The Blue Bird

Everyone has heard of the Bluebird of Happiness.  In some way, we have all searched for it, too.  But, strangely, we have collectively forgotten where the idea of searching for the Bluebird of Happiness originated.  Why did we embrace the Blue Bird metaphor so thoroughly but completely lose sight of its source?  So, where did it come from?  Many cultures have associated bluebirds with luck, safety, fortune, and such for centuries.  However, the source of the Blue Bird of Happiness is Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1908 play L’Oiseau Bleu (The Blue Bird).

Maurice Maeterlinck

Maurice Maeterlinck (August 29, 1862 – May 6, 1949) was a Belgian playwright who wrote in French.  His plays are considered a key part of the late 19th Century Symbolist Movement, which attempted to describe absolute truths through the use of symbols in stories brimming with imagination, spirituality, and dreams.  Maeterlinck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911 for “his many-sided literary activities, and especially of his dramatic works, which are distinguished by a wealth of imagination and by a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale, a deep inspiration, while in a mysterious way they appeal to the readers' own feelings and stimulate their imaginations.”  It doesn’t call it out explicitly, but this quote from the Nobel Foundation is clearly referencing The Blue Bird.

Mytyl and Tyltyl in the Moscow Art Theatre
 1908 production

The Blue Bird (A Fairy Play in Six Acts) premiered on September 30, 1908 at the Moscow Art Theatre.  Its first London production was at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in early 1909 with several revivals in the following years.  The original Broadway production opened at the New Theatre on October 1, 1910 with revivals in 1911 and 1924. The Project Gutenberg website has a downloadable script from the 1910 Haymarket revival of The Blue Bird.  Here is a summary of that version of the story.

Act I: The Wood-cutter’s Cottage.  The curtain rises on the rustic interior of the cottage where the woodcutter’s children Tyltyl and Mytyl have just gone to bed on Christmas Eve.    They ogle the rich kids’ party next door and try to imagine what such luxury would be like.  The fairy Beryluna, who looks like their neighbor, enters and tells them they must go on a journey to find the Blue Bird for her daughter who is very ill and “just wants to be happy.”   She gives Tyltyl a green hat with a large diamond that makes people see “inside the soul of ordinary things.”  When Tyltyl turns the diamond, Fire, Water, Bread, Sugar, Milk, the Dog and the Cat all come to life, dance, cavort, and talk to the children.  The clock face opens and The Hours dance around the stage.  Light emerges from the lantern in the form of a beautiful woman.  Soon, they are all off on their journey to find the Blue Bird.

Dance of the Hours at the Haymarket (1909)

Act II, Scene 1: The Palace of the Fairy Beryluna.  The Cat convinces the other entities to hinder the children’s quest in order to prolong their own lives in their new state of enlightenment…all but the Dog, that is, who takes his loyalty to Tyltyl very seriously. 

Act II, Scene 2: The Land of Memory, where the children meet their dead grandparents - who look just the way the children remember them!  The grandparents tell the children to think of them more often because it makes them so happy.  Mytyl and Tyltyl’s seven dead siblings join them for supper.  The Grandfather gives Tyltyl his blue bird but, when the children leave the Land of Memory, the bird turns black.

The Land of Memory at the Haymarket (1909)

Act III, Scene 1: The Palace of Night, where Light has learned that the real Blue Bird lives among the blue birds of dreams who die in the sunlight.  The Cat asks Night to confound the children or else Man will learn all her secrets, ruining the health of her terrors, ghosts, and sicknesses.  Tyltyl and Mytyl search Night’s palace for the Blue Bird one room at a time.   First, Tyltyl opens a door to a room full of ghosts who rush about, terrifying Bread in particular.  Next, he opens a room full of Sicknesses.  Next, The Wars try to escape from their cave but the company manages to shut the door on them.  Next, the very timid Shades and Terrors make an appearance. Finally, despite Night’s warning, Tyltyl opens the last door and discovers a room full of blue birds.  The children catch many of them but when they leave the Palace of Darkness and show their catch to Light, all the birds are dead.

Night in The Blue Bird (1918)

Act III Scene 2: The Forest, where all the trees and animals have come to life.  With the Cat’s persuasion, they decide to kill the children before they can find the Blue Bird, gain happiness, and “make the tree’s servitude even harder.”  The children explain to The Oak that they only want the Blue Bird for the Fairy’s daughter but the trees are undeterred.  The Dog protects the children, taking on all the trees and animals at once.  In the nick of time, Light appears, Tyltyl turns the diamond, and the trees and animals return to the forest.

Act IV: The Palace of Happiness, where Light figures they’ll find the Blue Bird.  At first, the palace is a gaudy, vulgar place of purple drapes, gilded statues, and raucous music.  Amidst the food and drink are the Luxury of Being Rich, the Luxury of Satisfied Vanity, Fat Laughter, the Luxury of Knowing Nothing, the Luxury of Drinking when you are not Thirsty and the Luxury of Eating when you are not Hungry, and others Luxuries.  The Blue Bird is nowhere to be found in this sorry crowd so Tyltyl turns the diamond.  As the hall fills with light, the Luxuries take refuge with The Miseries.  The scene resolves into the true Palace of Happiness, a “cathedral of gladness and serenity.”  It’s populated by a host of beautiful women, the Happinesses of Home, including the Happiness of Being Well, the Happiness of Pure Air, and the Happiness of Spring.  They laugh at Tyltyl when he asks them for the whereabouts of the Blue Bird.  They are joined by the Great Joys: the Joy of Being Just, the Joy of Being Good, the Joy of Fame, the Joy of Thinking, and the Joy of Understanding.  All this Happiness and Joy cannot be contained with the arrival of the Joy of Maternal Love (who looks like the children’s mother, just not as tired).

