Frontier Figures

by Beth E. Levy

  Like Lelawala and The Sunset Trail, The Bells of Capistrano presents a conflict between Christian teachings and Indian legend, here represented by Posé, who convinces his people that by stealing the Ortegos' cattle they can fulfill the will of the gods. It is no surprise that Posé preaches an outdated wisdom, joining the ranks of stereotyped medicine men who lead their tribes doggedly toward racial oblivion. But in Cadman's operetta, Christianity too seems to be past its prime. Alden is at the mission to restore, not to worship, and Ramon welcomes his custodianship because “the elements are playing havoc with the ruins.” Instead of the comforting presence of Narcissa or the imposing figure of Father Peralta, the mission at Capistrano is inhabited only by memories, nostalgically recalled in the operetta's title song over a fabric of rolling, tolling triads (example 19): “Oh sweet and sadly chiming / The vesper bells are calling, / Across the dark'ning plain…Ring out, ring out, O sweet toned bells, / Wake mem'ries old again.” Though the building may be threatened, fond memory will restore the mission and its social hierarchy of priests and neophytes. Right up to its closing vaudeville-style tagline (“Ah, those olden, golden Spanish Bells!”), this number places the mission in its proper time and place: the long-gone days of Spanish exploration as seen against the dwindling light of sunset.

  EXAMPLE 19. The Bells of Capistrano, refrain of title song (Chicago: H. T. FitzSimons Co., 1928)

  Like the mission itself, the Ortego family is threatened by the passing of time; Ramon is the “last male descendent of an old Spanish family,” and he seems incapable of acting to preserve his ranch. It is the foreman, Billy, who stirs the cowboy to pursue the cattle rustlers, while Ramon sighs: “Who can fight against such enemies! It almost seems that the old curse is coming true.” Ramon's virtues are generosity and hospitality. His misguided gallantry almost costs him the chance to court Marian, as he does not wish to burden her with a bankrupt lover. By contrast, the practical cowpoke Billy pursues his love with clear-sighted competence and no beating around the bush. Ramon's “Serenade” is affecting, but Billy is the instigator of action.

  EXAMPLE 19 (continued)

  If Ramon and Billy represent conflicting brands of western masculinity, Prof. Anderson and Mr. Alden bring the authority of eastern learning to the rancho in its hour of need. Alden restores the bells just in time to fulfill the prophecy. And when Marian discovers that one of the mission paintings conceals the map to a lost mine, it is Anderson (conveniently “an authority on mines”) who certifies its profitability. In addition to the professor and the preservationist, however, there is another species of “eastern” masculinity that proves crucial to the denouement: the Chinese servant Gow Long. Gow Long is a pantomime role, and he appears with recognizable “yellow-face” props: a long pipe (presumably for opium) and a laundryman's basin. Like his cousins in comic relief, he serves as bumbling porter and clumsy dancer—he participates in the cowboy number “I'm Ridin' Down to Mexico” without ever leaving his washtub.

  Ultimately all these forces conspire to bring Act 3 to its happy end. Posé orders the Indians to keep watch inside the mission church, to see whether Kraft or Ramon will fulfill their respective promises to restore the native lands. Noneeta has explained to Marian about the prophecy, and both agree that everything depends on the ringing of the newly restored bells. Hard on the heels of Ramon's announcement that all will share equally in the wealth of the mine, Marian finds that the mission is occupied by suspicious Indians who bar all entry. Nonetheless, the bells ring out seconds later, and after the requisite confusion has subsided, cowboy Billy discerns the cause: “Gow Long is your miracle man who rang the bells!” Noneeta concurs: “The gods have used Gow Long to fulfill their prophecy.”

  With this startling turn of events, both Indian prophecy and mission religion are definitively abandoned. The prophecy is fulfilled, but utterly demystified—fulfilled, but through the mechanics of comedy, at the hands of a Chinaman. What's more, the “miracle” of the bells does not satisfy the characters' needs. Instead it is the future development of the mine that will ensure their happiness. Ramon restores land to the Indians and marries Marian; and the Ortego sisters reaffirm their love for the Anglo students, implying a total of three Anglo-Hispanic weddings. Billy and Laura are presumably united as well, but an emphasis on cultural mixing remains as the uneducated cowpoke woos the professor's daughter. These and other examples suggest a telling contrast: while the Indian West was won by conquest, the Hispanic West was won in romantic fashion—through force of love and sanctity of (inter) marriage.

