If you grew up in the Seventies or Eighties, chances are you not only remember the album “Free to Be…You and Me,†you also remember which role you played in the requisite school play, rampant in elementary schools across the nation. (I was Pamela Purse, the impudent little minx who cried “Ladies First!†in Shel Silverstein's mischievous skit.)
This month, the songs that for many of the era's schoolchildren provided the soundtrack to their lives - and are now played for their children - celebrates its 40th anniversary. An anthology has just been published, “When We Were Free to Be: Looking Back at a Children's Classic and the Difference It Made,†by Lori Rotskoff and Laura L. Lovett, in which essays by contributors that include Alan Alda, Peggy Orenstein, Letty Cottin Pogrebin and Gloria Steinem explore the meaning, impact and legacy of that landmark album.
The woman behind the music, book and hit TV primetime show is the actress, activist and philanthropist Marlo Thomas, most famous at the time for being the star of television's “That Girl†and the daughter of the comedian Danny Thomas. Determined to find literature and music that didn't rely on gender stereotypes for her young niece, Dionne (who also contributed to the anthology), Ms. Thomas came up with a plan to record a rock album, write a book and create a TV show for children born into the Women's Rights and Civil Rights era.
She corralled many of her friends and colleagues from show business to take part in the venture. Harry Belafonte accompanied Ms. Thomas in a song called “Parents are People.†Mel Brooks wrote and performed in a skit about gender roles and assumptions. The football star Rosey Grier sang the ballad “It's All Right to Cry.†And Roberta Flack and Michael Jackson sang and danced to a duet, “You Don 't Have to Change at All,†whose words now bear a melancholic irony.
Despite the star power, expectations for the album's success were not high. But it quickly went gold, and then platinum, and continues to sell today. I spoke with Ms. Thomas recently about the radical ideas she helped bring to the mainstream: That it's OK to cry, that boys can want a doll and that a girl can happily be a brunette - even if she insisted on being a princess. Some things, it seems, haven't changed.
Related: Times reviews of the album and book from 1972 and 1974 by Deborah Jowitt and Erma Bombeck.
