Watch it online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC6JZ-rYD98 ! Still available for viewing until July 13.
The San Francisco Free Folk Festival presents a special online showing of Love It Like a Fool, an award-winning 1977 documentary by filmmaker Susan Wengraf about the Bay Area singer, songwriter and activist Malvina Reynolds. This showing is in honor of the 120th anniversary of Malvina’s birthday. This is the first time that a high-quality version of the film has been made available online, which was done specially for the 2020 San Francisco Free Folk Festival.
Among the songs written by Malvina Reynolds (1900-1978) are Magic Penny, Little Boxes, What Have They Done to the Rain, and It Isn’t Nice.
Born of Jewish socialist immigrant parents in San Francisco, Malvina earned a BA, an MA and, in 1939, a PhD in English from the University of California at Berkeley. It was the middle of the depression; she couldn’t get a teaching job at the college level. She worked as a journalist and on an assembly line in a bomb casing factory during WWII. She and her husband and daughter moved to southern California where, in the late 40s, she met Earl Robinson, Pete Seeger ,and other folksingers and songwriters, and got serious about songwriting.
Her songs have been recorded by Harry Belafonte, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Pete Seeger and many others.
If you would like to purchase a copy of Love It Like a Fool, please send an email to loveitlikeafool@comcast.net or write to Susan Wengraf, 1404 Le Roy Ave., Berkeley, CA 94708.