The One Feather Tail of Miss Gertrude McFuzz
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The One Feather Tail of Miss Gertrude McFuzz is a song from the Broadway musical Seussical, featuring an unhappy bird with one tail feather.
- There once was a girl bird named Gertrude McFuzz, And she had the smallest plain tail ever was.
- -- Seussical the Musical: One Feather Tail of Miss Gertrude McFuzz
Contents |
[edit] Character Introduction
Miss Gertrude McFuzz first appeared in the Dr. Seuss short story Miss Gertrude McFuzz, in the book Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories. In the story, Gertrude McFuzz vainly wishes she looked more like the more fully feathered Lolla-Lee-Lou:
- One droopy-droop feather. That’s all that she had.
- And, oh! That one feather made Gertrude so sad.
Wanting her tail to grow!!!!, she seeks a doctor’s advice:
- "Tut tut!" said the doctor. "Such talk! How absurd!
- Your tail is just right for your kind of bird!"
- -- Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories
Gertrude relentlessly insists until her uncle doctor prescribes bitter berries from the pill-berry vine. As she gobbles them down, feathers emerge. Before long, she finds herself plagued with a massive, cumbersome plume. After experiencing some painful plucking and preening, Gertrude learns to be quite happy with her one feather tail.
[edit] Seussical the Musical
In Seussical, Gertrude McFuzz is portrayed as the love interest of Horton, the endearing elephant from Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who!. Janine LaManna played the role for the Broadway version of the musical and Garrett Long, an Alexandria, Virginia native, portrayed the role of Miss Gertrude on the national tour of Seussical.
As the story begins, Gertrude is self-conscious and hypersensitive about her single, seemingly insignificant tail feather. Gertrude undergoes a physical, mental, and emotional metamorphosis during the production. She changes from a nervous, neurotic bird into an altruistic, gallant one by overcoming her perceived shortcomings and accepting and believing in herself.
Gertrude’s musical numbers, in order of appearance, are:
- Biggest Blame Fool
- Jungle of Nool(reprise)
- The One Feather Tail Of Miss Gertrude McFuzz (solo)
- Amayzing Mayzie
- Amayzing Gertrude
- How Lucky You Are
- Notice Me Horton (duet)
- All For You
- The People Versus Horton The Elephant
[edit] Other Works Featuring Miss McFuzz
Between 1978-1982, Miss McFuzz reappeared in the Fisher-Price Talk-To-Me Book Gertrude McFuzz (07-AD-01-8-I). In 1999, the Buddha label reissued an audio version of the story in the collection Dr. Seuss Presents: Fox In Sox, narrated by Marvin Miller.
The character of Miss Gertrude McFuzz has also been featured in Rob Kapilow’s Two By Seuss (1995), a musical setting of two Dr. Seuss works, Gertrude McFuzz and Green Eggs and Ham.
