Museum Will Revisit a Holiday Treasure in Vintage ‘Amahl’

The fledgling medium of television took a major leap on Christmas Eve 1951 when “Amahl and the Night Visitors” aired live on NBC. Not only was it the first opera commissioned exclusively for television, “Amahl” was also the first program presented under the “Hallmark Hall of Fame” banner.

Gian Carlo Menotti wrote the one-act opera, which tells the story of a crippled shepherd boy and his long-suffering mother who are visited by the Three Kings on their way to Bethlehem to see the Christ child. When the Magi leave to deliver their gifts to the baby Jesus, Amahl is inspired to join them. The only problem is, he doesn’t have a gift that matches the precious offerings of the Three Kings

The cast included 12-year-old Chet Allen as Amahl, Rosemary Kuhlmann as his mother and David Aiken, Leon Lishner and Andrew McKinley as the Three Kings. Menotti staged the opera, which then was directed for TV by Kirk Browning and conducted by Thomas Schippers. The broadcast ended with a performance of the Columbus Boys Choir of Princeton, N.J., of which Allen was a member.

Though “Amahl” was performed nine times in the 1950s for NBC and then on an occasional basis through the ‘70s, the kinescope of the very first telecast had been considered missing. But the Museum of Television & Radio recently acquired a copy of the historic telecast and is screening it today through Sunday at its Beverly Hills facility.

The museum, says curator Rebecca Paller, thought the kinescope of the original broadcast was missing because people connected with the show for years believed that to be the case. Menotti, who is now 90, said in an interview with the New York Times that the kinescope had been destroyed.

“It turned out it really wasn’t missing,” Paller says. “When we did a huge ‘Hallmark Hall of Fame’ salute [in New York] last March, the people at Hallmark were able to put us in touch with the UCLA Film and Television Archive. It turned out it was there.”

The impact of this sweet, moving opera was huge. “It’s my theory that it was really the first opera on TV that was successful,” Paller says. “There had been operas before on TV. There was a rather good production of Menotti’s ‘The Medium,’ which was broadcast in ’48 or ’49.”

In 1950, NBC President David Sarnoff hired a creative team, including director Browning, and gave them carte blanche to produce operas under the umbrella title “NBC Opera.” Later that year, the unit commissioned Menotti to write an opera for Christmas season 1951. But as the dashing, charming Menotti says in his on-air introduction, it wasn’t until Thanksgiving 1951 that he got his inspiration for the opera, when he saw the painting “The Adoration of the Magi” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

“Menotti has always had a reputation for being a procrastinator,” Paller says. “He was writing to the very end. Kuhlmann, a few weeks before the opera had its premiere, said he would call her and say, ‘What’s your good high note, Rosemary?’” The critics did handstands over the opera, and it was later honored with Peabody and Christopher awards.

“The suits at NBC, knowing that they had a great thing, didn’t even wait until the following Christmas [to do it again]. They put it on at Easter,” Paller says. “They were able to get the complete cast again, including Chet Allen.” Allen only did the first two live performances because his voice changed during the summer of 1952. Bill McIver, a 10-year-old member of the Columbus Boys Choir, took over for the Christmas telecasts from 1952 to 1955.

“‘Amahl’ probably receives more performances today than most any other opera,” says McIver, who teaches voice at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. “A lot of the productions are done on local levels, but it is still done by big opera companies on occasion. It was obviously a seminal event in my life. We rehearsed for six weeks prior to the [1952] performance, and the last year I did ‘Amahl,’ I think, we rehearsed five days because we were all the same people.”

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McIver and Kuhlmann, with whom he is still close, quickly bonded. “In the middle of the first rehearsals, we were on a break and Rosemary called me over and sat me down and said, ‘Bill, if we are going to do this well, you need to look me straight in the eyes.’ I was kind of hesitant, but after that point we developed a great rapport. In the shows that I did, you can see there is a special bond between Rosemary and me, as there was between Rosemary and Chet.”

Though “Amahl” led to long careers for most of the participants, the curly-haired Allen, who possessed an angelic voice, struggled most of his life, committing suicide at age 45. Kuhlmann says he saw her as his surrogate mother. “I tell you, when he worked with me, I didn’t realize he wasn’t that happy at home,” she says. “He would show up at my door in Scarsdale [N.Y.] and I would welcome him in. He used to follow me around.”

“I knew his home life wasn’t as good as mine,” McIver says. “I had wonderful parents who were very careful to see that my head remained the right size. Chet went almost the other way. He would go and hide from people who wanted his autograph. He couldn’t handle the fame, and he didn’t have anyone to help him. The whole experience was not a good one for him.”

Whatever his demons were even at 12, on the night of Dec. 24, 1951, Allen set them aside to give a musical performance for the ages.

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“Amahl and the Night Visitor” will screen today through Sunday from 1 to 2 p.m. at the Museum of Television & Radio, 465 N. Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills. Admission is free.(310) 786-1000 or www.mtr.org.