Puzzled concerning Pavane

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Endof80
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Posted Jun 14, 2014 - 1:06 AM:

I'm a bit puzzled about something concerning both versions "Girl with the Flaxen Hair" and "Pavane",

I noticed some sources will title both episodes as "Pavane, the Girl with the Flaxen Hair", but that is not what I find puzzling..

In the original script for the first version as provided by http://www.quietlyyours.webs.com/19.htm The announcer says: "Quiet, Please!" for tonight is called "La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin...",

What's more, the name "Pavane" never occurs in neither version #20 or #105, and the 'girl with the flaxen hair's name is Joan..

Who's Pavane? and why is it tiled that?

Also, in the script mentioned above it documents it as episode #19 instead of #20.

Can somebody clarify this confusion for me?
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Posted Jun 14, 2014 - 2:20 PM:

"La Fille Aux Cheveux de Lin" was broadcast in 1947, but no copy circulates. The surviving recording is the rebroadcast of the script from 1949, when it was retitled "Pavane."

For some reason, the '47 version used the music of Debussy's "La Fille Aux Cheveux de Lin" and the '49 used Ravel's "Pavane pour une Infante Défunte" -- hence the title change.

I'm not sure why the music was altered. Possibly it had something to do with the change of QP's accompanists between the two broadcasts. Gene Perrazzo, the series' first keyboardist, may have known the Debussy piece, but perhaps his replacement, Albert Burhmann, was unfamiliar with it, so the Ravel was substituted. Or maybe Cooper decided he liked the Ravel better. Or maybe there's some other reason.

As for the numbering: the original script of "La Fille" actually says "No. 19," and it very likely was the nineteenth broadcast. Again, a lot of QP logs claim there are 106 episodes and include "Retreat at Dunkerque" as episode #12 (when it seems to be simply that week's local rebroadcast of "A Ribbon of Lincoln Green"), which throws the numbering off. In fact, there were apparently only 105 shows in the series. If you don't count "Retreat at Dunkerque" as a separate episode, the numbers make sense. Take out "Dunkerque" and "La Fille" slides up a notch, from 20 to 19.
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Posted Jun 15, 2014 - 1:52 AM:

Thanks again MS. - That actually should have occurred to me, I was already aware of the strong indications that 'Dunkerque' was nothing more than a mistitled 'Lincoln Green' , but until you pointed it out, it just hadn't occurred to me that it naturally would throw all the episodes numbers after it back one notch ..

But that actually causes a bigger inconsistency about something else in Pavane which I meant to mention above..

At the conclusion of the Pavane episode, Cooper says:
"Next week after more than 2 years this series of Quiet Please comes to an end. And for our show next week, number 107, I'm giving you a play based on the title of the series; Quiet Please"


By the way, You didn't answer my other question, but I hear the answer now.. "Pavane" was mentioned, I missed it somehow the first time.. It was the name of the song he played on the piano.

But I still don't understand why the first broadcast isn't usually logged with it's actual title of "La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin..." - Who decided to change the name?
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Posted Jun 15, 2014 - 5:46 PM:

Cooper himself never seems to have been clear about how many episodes are in the series. For example, at the end of the forty-first episode, "A Night to Forget," he calls it the fortieth. Later, he misnumbers the script of the sixtieth episode, "Presto Change-o, I'm Sure" as fifty-nine (the same number given to "The Thing on the Fourble Board" from the week before). When the series jumps to ABC, the sixty-fifth episode, "Anonymous," is listed on the script as sixty-four. And so on. I haven't seen all the scripts, but I suspect there's some other error (or errors) that caused Cooper to refer to the one hundred and fifth episode as "number 107."

As for why the logs don't list "La Fille" by its proper name, I think it's because when the logs were originally compiled the scripts weren't available, so, with no recording of the episode, the compilers had to do a little guesswork. The title is previewed at the end the previous week's show, "Camera Obscura":

***
COOPER: The music of Claude Debussy was the inspiration for next week's story which, borrowing the composer's title, I have called "La fille aux cheveux de lin" -- "The Girl with the Flaxen Hair" ... If you like charming ghosts, you'll probably like her.
***

And the same French title is previewed at the end of the episode that aired just before "Pavane." So the compilers apparently hedged their bets and listed "La Fille" as "(Pavane) The Girl with the Flaxen Hair" or a variation of that. (Perhaps they didn't know French well enough to figure out the "foreign language" title, so they went with the English.)
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