High Tor

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High Tor is a made-for-television musical fantasy, broadcast March 10, 1956 on the CBS Television network, as an episode of the series Ford Star Jubilee. Bing Crosby, Julie Andrews, Nancy Olson, Hans Conreid, and Keenan Wynn starred in the film, directed by Franklin Schaffner and James Neilson, and based on a 1937 play by well-known playwright Maxwell Anderson.

Bing Crosby had seen Julie Andrews in her Broadway debut in The Boy Friend (in which she was still appearing at the time), and invited her to appear in the film. Music was by Arthur Schwartz, with lyrics by Anderson. Because Crosby was uncomfortable with the exigencies of live television, he insisted that it be filmed. For this reason, High Tor is often considered the first TV movie.

[edit] Plot

Van Van Dorn (Crosby) owns a mountain ("High Tor") near the Hudson River on the Tappan Zee. Van Dorn is under pressure to sell his real estate, and, at the same time, is having doubts about his impending marriage to Judith (Olson). Judith leaves him because she feels that he should sell High Tor, as the profits would provide for their future. A freak rock slide traps Van Dorn and the realtors on High Tor; as Van searches for help, he meets the spirit of a Dutch girl by the name of Lisa (Andrews). Lisa and the spirits of Dutch sailors have inhabited High Tor for over 300 years since they were killed in a shipwreck. Of course, Lisa falls in love with Van. Songs include "Once Upon a Long Ago", a duet for Crosby and Andrews, "Sad is the Life of a Sailor's Wife", a solo for Andrews, and "When You're in Love".

[edit] Trivia

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Reference to High Tor is made in the following text written by music composer John Cage in his series of one-minute Indeterminacy lectures:

Music and mushrooms: Two words next to each other in many dictionaries. Where did he write The Three-Penny Opera? Now he’s buried below the grass at the foot of High Tor. Once the season changes from summer to fall, given sufficient rain, or just the mysterious dampness that’s in the earth, mushrooms grow there, carrying on, I am sure, his business of working with sounds. That we have no ears to hear the music the spores shot off from basidia make, obliges us to busy ourselves microphonicaly.[1]