The Green Glenn Singers — Glenn Close, Kathe Green, Virginia Entwistle and Jennie Dorn — were featured performers in "Sing Out '66." (Merle Hunter / ©Stars and Stripes)
The Green Glenn Singers — Glenn Close, Kathe Green, Virginia Entwistle and Jennie Dorn — were featured performers in "Sing Out '66." (Merle Hunter / ©Stars and Stripes)
The show had a cast of 150 American students. (Merle Hunter / ©Stars and Stripes)
Bill Pensoneau of Ponca City, Oklahoma, performs a Ponca Indian dance. (Merle Hunter / ©Stars and Stripes)
Glenn Close and Kathe Green do a parody of protest singers. (Merle Hunter / ©Stars and Stripes)
The "Sing Out '66" cast presents "The Ride of Paul Revere." (Merle Hunter / ©Stars and Stripes)
SING-OUT '66" is a Yankee-Doodle-Dandy show that preaches in song the message of God, country, and clean-cut youth.
The swinging, rocking troupe of American students — 150 strong — is touring Germany at the invitation of Chancellor Ludwig Erhard who is "convinced that they will make a valuable contribution to the maintenance of the free society in the world" and "with our German youth will give life and meaning to freedom for all men."
"Sing-Out" was organized last September at an international Moral Re-Armament revival meeting "to wrest the microphone away from today's headline-seeking college beatniks and pacifists."
The chorus makes its gusty entrance on stage with an Olympian dash and never stops hand-clapping, finger-snapping, knee-slapping, toe-tapping, heel-rocking, shoulder-swaying, and arm-swinging for two hours.
THIS PERPETUAL motion accompanies such star-spangled, hot-gospel selections as "Don't Stand Still" ("the world's awaiting to be remade by every gal and gay young blade"); "Design for Dedication" ("banish forever hatred and fear, famine and greed"); "Up With the People ("... they're the best kind of folks we know"); "A New Tomorrow" ("we're gonna stamp our feet and sing about it") ; "You Can't Live Crooked" ("and think straight"), "Freedom Isn't Free" ("you got to pay a price, you got to sacrifice") ; "Let Our Voices Be Heard" ("... let them ring in the sky, our freedom must never die"), and "Which Way America?" ("I'm gonna ask the Lord above to show me the road to take").
Heading the "big sound, big idea torrent of talent" are the Colwell Brothers, Steve, Paul, and Ralph. These instrumentalists (guitar, banjo, string bass) and singers write their own material.
Other triple threats as composers, instrumentalists, and vocalists are the Green Glenn Singers — Kathe Green, daughter of MGM musical director Johnny Green, Glenn Close, Virginia Entwistle, and Jennie Dorn. Musical director for the production is Herbert Allen, who also solos on the xylophone.
The show has toured the United States and Far East and has inspired the founding of about 40 other such nonprofit troupes dedicated to MRA's "absolute standards of honesty, purity, unselfishness and love."
The schedule in Germany opened in Coblenz with a special performance for the 3rd German Army Corps. Other concerts include Essen, May 9; Bochum, May 10; Bonn, May 11; Wuerzburg, May 15; Nuernberg, May 16-17; Munich, May 17-18; Ulm, May 20; Duisburg, May 24; Muenster, May 26; Wiesbaden, May 28, and Wolfsburg, June 1.
Program director John Sayre, an Olympic rowing champion, summed up the show's aim as a determination that "our generation is not going to be represented by the pacifist, antipatriotic minority who are squawking so loudly on the campuses today."
"Neither will we be, he said, "a part of the aimless majority who live only for themselves. We want to show the world what America is all about."
