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Popular Culture Review
Two of Williams’s most significant symbols in the play are associated with
the popular music he cued to the script—Laura’s victrola (and her record
collection) and the Paradise Dance Hall located in the back alley facing the
Wingfield apartment. Emanating from these two sources, popular dance tunes
float into the Wingfield apartment reflecting America’s taste in music during the
1920s and 1930s as well as establishing the historical setting of the play. The
1920s-1930s marked the era of the big bands—Paul Whiteman, the Dorsey
Brothers, etc.—that recorded the songs America listened and danced to at
ubiquitous dance halls, like the Paradise, across the country. In the Acting
Edition of Glass Menagerie, published by Dramatists Play Service, Williams
specifically asks the director to include '"'‘Old popular music of, say, the 19151920 period' (9). They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, the 1969 film starring Gig
Young and Jane Fonda, fiercely captures the paradoxes of these hubs of popular
entertainment—the exhilaration, the exhaustion, and, ultimately, the destructive
force they exerted on a Depression-weary audience.
Many of the songs that Laura plays on her victrola come from dance hall
tunes as well as other popular sources. Williams associates these melodies with
different characters in key scenes of The Glass Menagerie. In fact, these songs
serve as an expressionistic guide, an interpretation of the memories Tom recalls,
and a way to convey those memories—through his flashbacks—to Williams’s
audience. True to a memory play, the popular songs in Glass Menagerie
resonate with the dreams, the loneliness, and the heartbreaks of Williams’s
characters. The Acting Edition of Menagerie, for instance, contains nearly 20
musical cues, but almost all of them are to generic dance scores, e.g., “dance
music,” “a waltz.” And even though Williams commissioned his 6