Gerome reflecting Galt & James

James & Gerome

Gerome Ragni

James and Gerome

Viva, Gerome & James

Gerome

James and Gerome

Donna Summer in Germany

Donna was in the German production before she became a star.   "Oh Donna, Oh Oh Donna..."

Original producer, Joseph Papp

Ho Chi Min,  smoking philosopher

James Rado in U.S. Navy, c. 1958

Jerry, Galt and Jim in RCA recording studio

C. Earl Scott, metaphysician, playwright, tarot consultant,  artist and good friend

L.A. Tribers

Randy Fredericks, Jerry Combs and Carol Miller of Los Angeles Tribe.

Photo by John Weatherly

Aquarius Theater, 1969 ...

 Backstage at "HAIR" Rome, Italy 1970.  Isabelle Blau, the authors' rep, with arms around Italian Tribers.

Vicki Sue "Turn The Beat Around" Robinson, HAIRite

Jim, Urban Man, visits Jungle

Galt MacDermot. Composer, Music of Hair

Jim's Aunt Gert responds to appearance on Johnny Carson's Tonight show

Jim under Biltmore marquee

Opening night telegram to Jerry from Executive Producer

Telegram from Maria Callas, opera diva extraordinaire

The House Where HAIR Was Built...Top floor apartment - Hoboken, New Jersey

The 3rd floor Room where some of HAIR was written

1997 photo of the Writing Room in the appartment jerry and jim shared in the mid ' 60 's, though they wrote Hair everywhere they went, in clubs and on the street

Al Hirschfeld drew this caricature of HAIR for the New York Times, after visiting a rehearsal prior to Broadway opening

Hair, Istambul 2006

Another, later Hirschfield drawing for the ill-fated 1977 Broadway
revival

L.A. souvenir book cover - the Peacock Hair of Gerome Ragni (with red filter).

HAIR in London, 1993, at the Old Vic Theatre, produced by Canadian Ed
Mirvish and American Abe Hirschfeld

Biltmore Theatre lobby poster constructed by C. Earl Scott (collage of
Dagmar photos)

Page from L.A. souvenir program

Poster from Parisian production, 1969.

L.A. credits

"Ripped open by metal explosion/What a piece of work is man" from L.A.
souvenir book

Ad for "DisinHAIRited" album, Evergreen Review, 1970

"The Fool" painted the exterior wall of the Aquarius Theater for "Hair"
in L.A.

Galt MacDermot

Sagittarius

Composer

 

Born in Montreal, and educated at Capetown (South Africa) University, Mr. MacDermot has been a church organist, dance band musician, and composer of "African Waltz" - a smash hit in London, and winner of a

Grammy Award in the USA.  "Hair" is his first musical.  Mr. MacDermot was asked to explain his entanglement in "Hair," and with characteristic modesty, he replied in the third person.

 

"Take a hippie, wash, shave and trim him.  Dress him in a tweed suit and put him on a restless camel facing south on the northern edge of the Sahara, and you will eventually have a hot property."

 

By the same token, if you take the Arab goatherd that you see there, bring him slowly back to New York and put him on Houston St., will you have a hippie?  Only time can tell.  But this is what happened to MacDermot.  He was found in the wilderness herding goats, eating figs and flaunting his oaten airs.  He was brought to New York and placed at a table on which lay a book called "Hair" with instructions to set it to music.

 

Like any well brought up goatherd he quickly sorted the wheat from the chaff and constructed a typical tribal love-rock occasion in which the hands of all the great masters (Zerton, Flabula, Caribee) could be seen but where MacDermot's individuality still was able to vibrate at its own characteristic 64321 per NTM's.

 

It's not important whether MacDermot understood what he was doing.  He claims that his method is to set to music the mentality of the poet and let the literal meaning of the words take care of themselves.

 

Another theory is that there was a mix up in the Sahara and the hot hippie was mistaken for the goatherd.

 

Whatever the ultimate truth is (some even say "Hair" is not a tribal love-rock musical but actually a Broadway musical disguised as an opera) the fact is that "Hair," or crystallized Ragni-Rado, whichever you prefer, exists with all its meaning - literal, rarefied, subjective, absolutional - intact.  Or possibly not - only time can tell.

