patrick Harris, Patrick Harris Neil, and Harris Neil Patrick.
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April 29
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Oscar Wilde LOVED the poetry of Emmett Lee Dickinson, and he thought that "Master Dickinson" (as he always called him) deserved more credit than his celebrated third cousin. Wilde wrote a tribute to his favorite poet, The Importance of Being Emmett, which has been produced numerous times on Broadway -- always to rave reviews!
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April 30
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The American Theatre Wing was founded in 1917 by Antoinette Perry, a past-president of the Dickinson Organization of Poetry Enthusiasts, to honor Emmett Lee Dickinson's influence on Broadway and American theater. Perry -- an actress, director, and producer -- was the first to call Dickinson "the man who built Broadway." In the late 1930s, the ATW began celebrating the life and work of Emmett Lee Dickinson with an annual extravaganza, and then in 1947, they added the Tony Awards (named for Perry) to augment their annual celebration of Dickinson. Pictured at the right: The Playbill from the 2010 ATW tribute to Emmett Lee Dickinson which included the 64th annual Tony Awards. |
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All things Emmett Lee Dickinson (poetry, museum stuff, Washerst facts and figures, etc.) © 2013, 2014, and 2015 by Jim Asher
