It’s taken me all this time
to see A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, the 2019 feature in which
one national treasure, Tom Hanks, takes on the persona of another, the late
Fred Rogers. I admit I feel no special nostalgia for Mister Rogers’
Neighborhood, the national program that kicked off on public television in
1968. My own kids were much more attuned to the lively, sometimes wacky humor
of Sesame Street and its multiple inventive spin-offs (Square One,
anyone? This memorable math show, which included a tongue-in-cheek Dragnet
parody, was a big hit at our house).
I can see, however, how Fred
Rogers (a man of many enthusiasms and enormous integrity) played an important
role in the lives of many young children, especially those who were suffering
from a lack of role-models. Rogers’ ability to communicate with people who are
suffering – no matter what their age – is central to the plot of last year’s
movie, in which a young writer (based on Esquire scribe Tom Junod) is
helped by Mister Rogers to heal a rift that has torn his family apart.
What’s Fred Rogers really
like when he’s away from his neighborhood? That’s part of the focus of Junod’s
1998 Esquire profile of Rogers. I haven’t read it, but I’ve been lucky
enough to get a glimpse of the off-camera Rogers through a memory-piece by the
always interesting Dale Bell. Bell, a friend who once helped produce the movie Woodstock,
was also executive producer of Kennedy Center Tonight, the
ground-breaking performing arts series that ran on PBS from 1980 to 1985. The
program, which evolved from Bell’s deep admiration for the late President
Kennedy, was intended to humanize the great performers who appeared on the
Kennedy Center stages.
As the first entry in the Kennedy
Center Tonight series was about to go before the cameras, Dale ran into
Fred Rogers, whom he had known from Pittsburgh’s
WQED. When Fred learned that the inaugural show would be a celebration of
composer Aaron Copland’s 80th birthday, featuring such stellar
musical talents as Leonard Bernstein and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, he
couldn’t contain his enthusiasm. A trained musician himself, he quickly agreed
to be among those making the trek to Washington DC for the taping.
On the drive down, Rogers
admitted why he had first aspired to be a musician: “I was very lonely growing
up. I didn’t have many friends. I had to make up my own worlds. There, I could
listen to my characters, or my puppets, and help them to deal with their
problems, which were my own. My love of music was my constant inspiration.”
When Dale asked Bernstein,
Copland, and Rostropovich if they were willing to have a special guest
backstage, they (in Dale’s words) “erupted in joy that they were going to meet
the creator and star of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. There were mammoth
hugs all around.” As Dale remembers it, “This entourage, linked by hands that
loved making music, this whole chain of sudden new-found friends and colleagues
and comrades, was led out on stage among all of the players, who began tapping
their music stands with their bows, and blowing their horns. Fred Rogers, adored by millions of children,
was alive and arriving on the Concert Hall stage at the Kennedy Center.”
And that’s how Mister
Rogers—in his trademark cardigan and sneakers—came to sit down at the Kennedy
Center grand piano to pound out “Happy Birthday to You” in Copland’s honor.
Clearly, it was a beautiful day in D.C., a place that could certainly use some
beautifying, and Fred Rogers’ gentle touch.
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