  OLD CALIFORNIA: FIESTA AND RANCHO

  It practically goes without saying that, after the discovery of the mine and the ringing of the mission bells, the newly expanded Ortego family holds a fiesta. A necessary feature of Natoma, the fiesta also played around the edges of The Golden Trail (with its dancing girl Carmela and its singing bandit Murietta). The fiesta topos appears fully formed in two of Cadman's other operettas: South in Sonora (1932, libretto by Juanita and Charles Roos) and Meet Arizona (1947, George Murray Brown). South in Sonora is Cadman's most fully “Latin” operetta, and the action unfolds mostly at the rancho owned by Don Ricardo Gomez. The plot yields a bevy of mixed couples—always Anglo men and Hispanic women—thanks to a group of “College Boys” from Texas who behave more or less like a glee club, singing on cue a reprise of “Mexico, My Mexico,” the sentimental ballad “Dreaming,” and the rousing “By the Rio Grande.” Though the boys are ostensibly present to study “practical mining,” their real function is to provide partners for Don Ricardo's five daughters. As elsewhere, the keynotes of the fiesta are love and dance: smoldering passions, entrancing bodies, and music spiked by habañera rhythms and thrumming accompaniments.

  The main obstacle to a five-wedding finale lies with Don Ricardo's second daughter, Catalina, who speaks but does not sing. She is ugly. What's worse, she has been to college in the States. As her sister Paquita puts it, “She is strong-minded and she don' like men! She believes in ‘Women's Rights' which is something she have learned in those United States of yours!” Paquita's distress is magnified by her father's decree that none of the younger daughters may marry before Catalina does. Despite Don Ricardo's old-fashioned ways, a happy ending is engineered through the girlish mischief of the sisters, the Texas stubbornness of the College Boys, and the democratic wherewithal Catalina absorbed at school: after a local bandit is tricked into marrying Catalina, she manages his successful campaign for the Mexican presidency.

  Feminism is not the only point of conflict between Mexico and its neighbor to the north. The gallantry of the Spanish men is accompanied by the threat of violence, and both the bandit and Don Ricardo place great stock in costume and the trappings of wealth. They are fooled by the disguised bride only because each places such importance on the “priceless Gomez wedding veil” that shields the impostor Catalina from discovery. The Mexican government is also portrayed as unstable. The proper president is deposed by an easily bribed bandit, and government surveillance stifles dissent. “Hush, Papa mio!,” Paquita cautions. “The very walls have ears.” By contrast, the College Boys' native state of Texas is aligned with Mexico only for the purposes of romance (in the love song “By the Rio Grande”). When action is required, they rally effectively under the banner of the Lone Star State (“Fear Not, for we are Texas born”) and associate themselves with Kansas and the American Midwest.

  Cadman's South in Sonora involves a familiar mix of western settings. Yet no one is concerned with cattle, there are no cowboys, and no serious interest in mining is required. The fiesta takes precedence over all. The same cannot by said for Cadman's tenth and last operetta, Meet Arizona, subtitled A Dude Ranch Operetta. Here the Hispanic characters are mostly exotics imported for comic relief: the fiery Carlotta, the henpecked Antonio, and the weeping maidservant Maria. Carlos has a somewhat more dignified role, befitting his status as fiesta manager. But unlike South in Sonora, which poked fun at the incomprehensibility of English slang, Meet A
rizona takes pains to make its Mexican characters sound as foreign as possible, including such polite footnotes as “Please pronounce it Maý-he-co.” The fiesta itself is largely incidental to the plot, which offers only a loose revue-style framework within which individual characters are in turn invited to sing or dance on the slightest pretext.