Broadway poster, minus authors' credits...this was a contractual
"no-no", and was soon corrected  (whenever the producer's name appears, the
authors' names must appear as well)

Magazine ad for "The Lion in Winter", 1966

The actors pasted these Hair daisy-stickers all over New York, in
taxis, on lamp posts

Hair in Argentina

 The airborne Berger of Otis Stephens

 Tom O'Horgan's staging of
"The Bed": at the climax of song, the Tribe bursts forth from large phallus, with balloons and confetti flying

Generic moment of abandon

"The Bed"

The Shirt-Twirling Dance in "The Bed"

Claude elevates, walking in space

Johnathan Kramer, Donnie Burks, James Rado, Robert I. Rubinsky, Lamont Washington 

"Mixed Media" moment

Costume design by Nancy Potts

The Supremes sing "White Boys" (Emmaretta Marks, Melba Moore, Mary Davis)

The Freedom Finale of Act I

Berger sings, "Don't put it down"

Hud burns his draft card

Shelley Plimpton (Crissy), Leata Galloway (Triber), Emmaretta Marks (Triber), Lamont Washington (Hud), Lynn Kellogg (Sheila), Sally Eaton (Jeanie) and Marjorie Lipari (Triber)

The Triber Diane Keaton

The ever-pregnant Jeanie sings "Air"  

Sally Eaton with Shelley Plimpton and Melba Moore 

Claude, tarred and feathered, gets cleaned up with water pistols during
"Manchester, England"

James Rado

Berger has cut a lock of Claude's hair, and Sheila burns it

Berger, Claude, Sheila

 Manhattan Tribe, later in the run

Be-in on Broadway (in foreground, Sally Eaton as Jeanie)

Prominent Tribers: Lamont Washington and Ronny Dyson

Berger, Woof & Steve Gamet during rehearsal, prior to Broadway opening.

Photo by Dagmar

Ragni as Berger, Diane Keaton in the Tribe

Photo by Dagmar

Rado as Claude sings I GOT LIFE

Photo by Dagmar

Claude being washed, de-tarred and de-feathered

Photo by Dagmar

Unquestionably a boy...

Photo by Dagmar

Claude, Lynn Kellogg as Sheila, Berger, and Lamont Washington as Hud

Photo by Dagmar

Mary "Lincoln" Davis, Paul "The Last Dance" Jabara, and Natalie "The
Shoeshine-girl" Mosco

Photo by Dagmar

Ragni as Berger as George Washington

Photo by Dagmar

Sally Eaton, as Mom, casts look of disdain, as Emmaretta Marks, Ronny
Dyson, Leata Galloway, Donnie Burks, and Diane Keaton sing I GOT LIFE

Photo by Dagmar

The TRIBE, shocked by the lyrics of SODOMY.  Hiram Keller, Walter
Harris, Johnathan Kramer, Paul Jabara, Melba Moore

Photo by Dagmar

Ronny Dyson, Donnie Burks, Lamont Washington

Photo by Dagmar

Marjorie Lipari, Natalie Mosco, Diane Keaton, Gerome Ragni, Steve Curry, Steve Gamet, Shelley Plimpton, Ronny Dyson

Photo by Dagmar

Folding the flag means taking care of the nation

Photo by Dagmar

Donnie Burks and Walter Harris

Photo by Dagmar

Emmaretta Marks, Melba Moore, Mary Davis

Photo by Dagmar

"The Bed"

Photo by Dagmar

Protest March

Photo by Dagmar

"The Flesh Failures"

Photo by Dagmar

Ronny Dyson and Walter Harris, "What a Piece of Work Is Man"

Photo by Dagmar

Invitation to third anniversary event

New York Tribe forms "four" for fourth anniversary

The great Janis was a fan

HAIR in Hungary

 From the first James Rado HAIR Museum, Manhattan, curator, Earl Scott

 Museum after it moved to Hoboken,  NJ,
Earl Scott, curator

"The Naked Dance that should be in Hair," says Jim Rado.
If anyone has the name of this dance company, please let us know for
proper credit

Just in case

Southern tip of the old New York, seen from Hoboken, NJ

"Black and white go nice together!" (Ben Vereen and Willie Weatherly, L.A. show)

The Tribe zaps Claude

Nude Scene

L.A. Supremes

L.A. Tribe dances to "White Boys"

Generic moment, A blond Woof, upstage, played by Jobriath.

"Ripped Open By Metal Explosion" 

"Electric Blues", a study in yellow and blue by lighting designer Jules
Fisher

"Prisoners in Niggertown, it's a dirty little war"