Simsalabim Bam Bum (200th Entry)

Synchronicity is a wonderful occurrence in one’s life. And I always love it and feel special when it happens in mine! Yesterday, on the last day of the year 2010, was again such a marvelous day when everything comes together in an unusual but natural way. Since my last entry for this blog I was looking for a subject regarding Marisa Mell’s life to write about for the present entry. Not only was it going to be the first entry in the new year 2011 but it would also mark the 200th entry after 2 ½ years of blogging about the life and work of Marisa Mell. So the entry had to be special or unusual to mark the occasion. After several hours of going through my Marisa Mell collection on paper and digital I still had nothing that appealed to me to write about although there is still a lot of material to cover but nothing, in my eyes, that had that “je ne sais quoi” for a 200th entry. So I was a little in despair but I was going to give me a last chance and started again to search the internet for ideas and new angles. And that lead me to the wonderful subject of this entry: “Simsalabim Bam Bum” with Marisa Mell. “Simsalabim Bam Bum” or “Der Barometermacher auf der Zauberinsel” is a theatrical play written between October 15th and November 15th 1823 by Austrian play write and actor Ferdinand Raimund. The base for his play is a fairy tale called “The princess with the long nose”. This fairy tale is part of a larger collection of fairy tales collected by Christoph Martin Wieland and published between 1786 and 1789. In 1823 the play was put to music by Wenzel Müller. In 1985 the Austrian state television ORF and the German commercial state television ZDF recorded an adaptation of this play for children to be broadcast on the respective networks. And it was finding this play on the internet that put a huge smile on my face and was for me the perfect unbelievable year ender. 2010 could not have ended better. Why? First of all of course it is a theater play with Marisa Mell which is very rare in her career but the main reason for my happiness was that finding the broadcast of this play is so rare, since it's original date, that not many people in German speaking countries remember the play on televsion and if so, they remember it as having seen it only as young children and do not remember much of it! This production was not publicly available on any medium during the last 25 years. You could get a copy from the television station ZDF or its cultural pendant SAT3 but only for a whopping 200 euros. The story is about a very clever young man Barholomäus Quecksilber who's profession it is making barometers. One day he is cast on a magical island. The fairy Rosalinde grants him three magical objects: a wand turning everything it touches into gold, a cloak enableling him to make dimensional journeys anywhere he wants to and a horn that can call an army to his help when needed. "If I have this much power I can ask for the hand of a princess!" Bartholomeus thinks but can he or are there hidden traps to conquer when using the magical objects?
This production was broadcast on December 1st 1985. In this play Marisa Mell incorporates the important character of the fairy Rosalinde. She has the body of a sfinx and is constantly weaving threads of destiny for the people on Earth. Because this was mainly an Austrian prodution, co-financed with the ZDF, Marisa Mell got the part because she lived already then in Vienna out of necesssity and knew some key people involved in the production of this play. Simsalabim Bam Bum is one of the last productions she worked on in a major capacity. What is also refreshing after many years of being dubbed into Italian is hearing her speak in her own husky voice. This production is so rare that not much is known about it or what happened behind the scene's. The complete production is for the moment available on the internet but maybe not for long due to copyright reason's. So if you would like to own a rare Marisa Mell starred staged production for television this is the moment to download it before it is gone again maybe forever from the public domain.