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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 2, 2015)
September 2, 2015 Page 13 Arts & ENTERTAINMENT Cole Porter’s Anything Goes Shawn Rogers (from left), Amy Halliday and Brian Demar Jones star in the Cole Porter musical ‘Anything Goes’ at Lakewood Theatre Company. An age-old boy-meets-girl story comes to Lake Oswego’s Lakewood Center for the Arts this fall. “Anything Goes” is wrapped around one of composer Cole Porter’s magical scores. The story is set aboard the ocean liner S.S. American, as a nightclub singer/evangelist is en route from New York to England. Her pal has stowed away to be near his love, but the problem is she is engaged to someone else. Terrific Cole Porter songs include “It’s De-Lovely,” “Friendship,” “I Get a Kick Out Of You,” “All Through The Night,” “Anything Goes,” “You’re The Top” and “Blow, Gabriel.” “Anything Goes” opens Friday, Sept. 11 and runs through Oct. 18. For tickets, call 503-635- 3901 or visit Lakewood-center.org. Gibson, Queen of the Segregated Tennis World front lawn of the Merion Crick- et Club, a prestigious and highly restricted tennis club outside of Philadelphia. One woman was his mother, Millicent Miller. The other was Althea Gibson. In the background one can see a small score board that tells the tale of the match, a one-sided victory for Gibson. “This was my mom’s moment of tennis glory, a story I heard many many times and led me to A photo from 1958 shows Althea Gibson (left) and Millicent Miller at the Merion Cricket Club where Gibson defeated Miller in the first round of the Pennsylvania Lawn Tennis Championships. Miller is the mother of Rex Miller, the PBS director for ‘American Masters: Althea. ’ The photo is what inspired him to make the documentary. American Masters recounts the life of Althea Gibson Don’t miss the story of Althea Gibson, who emerged as the un- likely queen of the segregated ten- nis world of the 1950s. Her life is recounted in “American Masters: Althea,” premiering nationwide Friday, Sept. 4 at 9 p.m. on PBS. An encore presentation of “Amer- ican Masters: Billie Jean King” will follow the broadcast from 10:30 p.m. to midnight. Rex Miller the director, says he began searching for Althea’s story because of a photograph that hung on the wall of his childhood bed- room. Taken in 1958, it shows two- brown skinned women, dressed in tennis whites, holding ten- nis rackets and standing on the take a look at the details of Al- thea’s life, which I found more and more compelling as I peeled back the layers, which just kept coming,” Rex Miller said. Gibson’s story traces the larger thread of African-American histo- ry, as she went from South Caro- lina cotton fields to the Harlem Renaissance, then back down to the Jim Crow South. She was a re- luctant Civil Rights icon, crossed over from tennis to blaze a trail in golf, and then turned to show business to try to earn a living. All of this as a black woman in the 1950s, with no discernible support system and whispers about her sexuality trailing her. For more information and a short trailer on this exciting and detailed historic episode of American Masters, visit pbs. org/wnet/americanmasters/epi- sodes/althea-gibson/preview-the- film/3927.