  With the move from “rancho” to “dude ranch” comes a change in racial and thematic hierarchies. The crucial alchemy no longer lies in the mingling of Anglo and Hispanic blood, but in the confrontation of eastern and western “types.” Domineering Aunt Lavinia, grand dame of the East, has come to Arizona “to be wild and wooly.” Amateur actor Tom Wilder arrives on the scene just in time to impersonate Arizona Tom, an ex-sheriff known for his tall tales. The big-hearted Corral Boss Cappy serves as a foil for the tenderfoot Bertie, whose only memorable line is “When East meets West I'll bet on Vermont.” The conflicted meeting of East and West is best represented by Vermonter Lettie and her ranch-bred cousin-by-adoption, Larry, whom all manner of plot devices push toward marriage. Alongside this Anglo crowd, the Hispanic characters are tangential; in fact, “the romantic cowboy,” Rennie, says as much to Emily, the dudine he fancies: “Our Mexican help live in a little world of their own,” he explains, and Emily agrees: “And a rather excitable world. Oh, Rennie, I'm just going to love Arizona. Everything is so different.”

  As Emily, Rennie, and the other characters would surely expect, ethnic and regional differences between the musical numbers are clearly marked. Lettie sings of Vermont's “Green Mountain Boys” while the chorus performs vocal “drum rolls.” On either side of her song are Arizona Tom's tall-tale number, “You Can Put it Down as True,” and Carlos's announcement of the next day's fiesta, replete with Hispanic markers. Act 2 opens with a musical revue staged for the benefit of the dudines: a cowboy duet (“Old Mule”); a song from Arizona Tom “sung with nasal tone, in Hill-Billy style”; an “Indian Song”; and a four-part Serenade, “Fair Flower, Lolita,” sung by a “chorus of Mexicans.” Only one character effectively blurs the boundaries between races and types: Tonita Sunrise, “modern, educated, and of remote Indian descent.” More like Tsianina Redfeather than most of Cadman's Indian characters, she sings her “Love Song” but then vanishes from the story until the surprise announcement of her engagement to Arizona Tom.

  Interestingly, the only dialogue between Tom and Tonita reveals them both to be adept at impersonation. Tom recognizes Tonita, apparently from their days on the stage. He calls on her to “remember our show in Los Angeles,” and she inquires about his disguise:

  Tom: I'm impersonating Arizona Tom. Why the Pocahontas outfit?

  Tonita: I am to sing an Indian song to the guests tonight, in the costume of my ancestors.

  Tom: Ancestors?

  Tonita: Yes, Tom, a long way back. Tonita is really Indian.

  Tom: I thought it was Spanish.

  Tonita: (stepping back and gracefully posing as an Indian maid, with head held high) Tonight I shall be Tonita Sunrise, Indian Princess.

  Tonita's performance as Indian Princess would appear to be a racial masquerade while Tom's invokes region or class, but both are driven by the desire to entertain. Tonita's performance is musical, but Tom's involves tall tales and an eccentric western dialect, for which the writers of the synopsis felt an apology might be in order: “If the grammar employed by CAPPY and ARIZONA TOM strikes one's ear as not what one would expect to hear at the best finishing schools, let us accept it as a brave attempt to impress Easterners as they feel Easterners want to be impressed concerning the ‘wild and wooly' West. Let them keep their romantic illusions!”

  Like so many western stories, Meet Arizona concerns itself with land and inheritance. In practical terms, the plot turns on a lost will. Once discovered, it deeds the ranch to Larry and Lettie on the unreasonable but easily satisfied condition that they fall in love. More figuratively, the story sets out a continuum of attachment to the West. For the locals, the landscape inspires a genuine affection inseparable from its economic potential. The operetta's eponymous anthem is, in essence, the marketing jingle of the Dude Ranch. “Most of these dudines are from back-east Vermont,” cowboy Rennie announces. “Let's give them our good, old ‘Meet Arizona' song, boys.” The refrain extols the local tourist attractions (“colored canyons,” “sunrise on the sage,” etc.), and the verse is meant to entice: “Come on out and get acquainted; This old State will treat you right.” The targets of this public relations campaign respond with varying degrees of seriousness, ranging from a naive embrace of exotic color (exemplified by Emily and the dudines) to a more tangible desire for change and adventure. Aunt Lavinia's cowgirl clichés are echoed by a “yipping” chorus of ranch hands, but Lettie sings a more earnest “March Song” that recounts her westward journey with triadic lines, dotted rhythms, a stomping tonic-dominant accompaniment, and a statement of intent: “I want to love your golden West.”

