ROSE’S WAR
ROSE’S WAR is a 4-episode WWII-era TV musical about two singer-songwriters who dare to believe their interracial love story can have a happy ending.
Imagine LADY SINGS THE BLUES and ALL THAT JAZZ entwined with the intimacy of LA LA LAND fearlessly exposing racism’s insidious assault on love. Magical realism like it was artfully and intensely imagined in UNDERGROUND RAILROAD and THE WATCHMEN TV SERIES will also play a critical role in the storytelling.
The following Sizzle Reel is from one of ROSES WAR’s five performances in New York City at the Rave Theater Festival in 2019. The television series is inspired by this material but will have a much grander scope and the luxury of more time to spend on all of the characters’ challenges.
STORY
It’s the summer of 1944. WWII is raging. Rose Leland has grown-up with her white mother, Dahlia Leland. She has never met her African American trumpet virtuoso father, Cecil Clay.
At Willow Run near Detroit, the world’s largest bomber factory built by the Ford Motor Company, Rose falls in love with Italian American Danny Capucci. Rose and Dahlia are working as riveters building B24 Liberators. Danny is picking up the bomber he will captain on missions against the Germans. The intimacy that is sparked between Rose and Danny is matched by their desire to survive the war, make music together, and live happily ever after together.
They know the odds are slim that their dreams can come true. In the music business there are unwritten laws restricting access to colored artists. In most of the United States there are laws forbidding mixed race marriage. And, sadly, most Americans regardless of their color frown on races mixing.
Dahlia, who is ill when we meet her, dies in Rose’s arms on the B24 assembly line, the victim of years of toxic fume inhalation working for Ford in their paint departments. Rose buries Dahlia and heads immediately to New York City fully expecting her father, who owns a club called The Pair O’ Dice in Harlem, to recognize her talent and launch her song writing and performing career. Danny’s at the club; it’s his last night before flying overseas. Rose and Danny promise to write each other every day and seal it with a torrid kiss.
The story is set mostly in Harlem and New York nightclubs, but also in England on an Army Air Corps airfield, in air combat over Germany, and in bombed-out London and its famous USO Stage Door Canteen where an intense friendship blooms between Danny and lily white superstar recording artist Sophie Hudson.
Danny nearly dies on his last mission into Germany. When he returns home damaged and in Sophie’s care, the possibility of Rose and Danny’s story having a happy ending seems even more unlikely.
EPISODE 1
Sunbeams quiver through filthy bronze air past polka dotted sheers onto two sweaty women in white cotton night gowns in a single iron framed bed. ROSE LELAND, 20, caramel skin aglow, wounded eyes flickering, shudders from the fitful wheezing struggling out of her mother, DAHLIA LELAND, 40, who’s furthest from the window. So translucent is Dahlia’s white skin that her life can be seen through it making preparations to pass on.
A provocative original tune (to be written) in the spirit of NATURE BOY by Miles Davis springs from Rose in a hum, like a salve for weary souls. She rolls over and caresses one of Dahlia’s cheeks. Dahlia’s eyelids flutter, but don’t open, and the wheezing stops. A smile of relief graces both their faces. From under Dahlia’s pillow Rose eases out a 22-caliber pistol and slips out of bed.
DAHLIA
(in sleepy jest)
You going to put me out of my misery?
ROSE
No, mama. And that’s not funny.
DAHLIA
Time to go to work?
ROSE
Almost. You go back to sleep. I’ll wake you up.
DAHLIA
You be careful with that pistol.
On a dresser is a letter from Decca Records. Using the barrel of the pistol to follow the text, in her head Rose reads about her song’s rejection. Angrily she drags the letter into the dresser’s top drawer with a bunch of others. Longing for relief she pushes back the sheers and gazes out the window. She imagines 3 Harlem Showgirls in full regalia, her Muses. They are irrepressible, dignified, and charismatic; through them she dreams. They give her hope. The Muses begin an anguished and hopeful dance to NATURE BOY (or an original provocative piece). One of the Muses always has an eye on Rose. Black Factory Workers (Rosie the Riveters and their male counterparts) emerge from apartments “heading to work” and join the spectacle. All of them are survivors, pioneers, powerful forces to be reckoned with. The music builds in tempo and intensity.
Rose is beaming. But, then a heavy bomber, a B24 Liberator, roars in low shattering her dream, blowing away all the dancers. Fearing abandonment Rose squeezes the pistol and turns to see her mother wheezing again.
ROSE
Mama. Time to get up.
Rose and Dahlia are in a screening room with two dozen women of color. They’re all in blue denim jump suits watching a black and white documentary about Willow Run, the largest bomber factory in the world, built by the Ford Motor Company near Detroit. Every hour a Liberator rolls off its assembly line. It’s where the first Rosie the Riveters did the jobs of men who went off to fight in World War II.
