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Penn State to honor Joe Paterno’s 50th anniversary

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Wilkes ready to kick off 2016 season

<p>One would expect the question about &#8220;Florence Foster Jenkins&#8221; &#8211; the newly released movie starring Meryl Streep as the title character, a Luzerne County native who fancied herself a talented singer &#8211; to be this: Should our area be embarrassed or emboldened by the film?</p><p>But the argument seems short-circuited because the script never mentions the notoriously bad soprano&#8217;s Wilkes-Barre roots.</p><p>That might be a good thing, considering that it places Jenkins&#8217; Mexican-born pianist as &#8220;from San Antonio, Texas.&#8221; How indignant would Wilkes-Barre&#8217;s residents be if Hollywood had put Jenkins&#8217; hometown in, say, Hazleton or Scranton?</p><p>The $19 million feature film from Paramount Pictures is playing this week in area theaters. Residents of the Greater Wyoming Valley might recall that Jenkins also was the focus of a 2007 documentary titled &#8220;Florence Foster Jenkins: A World of Her Own.&#8221;</p><p>According to the documentary by Donald Collup, the woman who was raised on South Franklin Street, married in St. Stephen&#8217;s Church and buried in Hollenback Cemetery rose to lasting fame for two reasons: She made recordings (largely on a whim) that are still available, and she used her wealth to put on a recital at Carnegie Hall.</p><p>Both events are depicted in the feature film and the documentary. Comparing the two suggests Hollywood got a lot right (for example, an incident involving potato salad), but used literary license with predictability, particularly in portrayal of the 1944 Carnegie Hall appearance.</p><p>If you see both the documentary and the new movie, you might conclude that 19-time Oscar nominee Streep, renowned for mastering accents (think &#8220;Sophie&#8217;s Choice&#8221;), didn&#8217;t do Jenkins justice; the actual recordings sound worse than Streep&#8217;s interpretations.</p><p>Jenkins became a darling of New York socialites in the 1920s and &#8217;30s. Her performances evoked audience laughter and critics&#8217; comments such as &#8220;(she) hit only a few notes, the rest were promissory.&#8221;</p><p>Yet consider her fuller story.</p><p>Before her tweens, she built acclaim, performing in the White House. Her only sister died of diphtheria, her father disinherited her for a time when she pursued a music career, her first husband gave her syphilis (mercury treatments likely caused her baldness), she suffered an arm injury that ended dreams of being a concert pianist, and her second marriage was never official and apparently platonic.</p><p>(As an aside, the documentary posits that Jenkins carried important papers in a briefcase because Wyoming Valley corruption left her with a lasting distrust of public officials and attorneys.)</p><p>Despite it all, she earned the deep love of that second husband, joined numerous music clubs before founding her own, and drew the attention of greats including conductor Arturo Toscanini. Carnegie gets as many inquiries for information on only two other acts: Judy Garland and The Beatles.</p><p>&#8220;Some may say that I couldn&#8217;t sing,&#8221; she once said with perspicacity, &#8220;but no one can say that I didn&#8217;t sing.&#8221;</p><p>Such tenacity might be the essential part of this region displayed in both movies, fictional and factual. As Collup put it in the documentary: &#8220;She only wanted her singing to make other people happy. In that, she achieved permanent fame.&#8221;</p><p>Hollywood was more succinct: Jenkins&#8217; singing might have lacked pitch and tone, but it had a quality you can find in many area natives:</p><p>&#8220;Authenticity.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Nick Wall | Paramount Pictures, Pathé and BBC Films via AP</div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/web1_FlorenceWebOnlyPic.jpg</photo0><caption0>Nick Wall | Paramount Pictures, Pathé and BBC Films via AP</caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>

Our Opinion: ‘Florence Foster Jenkins’ movie takes native singer’s legacy to whole new scale