  As the operetta's romantic leads, Larry and Lettie are required to transfer their love of landscape to one another. Perhaps this is why the production's most striking tribute to the western land issues not from the mouth of a cowboy or a dudine but instead from the Mexican fiesta-impresario Carlos. He begins: “In my contree we have what you call deep respect for the land. We Mexicans like the tortilla ver' much. But where tortilla without corn? An' where corn without soil? (widespread gesture of hand) So, I will recite to you, “I Am the Land!” Dropping his dialect entirely, Carlos continues:

  I am the land that takes the seed.

  And shapes it for man's every need.

  As light and rain impartial fall,

  My bounties flow to one and all.

  I care not who may till or sow,

  My largess makes the plant to grow.

  I take no sleep, I take no rest;

  I nurse all races at my breast.

  The ensemble joins in, maestoso, taking an unlikely patriotic cue from the Mexican entertainer. Cowboys and city slickers, dudes and dudines, servants and tourists are united in this hymn to a Mother Earth, whose generosity turns humankind into one fertile family, cross-pollinated by ethnic and cultural heterogeneity.

  More than most of Cadman's operettas, Meet Arizona plays on the self-conscious performance of racial and regional identity: Aunt Lavinia wants the chance to play cowgirl; the operetta's villain turns out to be an escaped felon disguising himself as a ranch manager; Tom Wilder, already an actor by trade, has no trouble adopting the persona of a Wild West sheriff; and Tonita Sunrise knows just how to assume the posture of an “Indian Princess,” no matter what her actual background might be. Even Lettie and Larry seem to understand that certain behavior is expected of them as representatives of their respective regions. This performance-of-performance is hardly unusual in the realm of operetta or, for that matter, in opera. For all their ubiquity, however, these performative moments are not merely piquant plot devices. There is, as always, the pleasantly reflexive irony of watching a fictional audience see what we can also see. But in plots so charged with identity politics, much more is at stake.

  Western dramas by Cadman and others invite us to consider a relatively recent history of national expansion, political conquest, and economic development by watching the interaction of distinct character types. Sometimes the invitation is explicit, as when the spirit of Columbia descends to bless the East-West union of Charlie and Barbarita in The Golden Trail. More often it is implicit, as when Gow Long effects the happy ending in Bells of Capistrano, tacitly asserting a vision of the West Coast as the eastern edge of the Pacific Rim. As each production disrupts or reinforces our assumptions about behavior appropriate to “the Spaniard” and “the Mexican,” the “medicine man” and the “educated Indian,” the “city slicker” and the “ranch hand,” it also alters our understanding of western history. When can love cross ethnic or class lines? What lies in store for characters who transgress regional or cultural boundaries? Who inherits the land and its riches? Such questions have been complicat
ed by the pervasive idea that western land held the power to shape a uniquely “American” identity through a kind of instant evolution. Instead of arising from climatic or demographic factors working slowly over generations, the “typical American” was to emerge in a matter of years thanks to the accelerating influence of the frontier. The catalyst for this rapid reaction was encounter.

  HOLLYWOOD AND THE “NATIVE” COMPOSER

  If the ironic tone of Meet Arizona seems at odds with Cadman's earlier operettas, we must remember that approximately twenty years had elapsed between the “Dude Ranch Comedy” and Cadman's first successful operetta, Lelawala. Much had happened in his life and even more had happened in his sometime hometown, Hollywood, California. Cadman's last two decades brought local prestige and national frustration. Lee Shippey of the Los Angeles Times saw in Cadman's output of the 1920s “a number of operettas which are extremely popular in high schools—so popular that it would be hard to estimate his influence on the musical taste of the rising generation.”28 But few East Coast critics would have agreed, and Cadman himself may have blushed at this acclaim for works written to order. The national recognition Cadman received was almost exclusively confined to his Indianist works. Like Farwell, he saw his reputation tied to music that he now considered passé. In California, Cadman's popularity was such that the Pacific International Exposition at San Diego chose to celebrate “Cadman Day” on 4 September 1935, but even here, his erstwhile Indianism held sway. The festivities were held at the Exposition's “Indian Village,” and newspaper photographers delighted in the ceremony by which Cadman was made an honorary Indian chief. In 1934 and again thereafter, Cadman spent part of his summer at the MacDowell Colony, but he found the experience somewhat daunting. He wrote to Eberhart in 1937: “These guys here…are steeped in TRAINING (even the kids are).”29