Well, I mean, you've heard of a show going up in flames. You don't expect it to be literal. Well, this is where the saying came from. You're listening to Expertise, spelled wrong. The podcast where the world's most expert experts discuss their areas of expertise expertly. Expert comedy writer Clare Sera and expert comedy writer Danno Sullivan bring their expertise to other unrelated expertises. Clare, our audience tonight is composed mostly of musical theater buffs. And that's your Expertise, spelled wrong. Naturally. Welcome one and all to Expertise. Clare Sera, you are an expert in the little known German language musical Zeppelin.
Zeppelin! Just wanted to give you a little piece. Now, I know that you didn't write it. I know that you didn't perform in it. I know that you're an expert about it. In fact, I know that you couldn't have done any of those things, because of course, it's one of the early musicals from the 1930s. Yeah, and sadly, it was never recorded. So, a person of today would not even be able to hear the original music. Just what I gave you at the top of the show. I was able to piece together this forgotten and sadly could have been lost piece of Berlinar. That's what we call it.
I found the grandchildren of the folks who had been in the show. It was only put on once. I know why it was only put on once. Let's save up for that. Right. It's a punchy topic. I want everyone to learn about the extraordinary story of this musical, but I think it might help set the scene a little bit, as it were, to talk about the history of the Zeppelin itself. Was it the Count von Zeppelin? You know, Dano, no offense, but of course, you think it's the Count von Zeppelin, when it is actually the Baroness. Behind every great man, there's a great Baroness.
Yes, the Baroness von Zeppelin. Now, this was early on. There was, in fact, early manned flight at this point, or womanned flight, or Baroness flight. Yes. But it was unreliable. And what was the Baroness's dream? What was she trying to accomplish? She wanted to experience flight. She dreamed of soaring. You know, she also was the first to experiment with parachutes. Parachutes. So, when I read about the musical, I didn't understand why the Baroness character had no legs. But this explains it. I guess there must have been some sort of terrible parachute-related accident.
There was more than one. One for each leg? Tragically, she did not need to lose those legs. So, that's a nice little bit of backstory for the... They're not the two main characters. Of course, there's the young lovers, the tennis star and the gal. I know you're trying to teach us to... Consider women as human persons. Consider women as human persons. But she's actually called the gal. That may be the German pronunciation of her name. I'm not sure. Yeah, she is actually pronounced Chagall. So, it's the tennis player in Chagall. But the story itself, interestingly, has nothing to do with flight.
It exists sort of as a metaphor throughout, though, wouldn't you say? Oh, absolutely. It was the first play to use a zipline entrance. It was phenomenal from what I've read. And, you know, you think early technology. There was only one time that he got stuck hanging above the audience for about two hours. Danno, you know, I know that a lot of people focus on Chagall. Yes, the love interest. But I found equally interesting the story of the fellow who was up in... He was in the zeppelin because of a condition that he suffered under, for which there was no known cure in 1930s Berlin.
And the baroness, after what she had been through and losing her legs, she wrote a character that she could pour her heart into. This fellow, you know, he was a fictionalized character. And again, everything for her was metaphorical. The young man had no lungs. Oh. Yeah. They thought they were so ahead of their times medically that they had a tube that they had inserted... Directly from the great balloon filled with gas to this poor boy's lungs. And that was the rhythm of every song was to his breathing. So could I just put forth maybe a startling theory? Yeah.
That actor wanted to get caught on the zeppelin. He did not want to make it to the stage and get hooked up to that gas line. Wow, Danno, that really brings the humanity because they had rehearsed it, but they hadn't, of course, inflated the zeppelin inside the building. They were saving that for opening night. So presumably during rehearsals, they would have pumped oxygen into his lungs, but God knows during the actual performance, I would have strung up on the zeppelin too. So Claire, run us through the plot real quick, just act one, two, and three. And then I think most of our listeners here are pretty savvy folks.
And when they think of zeppelins, they think of only one thing. And you can fill us in on the heart-rending conclusion to that one and only opening night. But we'd love to hear the rundown of the story real quick. Well, the two meet, Chagall and the fellow with the lungs, and they have such a strong connection as you can imagine. They're charming. She does most of the dancing around him as he's rather limited. Because of the legs. And the hookup to the lung. Right, right. He's got the lungs and the legs missing. I don't believe his legs are missing. All right, let me backtrack just a little bit.