Mytyl, Tyltyl, and Light meet The Luxury of Being Rich
in The Blue Bird (1918)

Act V Scene 1 & 2: The Graveyard.  Light tells them that the Blue Bird will come out with the dead at midnight.  Milk says "I feel I'm going to turn..."  After a terrifying wait, the clock strikes twelve, the graves open, but “there are no dead…”

Act V, Scene 3: Kingdom of the Future, where unborn children wait to be born.  Mytyl and Tyltyl chat with the unborn children, admire their inventions, and listen to their hopes and wishes for life on earth.  They meet their brother who is to be born next year.  Their joy is punctured when he tells them that he will leave them soon after his arrival.  Tyltyl says “It will hardly be worthwhile coming!” and his unborn brother replies “We can't pick and choose!”  Time appears and calls the names of the children who are going to earth to be born.   A few don’t want to go; others try to leave before their time.  Two lovers cry at their parting because he will be dead before she is to be born.  The children-to-be-born board a galley, wave to the others, and sail off towards the “song of the mothers coming out to meet them.”

The unborn lovers part in The Blue Bird (1918)

Act VI,  Scene 1: The Leave-taking.  After a year of adventures, the children return home empty-handed.  They say goodbye to Light, the Cat, the Dog, and the other entities who slink off to resume their old forms.

Act VI, Scene 2: The Awakening.  The Wood-cutter’s cottage looks like it did in Act I but it is “magically fresher, happier, more smiling”.   The children awaken in their beds.  They tell their mother of their long adventure, but she says they’ve been in their beds all night and asks if they haven’t been in their father’s brandy.  When the neighbor arrives and tells them how much her sick daughter wants their bird, Tyltyl notices that his dove is blue!  The Blue Bird has been in their home all along!  The dove is given to the sick girl who miraculously gets up and walks.  While the girl thanks Mytyl and Tyltyl, the dove escapes.   Tyltyl says “Never mind…. Don't cry…. I will catch him again…. (Stepping to the front of the stage and addressing the audience.) If any of you should find him, would you be so very kind as to give him back to us?… We need him for our happiness, later on….”

In the 1918 silent, Tyltyl spoke to the audience, too, but the title card reads:
"Please, all of you.  Look for our bluebird with all your hearts; and if you find him,
keep him for yourselves.  And be sure to look first in your own homes,
WHERE HE IS MOST APT TO BE FOUND!"

Okay, so it’s rather corny, sentimental, optimistic, and obvious by today’s standards.  But, in its day, The Blue Bird was a huge success, playing on stages around the world.  Judging from the surviving pictures, these were enormous productions with state-of-the-art stage effects.  The play must have struck a chord somehow.  Although it’s a fairy tale, the play is overflowing with some meaty philosophical concepts.  Inanimate objects have souls; we just can’t see them.  The forests resent their servitude to men who chop them down with blissful ignorance.  The dead live in our memories and not in the graveyard.  Darkness conceals a host of unpleasant things that cannot survive the light of day.  Luxury does not bring happiness but in fact leads to misery.  The most spiritually disturbing concept in The Blue Bird is the Kingdom of the Future where unborn souls wait for their time – and cannot escape their fate (Free will, take that!).  Heady stuff, really, and certainly worthy of an on-going legacy.  So…what happened?

Poster from The Blue Bird (1940)

Several movie versions of The Blue Bird have been made over the years.  A silent movie of The Blue Bird (1918) was released starring Tula Belle as Mytyl and Robin MacDougall as Tyltyl.  Thanks to early movie magic, the entities popped into life, the Palace of Darkness was very scary, and Galley of the Unborn Children sailed the skies.  The sets and effects, all tinted various colors, are quite amazing for their day.  Two decades later, 20^th Century Fox released The Blue Bird (1940) starring Shirley Temple.  This production is clearly influenced by the success of The Wizard of Oz a year earlier.  The Dog, the Cat, and Light behave much like The Wizard of Oz’s Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Glenda.  “There’s no place like home” is replaced with ‘happiness is found at home’.  The Blue Bird (1940) even starts in black and white and changes to color.  While this version drops key scenes (The Palace of Night is missing) and characters (Fire, Water, Bread,  Sugar and Milk), other parts of the story are enhanced:  The Forest burns and Land of the Future sparkles.   While the deeper concepts are simplified for a young audience, it’s still an enjoyable movie.  Unfortunately, the next major movie, The Blue Bird (1976), wasn’t as lucky.  This albatross, the first Soviet/US movie collaboration, was made near the end of director George Cukor’s long and distinguished career as “the women’s director”.  Elizabeth Taylor stars as Mother/ Light/ the Witch/Maternal Love; Jane Fonda is Night; Cicely Tyson is Tylette the Cat; and Robert Morley is Father Time.  This version is fairly true to the original play but quite painful to watch.  (Robert Morley sings!)  It was a critical and box-office disaster and, viewed today, it's easy to see why.  No one looks like they’re having much fun.

Elizabeth Taylor, Patsy Kensit, and Todd Lookinland in
The Blue Bird (1976)

 Maybe that explains what happened to our collective memory of The Blue Bird.  The original play must have had some magic, some universal truths, that didn’t make it into the later incarnations.  As a result, we simply forgot about it even though the phrase “Blue Bird of Happiness” lived on.  It’s hard to imagine that we would ever forget the sources of “Elementary, my dear Watson”, “There’s no place like home”, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship”, “Make him an offer he can’t refuse”, or “Luke, I am your father.”  But the source material for these lines is so good and so available that future generations will continue to discover them.  Sadly, this wasn’t the case for Maeterlinck’s The Blue Bird.  

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