Many workers, nearly all of them white, are depicted in the film plying their trades. Riveters are well represented, but only one of them is colored, Rose. Many of the women are resentful. Slurs are slung Rose’s way and she jumps the most belligerent smart ass who’s riling everybody up. The gal is big and gets the best of Rose with a few powerful punches. As the documentary ends with a patriotic musical flourish.
A USO Big Band is rehearsing THE HARLEM HOP for a dance concert in a hangar adjacent to an airfield full of B24’s.
Factory workers and airmen who are test-flying and picking-up B24’s are drawn to the music like moths to a flame. Rose and Dahlia and the colored riveters rush in. Amazingly the band is playing THE HARLEM HOP, a raucous hit dance song written by Rose’s father, Cecil Clay, who she’s never met. He’s a renowned black trumpet player and owns The Pair o’ Dice a small popular Harlem club. Black ownership of clubs was rare, even in Harlem. The song’s co-writer, Danny Capucci, is on the piano vamping with the band in an Army Air Corps captain’s uniform. Everyone else in the band is in civilian garb. After an irresistible display of dancing Rose is thrown onto the stage and convinces Danny to let her sing with him. She positions herself as a fan; making no mention of Cecil being her father. She and Danny sing and dance together and sparks definitely fly.
An hour later, protocol be damned, Danny disguises Rose as one of his crew and takes her up in his B24 for its test run. Rose, hanging off the bottom of the bomber in the nose gunner’s turret, gets a white knuckler thrill ride.
Later there’s an evening at the one of the apartment complexes Ford built for its workers. Because of Rose, she and Dahlia are required to stay in colored housing. Danny is totally comfortable among all the black families.
He plays THE ST. LOUIS BLUES with Rose’s next door neighbors, 3 generations from St. Louis.All ages indulge in the fun, but when Dahlia has a bloody coughing fit the party comes to a halt. Rose takes Dahlia home, next door, and while she quiets her down, Danny learns from her neighbor that Dahlia is gravely ill.
When Rose emerges, Danny consoles her. She learns that he lived on a farm near St. Louis until his parents and their land were swallowed-up by a flooding Mississippi River. Shortly thereafter, at 17, he moved to Harlem chasing his musical dreams and was taken in and mentored by Cecil. For the past 8 years Cecil and the talented showgirls and musicians at the Pair o’ Dice Club have been Danny’s family. Rose persists in not divulging that Cecil is her father. It’s very late and Rose and Danny are both longing for a goodnight kiss. Whites and blacks generally frowned on interracial romance and marriage, but the three little girls from next door who’ve been spying on Rose and Danny beg them to kiss. So kiss they do, and it is glorious!
The intensity of Rose and Danny’s brief encounter is matched by their will to survive the war, make it in the music business, and live together happily ever after. But, one out of every four airmen is dying in combat. Colored recording artists rarely are getting breaks in the notoriously white dominated music business, and colored women getting breaks is even rarer. Living happily ever after, well, let’s just say it’s highly unlikely.
Two days after Danny flies off in his Liberator, Dahlia drops dead next to Rose on the assembly line. Dahlia’s life as a single mother with a colored child was brutally challenging. For Rose and her to have a decent life, she endured a relationship with a married Ford executive, Dominik Mankowski. He kept Dahlia employed, provided her with an apartment and amenities, and helped himself whenever he wanted to Dahlia’s “favors”. Dahlia’s illness came from years of inhaling toxic fumes painting Ford trucks. In hopes of improving her health Dominick got her and Rose the riveter jobs at Willow Run.
Mankowski has the audacity to show-up at Dahlia’s funeral. Rose convinces him to take her to the lake where he and Dahlia often “picnicked”. Rose pretends that she’s willing to carry on where her mother left off, providing “favors”. Her seduction turns to extortion at gunpoint leaving him naked in the lake with a bullet hole through his thigh. Her threat to tell his wife about his nasty history secures an agreement from him to pay her an ample monthly stipend until she determines she doesn’t need it.
That night Rose jumps on a train to New York with her sights set on The Pair o’ Dice. She’s fully expecting that Cecil, who she intensely resents for abandoning her mother and her, will launch her music career. She wears her pistol strapped to her thigh and as Mankowski discovered she means business. Danny is there, spending his last night with his Harlem “family” before flying overseas.
Rose doesn’t reveal to anybody that she’s Cecil’s daughter; she wants to earn her breaks. Playing tough, Cecil hires her as a cigarette girl with no promises about singing and dancing, and provides her with a room above the club and board. But it’s clear to Rose and everyone at the club that Cecil fully recognizes her talent and will soon seize the opportunity to tie his career to hers.
Later that night Danny takes her with him to The Ivory, a legendary midtown club, where all the biggest recording stars perform. Rose is thrilled and impressed that Danny has a meeting with Sophie Hudson, a white superstar recording artist who’s looking to record his new torch song, WE DARE LOVE ON.
