Dear Readers:
Richard Roeper, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, has gone too far. He has dissed one of Doc’s favorite groups, Tony Orlando and Dawn. Lucky for Roeper, who is Roger Ebert’s current thumbs-up partner, he had nothing bad to say about “Candida” or “Knock Three Times,” two of the great songs of the rock era. Instead, Roeper took some cheap shots at “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree,” the monster hit of 1973 that became the inspiration for the yellow ribbon as national symbol.
“Yellow ribbons have been blooming like spring flowers,” wrote Roeper. “Around trees, on mailboxes, in storefront windows. Some florists have been creating special bouquets and arrangements for families that want to show their support for their troops.” Roeper denigrates the color yellow as a “sissy color, signifying cowardice.” Then he attacks the song as “dreadful … with a cloying, phony-folksy title, it’s not even about a brave soldier returning home. It’s about a convict wondering if his love still digs him after he’s spent years in jail for some unnamed crime.”
OK, so Roeper must be a real man because he does not like sissies, cowards, or ex-cons.
Maybe he should talk to Pete Hamill, tough-guy columnist from New York, who played a key role in the development of the yellow ribbon phenomenon, a role unrecognized in Roeper’s critique.
Let’s go back in time to 1981. Ronald Reagan has been elected president, and American hostages are released from custody in Iran. Penelope Laingen, the wife of one of the hostages, decorates her yard in Bethesda, Md., with yellow ribbons, as a symbol of loyalty and love for the hostages.
Laingen got the idea from the popular song, which was written by Irwin Levine and L. Russell Brown and released in 1973. The narrator of the song speaks in the first person and identifies himself as an ex-convict. He tells his wife that, if she wants him back, she should tie a yellow ribbon around a tree. If he does not see the ribbon, he will stay on the bus and leave her and his old life behind.
According to folklorist Gerald E. Parsons, there are at least three important steps in the development of this tradition that are not recognized by Roeper.
In June of 1972, ABC-TV produced a dramatic version of the yellow ribbon story starring James Earl Jones as the returning ex-con. Doc remembers this television movie from back in the day. The character played by Jones tells his story on the bus to two college students traveling on their spring break.
ABC’s movie derived from a Pete Hamill story for the New York Post titled “Coming Home.” Hamill’s story appeared originally in 1971 and was reprinted the next year by Reader’s Digest.
But where did Hamill get the story? Here’s his explanation, which appeared over the original column:
I first heard this story a few years ago from a girl I had met in New York’s Greenwich Village. The girl told me that she had been one of the participants. Since then, others to whom I have related the tale have said that they had read a version of it in some forgotten book, or had been told it by an acquaintance who said that it actually happened to a friend. Probably the story is one of these mysterious bits of folklore that emerge from the national subconscious to be told anew in one form or another. The cast of characters shifts, the message endures. I like to think that it did happen, somewhere, sometime.
So there you have it folks: urban legend to newspaper column to TV movie to hit song to patriotic tradition.
Finally, a note to Richard Roeper: Never, ever, ever show disrespect for Tony Orlando and Dawn again or Doc will knock three times…
Click play to hear Doc practicing:
