In the weekend’s interview on The Steven Speirer Show, I explained the distinction between morality and ethics in part by noting that ethics, unlike morality, is constantly evolving over time, and thus requires constant reflection and reassessment. This was the theory behind my now defunct professional theater company in Northern Virginia, The American Century Theater, which revived older American plays and musicals now considered “dated” by the theater community. Old art is never dated, because we have to know where we have been in order to understand how we got where we are and where we are going.

A fascinating time capsule in this vein is “Bye Bye Birdie,” the 1963 film of the hit 1961 Broadway musical. That show, the “Grease” of its generation, was a current events satire of the rock idol phenomenon, inspired by the cultural uproar when Elvis Presley, at the peak of his first wave popularity, was drafted. The Broadway show launched the careers of Dick Van Dyke and Paul Lynde, and included several hits songs (“Put on a Happy Face,” “I’ve Got a Lot of Living To Do,” and others by Adams and Strouse, who later wrote “Applause” and “Annie”) as well as one of the most famous opening numbers in musical theater history, “The Telephone Hour.”

For a number of reasons, I was moved to watch the movie again for the first time since I saw it in a movie theater. Naturally, when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I’ve got some other tools to evaluate performance art, but the ethical issues raised by the film are many.

Most notably, the casting of Janet Leigh in the role of Rosie DeLeon, struggling songwriter Dick Van Dyke’s long-suffering girlfriend, would be castigated today. The role on Broadway was played by Chita Rivera, and this was considered a break-through: no Latina had ever played the romantic lead in a musical before. Rivera was already a major stage star and was nominated for a Tony for her performance as Rosie, but while Dick Van Dyke and Lynde from the original cast were carried over to the film version, Rivera was replaced by Janet Leigh of “Psycho” fame, in an unbecoming black wig.

Leigh was a movie star and considered good for the box office, and Rivera was not movie close-up beautiful by Hollywood standards. Nevertheless, this would be called “whitewashing” today. Rivera was crushed by the decision, but such injustices in the translation of shows from stage to screen were and still are standard practice, one of the most famous being Audrey Hepburn taking Julie Andrews’ place as Eliza in the movie version of “My Fair Lady.”