That Championship Season by Jason Miller (1972)

With all of the excitement about the upcoming all-star revival of Jason Miller's That Championship Season on Broadway, I decided to go back and read the actual play itself. I had only previously seen snippets of the film, so I wanted to go back and read the original Tony- and Pulitzer Prize winning play by Jason Miller, who was born in Queens, NY on April 22, 1939 and died in his adopted hometown of Scranton, PA (where he was raised and lived for most of his life) on May 13th, 2001.

That Championship Season tells the story of a tense reunion between a group of 4 former high school basketball champs and their coach at his home in the Lackawanna Valley in the early 1970s. Early in the text of the play, Miller includes brief references to both Scranton and Old Forge.

The Scranton reference appears on page 11 of the 1972 Atheneum edition of the play. The characters of Tom (a former member of the team who is now an alcoholic) and George (another member of the team who is now the town mayor--of presumably Scranton--and up for reelection) are having a discussion about former teammate and wealthy businessman Phil:

GEORGE
I cancel at least five speeding tickets for him a month. He's going out with this seventeen-year-old, believe that, up in Scranton.

On page 13 is a reference to James (another teammate, a school principal and Tom's brother) purchasing beer in Old Forge, PA:

GEORGE
Where'd you guys go for the beer, New Jersey?

JAMES
Phil wanted Schlitz. We had to go to Old Forge.

On a side note, I noticed that the text of the play does include seven instances of the dreaded N-word. With the recent controversy over sanitizing Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by replacing each use of the N-word with the word "slave," I can't help but wonder if the upcoming and highly anticipated Broadway revival (which officially opens March 6th and will run through May 29th, with previews beginning on February 9th) will keep Miller's original text intact or modify the use of certain controversial words. My colleague (and frequent contributor to this blog) Evelyn G.--who actually knew Jason Miller when she and her husband lived in New York in the 1970s--has tickets to an upcoming performance, so I will make sure to ask her if the producers made any changes to the text to suit modern audiences.

The book of Jason Miller's play That Championship Season is available to borrow from the Lackawanna County Library System. To place a hold, click here.

thatchampionshipseason.com
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Allan Jones, Actor and Singer (1907-1992)

John Fortuna, one of our library's patrons and a true movie aficionado of the lives of movie stars, recently inquired about an actor from the Golden Age of Hollywood named Allan Jones. To my surprise, I discovered that Allan Jones was not only a prolific actor and tenor, but he was also an Old Forge and Scranton native.

Allan Jones was born Ocotber 14, 1907 in Old Forge, Pennsylvania, the son of a coal miner. He grew up in Scranton, PA.

After moving to Hollywood in the 1930s, Jones starred in several Hollywood films now regarded as classics. His credits include the Marx Brothers comedies A Night at the Opera in 1935 (as Ricardo, he was the tenor in the performance of Il Trovatore which was the film's centerpeice opera referred to in the title) and 1937's A Day at the Races (where he played a race horse owner); 1937's The Firefly with Jeanette MacDonald (which introduced his tremendously popular rendition of the song Donkey Serenade); and 1940's The Boy From Syracuse with Martha Raye and Irene Hervey (who was his wife from 1936 to 1957).

Perhaps Jones's best and well-known performance was as gambler Gaylord Ravenal opposite Irene Dunne in the 1936 musical film Show Boat. In 1942 he co-starred with Scranton native Gloria Jean in When Johnny Comes Marching Home.

Jones continued to act and sing in films until 1970.

His son Jack Jones was also a popular singer in the 1960's, whose hits included Friends & Lovers.

Jones died of lung cancer in New York City on June 30, 1992.

Several films featuring Allan Jones are circulating throughout the Lackawanna County Library System: reserves may be placed on the VHS or DVD of A Day at the Races; the DVD of A Night at the Opera; and The Marx Brother Collection (featuring both A Day at the Races and A Night at the Opera) on DVD.

The Reference Department also includes Local History Newspaper Clippings Files on both Allan Jones and his son Jack Jones.

Thanks again to John Fortuna for this reference.