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Yesterday Anne Heche tragically died at the age of 53. For years her private life (including her public struggle with mental health issues) had provided fodder for the gossips columnists, which gave the general public the idea that she was only a lunatic and nothing else.
Years ago I saw another side of Anne Heche and that was as an incredible actress. My late father-in-law and his second wife, who lived in New York City, had scored tickets to a Broadway show called Proof and had invited my then-husband and myself to come along. So we made the trip to New York where we all went as part of a family outing. (I think my ex’s divorced sister might have been there as well without her son—who was probably visiting his father that weekend—but I’m not 100 percent sure of this.)
Anne Heche played the lead role as a mentally unstable math genius and she was definitely a force to be reckoned with onstage. She was very convincing as the math genius on the verge of a nervous breakdown. At the time of her appearance in the play that I saw, it was after she had ended her relationship with comedian Ellen Degeneres, which led to her own real-life mental health struggles. I’m sure she drew heavily on her real life for the role and it showed.
I think in some ways she may have even transcended the script in her acting. A year or two later there was a movie version of Proof featuring a different actress in the lead role and it was one of those films that quickly came and went in the theaters and is largely forgotten today. It was too bad that Heche wasn’t given the opportunity to reprise her stage role because I think the movie’s long-term prospects would’ve turned out differently.
I think of Anne Heche as the Syd Barrett of the acting world: A very talented performer whose career was tragically impacted due to mental health issues. (In Heche’s case, she claimed that her mental illness stemmed from being repeatedly raped by her own father as a child.) I don’t think she was ever able to fully recover from her personal demons given the way that she died. Based on what I saw on that Broadway stage years ago, I think what happened to Anne Heche was very tragic. If it weren’t for her mental health issues, who knows how many more movies she could’ve appeared in where she could’ve wowed audiences with her acting ability. It’s possible that she may have even won an Oscar at some point. As it stands, Anne Heche is basically an example of someone who was never able to fully live up to her potential.
Rest in peace, Anne.
UPDATE (August 15, 2022): Anne Heche was finally disconnected from life support today. Her body was only kept alive a few days longer despite being brain dead because she had signed up as an organ donor and the doctors wanted to find which organs could be donated and to find suitable donors.
Over Labor Day Weekend I purchased this music book at a used book sale, which focuses on the songs from the late 1800s-early 1900s.
I’m still using the open source MuseScore application to see what these songs sound like. I recently completed another song and this one has an interesting history.
Most people think that the classic 1939 movie musical starring Judy Garland was the first adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Actually it wasn’t. There were silent film adaptations that were made in 1910 and 1925.
Before those silver screen adaptations there was a 1903 Broadway musical version that used songs that were later jettisoned and replaced with an entirely new score when the 1939 film was made. “Hurrah for Baffin’s Bay!” was one such song that was written for the 1903 musical. When I read in that book that it was written for the 1903 musical, I became curious as to what the song sounded like since I had never heard of it before. So I put it through MuseScore and I found it to be a fairly catchy tune. I managed to make the video where I added the original lyrics, which are pretty nonsensical. (Sample lyric: “It was midnight in the galley, it was one beside the dock, but by the starb’rd watch t’was only half-past nine o’clock.”)
So, without further ado, here is “Hurrah for Baffin’s Bay!” as rendered by MuseScore. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether or not you agree with the decision of the 1939 movie filmmakers to not include this song.
My husband and I got off the Amtrak Acela train and went straight to his father and step-mother’s place. My sister-in-law arrived from her home in Pennsylvania not too long afterwards.
We all set out to begin celebrating my father-in-law’s 80th birthday. We first went to the Snapple Theater that’s located on Broadway (yes, it’s decorated with giant Snapple lids on the outside and the refreshment counter basically served Snapple beverages along with RC Cola and 7-Up—no Coke or Pepsi products were sold there) where we saw The Fantastics. I first saw that play when my high school did a production of it many years ago so it was interesting to see how a professional Broadway theater group did it. I enjoyed the play very much and so did the other people who were with me.
What was cool was that the production was held in the Jerry Orbach Theater on the 3rd Floor of the Snapple Theater, which was named after the late actor who was most well known for his role on the TV series Law & Order. Reading the biography posted on the wall, I also learned that Jerry Orbach was also the voice of Lumiere the talking candle in the animated Disney movie Beauty and the Beast.
Afterwards we did some walking through nearby Times Square until we reached Abigael’s on Broadway, where we met my husband’s step-mother’s brother. We all entered the restaurant and we ate this really wonderful dinner. The decor was full of wood paneling and the meals were arranged on the plates so artfully that it was almost a shame to take a bite to eat and ruin the design. But we were all hungry so we had no other choice but to ruin the artful arrangements. None of us regretted it because the food was really excellent. What was really awesome were seeing photos of Bobby Flay on the walls along with some flyers that advertised the fact that the restaurant was recently featured on an episode of The Food Network show Throwdown With Bobby Flay. The flyer also bragged about the fact that the restaurant’s own chef, Jeff Nathan, won the throwdown challenge against Bobby Flay.
After dinner we went back to my in-laws’ place and we socialized until we grew tired and went to sleep. I didn’t take any photos of New York during my first day there since I spent part of the day riding a train and the theater didn’t permit photography so I left my camera behind at my in-laws’ place. I’ll use my camera more tomorrow as I walk around the city since I don’t have any other shows or special events planned on this trip.
Sagittarius Dolly 