Rose is humiliated when she discovers that The Ivory is restricted; no colored people can see the shows, no colored performers can enter the club through the front door, and no colored performers can leave the stage to mix it up with the clientele. Danny is mortified wnen Rose is demeaned by Artie, the club’s owner, but Sophie is kind to her. Danny is ready to leave, but Rose convinces him to stay. The last thing she wants is for him to lose out on such a big opportunity because of her.
Danny plays the piano and Sophie sings WE DARE LOVE ON, and she slays it.
She not only wants to record the song, she is about to go overseas with a USO band and wants to perform the song for the troops. Sophie is clearly smitten with Danny and invites him to play on her tour. He’s flattered but reveals that he’s joined the Army Air Corp. But, since he will be based near London and that’s the first stop on her tour, he asks if maybe he can sit-in with her band. Danny and Sophie shake hands on the deal. Rose is worried. She knows Sophie will be a mighty temptation for Danny and knows Sophie must always get what she wants.
On the rooftop of The Pair o’ Dice the sun is rising. Rose and Danny have been up all night. He’s in his uniform, packed and ready to say goodbye. Rose can’t resist kissing him, giving him something serious to remember. In the duet I WILL WRITE YOU EVERY DAY they vow to do just that.
EPISODES 2, 3 & 4
For many months Rose and Danny do write each other every day and they also inspire each others’ songwriting individually and as collaborators. Rose is struggling against gender discrimination and racism in the music business but making progress with Cecil’s help and the support of Judy, Rita, and Smoky (The Pair o’ Dice Girls), and Alvin, the club’s bartender. Rose sends Danny a photo of her in a bikini with a song she’s written called DO YA LIKE WHATCHA SEE?
It’s about a girl beseeching an airman to paint her on the nose of his bomber as a guardian angel/bombshell in a bikini riding a bomb hell bent on destruction. Danny’s crew gets a hold of the song and except for the racist “cracker” who is their radioman, they are all in favor Rose being the model for their “bombshell”. In a fantasy sequence Rose appears on an airfield in the English countryside in front of their B24 singing and dancing with Danny and his crew. But, as predicted by the radioman, their Commanding Officer nixes the idea, unless “the bombshell” is a white.
Reeling from Rose being rejected and suffering from the toll too many combat missions have taken on him, Danny finds himself backstage at the USO Stage Door Canteen with Sophie, proposing that she be their “bombshell”. It’s important for the crew’s morale and a sacrifice he’s willing to make. Danny is vulnerable, sure that his luck is running out; that he won’t survive the mission he’s flying the next morning. In the trio, LOOK WHAT WAR CAN DO, Rose is “present” in Sophie’s dressing room as Danny sketches Sophie in a transparent peignoir.
Rose tries to make Danny feel her love for him. Outside Sophie’s window London endures a V2 rocket attack. Danny succumbs to Sophie’s temptation. Danny survives his mission the next day, but is riddled with guilt for betraying Rose and stops writing her.
Not knowing what has happened to Danny and not having him in her life is devastating for Rose. She keeps writing him; terrified that he may be dead. She throws herself even more intensely into her career. Where initially there was a lot of jealously of Rose from the Pair o’ Dice girls, Judy, Rita and Smoky, who also manifest as Rose’s Muses, there is now support and friendship. In SCREW MEN, the Pair o’ Dice girls try to help Rose get over Danny by revealing that men just can’t be counted on.
A few months later Danny’s entire crew is killed in air combat, but he’s able to crash land his decimated B24 back in England. He’s badly injured and is in a coma for a month. Every day Sophie prays at his bedside and hides from him that Rose is still writing. When he awakens he’s a shadow of his former self, fearful, and devoid of career and romantic dreams. But, Sophie gets Danny back to New York. She ensconces him a lovely room adjacent to her rooftop garden and dedicates herself to his recovery, fully hoping that they will ultimately make beautiful music together again, and live happily ever after.
Rose’s career in collaboration with Cecil is taking-off in spite of all the racial barriers to their success. They have a hit “victim” song called CARAMEL. Cecil has worked hard to convince Rose that a love story for her with Danny was always doomed because of the color of her skin.
But, Rose still loves Danny. And Danny still loves Rose. He craves her forgiveness, and wants to rekindle their dreams. But, when he recovers enough to visit Rose and his “family” at the Pair o’ Dice, Rose pushes him away in the torrid tango duet, YOU THINK YOU KNOW, where she insists that they move on with their lives apart to prevent any further damage.
The paths forward for all the characters in Rose’s War can’t resist intersections. They are fraught with despair, and greased by hope and exhilaration. Whether Rose and Danny can make it together drives Rose’s War to its conclusion.
MUSIC DEMOS
NATURE BOY by Miles Davis
(or, an original provocative piece)
THE HARLEM HOP
THE ST. LOUIS BLUES
WE DARE LOVE ON
I WILL WRITE YOU EVERY DAY
DO YOU LIKE WHAT YOU SEE
LOOK WHAT WAR CAN DO
SCREW MEN
CARAMEL
YOU THINK YOU KNOW
LIVING IN COLOR