Sybil Bruncheon’s Christmas Memoirs: My Adventures on Christmas TV Specials...
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Have I told you about my adventures with one of my favorite photographers over the years?? Lawrence Hunter was by my side for so many of those planned (and UNplanned!) moments in one's career! Here's one from a Christmas television special that almost was!!!......
Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) and I had known each other for years and traveled in the same circles in New York during the 40s and 50s. It was in that vein that, as television became bigger and bigger an entertainment medium, he suggested that I play a new character he came up with in the Christmas of 1956, "Mrs. Finch", a charming and slightly mischievous creature who would bring toys and treats for underprivileged children on Christmas eve in a flying saucer!!... from the planet Uranus!!!
The concept ingeniously incorporated charity to the poor, social awareness, interplanetary brotherhood, and the birth of the space industry in the newly created NASA. Sadly, our sponsors at Nabisco felt that any mention of "Uranus" was ..."unappetizing for a brand of breakfast cereals and cookies", as Cuthbert Cubbins, the chairman of the board described it.
This, despite the fact that the Nabisco logo had always reminded people of a flying saucer...and that "Nabisco" did NOT in fact mean "National Biscuit Company", but was an anagram for “Bascion”, a Gaelic word from the Renaissance that loosely translated to “ baked goods from other worlds” (the Irish always had a fanciful sense of so-called wee-people and the color green).
Anyway, Theodor and I lost the argument, and the project was ..um... shall we say, re-imagined in a more conventionally acceptable way… although, the story became more of a diatribe against J. Edgar Hoover, Roy Cohn, Joseph McCarthy, and the neo-fascistic metaphor of the Jolly Green Giant… but that’s a story for another time!
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