The boy's missing lungs. His missing legs? I've lost track. The baroness. Got it, got it. And so she made it his lungs. Got it. So the baroness's missing legs are represented on stage by the boy's missing lungs. Exactly. Chagall is just a girl who wants to have a big sighting of a small city. Just a girl who can't say nine. Yes. And she falls deeply in love with the boy who cannot breathe. A beautiful love song and outstanding. It's a polka number. So he pulled out my lung blow polka. Man, I wish that had survived. I would pay good money for that. So I find it heartbreaking, Claire.
Disaster struck for the actual audience that night in the theater. The theater goers who could not get out the doors. It was like... Yeah, well, I mean, you've heard of a show going up in flames. You don't expect it to be literal. Well, this is where the saying came from. So some of the gas from the boy's tube, I gather, spun out into the theater. At this time, during the Berlin era, no one thought to not allow smoking in the theater, did they? No, in fact, it was encouraged. It was encouraged. Everybody was smoking. It helped the lighting. It created really beautiful effects.
In fact, they were handed cigarettes walking in on this particular play. So you've got a loose spewing hose. You've got a boy dangling from a zip line. You've got a stage full of actors. You've got an audience full of smokers. Yes. Walk us through this, Claire. The first to go was the zip line. For a moment, it seemed like a blessing. High above the flames, high above the fumes. Well, and also like, oh, thank God, that kid's finally getting down. Oh, yeah. And he's probably thinking, thank God I don't have to do that song from up here. For him, for a brief moment, everything worked out.
The first flame caught the zip line, which was, of course, in that day, a highly tensile rope. Naturally. So he was released from the zip line. Fell the 40, 50 feet. And the irony that he lost both his legs in that fall is not lost on me. On behalf of the Veriness, I thank you for picking up on that. And with his landing, he was wearing what in the day was known as a stunt suit, which is just you know, a padded extra, a highly flammable padding. Mm-hmm. The flamahosen. He was wearing flamahosen, which he just, he went up like, I mean, screaming. The audience tried to catch him still because it is, it's an instinct.
Arms went up. Yeah. You see a flaming actor, you want to grab him, save him, stomp him out. I can't tell you how many flaming actors I've wanted to stomp out. He was a rolling ball of flame that was then caught and taught like a hot potato, tossed around from cigarette smoking patron to cigarette smoking patron. Unfortunately, also the era of the first toupees. Flammenherren. So I can only imagine with that slicked back toupee oil, you got a flaming actor rolling around, throwing up sparks. The actors on the stage were the last to go. They were probably dreaming of an encore.
Well, the people were on their feet. Standing O, standing O. Screaming, screaming, but everything being made of wood. Right. Or because even back then, theaters didn't have a lot of money. They had created a lot of the set out of matches. It seems like somebody somewhere along the line would have thought that is not a great idea. Matches can be a very, very useful and adaptable building material, but you've got those sulfuric heads. Well, again, these are why we have these rules today. Right. No stage is built out of matches. It's rule number one, almost. With Oshkosh, I mean, OSHA.
We owe them for that. We owe Zeppelin so much. I think it's mostly forgotten today, but we do owe them. Modern theaters have doorways, for example. Yes. And I know back then they would actually lift the entire theater. The audience would come in to their seats and then lower the theater down over the seats again, just to save a little money on doorways. Well, and it did save a lot of money. I mean, every now and then I'm jealous of what they could pull off. Up until Zeppelin. I mean, we don't think about the number of plays that went on successfully before Zeppelin, but that was not to be for us.
And if the forensic and carbon dated records of the bodies, which were found much like Pompeii- Was there anything that you discovered among those poor charred audience members that really stood out to you as an emotional cry or symbolic of that night? You know, when I took away from all of this, Dano, was when I saw the way the arms were extended. Some clearly clapping, thinking this was all part of an amazing show. Even in their final dying breaths, they wanted entertainment. And they had had it. I mean, you know, except for the dangling. I like to think that those audience members went out the best way possible, up in flames, in the middle of an experience that was- They would never forget.
They would never forget that night and that moment. And I feel like the baroness was completely vindicated. Yeah. Her whole life meant something. Pulled out my long blow polka. Pulled out my long blow polka. Pulled out my long blow polka. Pulled out my long blow polka. The Expertise Spelled Wrong podcast is free and, like the Amish, all are welcome. Be sure to sign up for our email announcements at funnypodcast.co and follow us in your favourite podcast app, like the expert podcast listener we know you are.
