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.