In the time I’ve been posting daily on this site, from time to time recurring themes have come to me, hence you can use the search option and find about forty once weekly posts of “Movies with Meaning”, and also a theme with many posts called “Writing I Love”.
Now another theme emerges, Beautiful Leadership. On one day alone last week, at least four wonderful examples of Beautiful Leadership found their way to me:
- an NBA star and father empowering young women by walking the talk.
- a brave woman CEO in the UK leading by example around income inequality, though with some sadly paradoxical behaviour in how I learned of her leadership.
- an environmental activism movement masquerading as a large US corporation taking the Trump tax cut it received and giving it back to the planet.
- a Hollywood movie star finding the power and passion of a moment irresistible and showing leadership which made real a project that has since touched millions.
For each of these, I Tweeted or posted on Linked In as I found them, and over the coming days will write a little more to share on them one by one.
Today, about that movie star.
Towards the beginning of 2018 I wrote: “Be Brave, Own It ! – Keala’s “This is Me” Moment”, featuring Keala Settle singing the anthem “This is Me” to a group for the first time. Truly a goosebumps moment.
Do watch the video in that post, and when you do, pay close attention to Hugh Jackman and the impact her bravery has on him.
Now, what I did not realised back earlier this year was that in that same workshop, another anthem was to be sung, called “From Now On”. As reported in Variety:
It was judgment day for “The Greatest Showman.”
The brass at 20th Century Fox and a cadre of financiers were descending on New York City to decide whether or not to give the greenlight to a musical biopic about circus impresario P.T. Barnum — one that by 2015 had been in development for seven years. In order to convince the studio, director Michael Gracey and star Hugh Jackman had arranged to do an elaborate read-through, with several Broadway greats playing supporting parts.
There was just one catch. Twenty-four hours before the presentation, Jackman had gone to the doctor to have a basal cell carcinoma removed from his nose.
“‘Michael, I have some good news and some bad news,’” Jackman said on the phone to Gracey. “The operation was a huge success; that’s no problem. But I’m in the surgeon’s office, and he’s not letting me leave until I call you and say there’s no way I can sing tomorrow.”
Gracey’s heart sank.
Fearful that people wouldn’t make the trek across country if they found out their leading man would need an understudy, the two men conspired to wait to share the bad news until everyone was seated. At the run-through, “Newsies” star Jeremy Jordan did the singing for Jackman while the actor mimed the stage directions.”
Watch the video and see what happened. A true example of #BeautifulLeadership