Culture Watch

The Last Bow for 35mm Film

by Thomas Doherty

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its annual candidates for the gold stature on January 24, it came as no surprise that Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist and Martin Scorsese's Hugo dominated the rankings. It will be a surprise if neither grabs top honors when the global extravaganza is broadcast on Feburary 26. Both are excellent films, but I think the reason the motion picture professionals in Hollywood took this particular double bill to heart is that both are about a fading legacy of movie history—35mm projection.  2011 marked a tipping point year for a motion picture revolution that has been unreeling since the changeover from the twentieth to the twenty-first century: the replacement of venerable old celluloid film with high-def digital imagery at your local multiplex. Texas Instruments, the outfit overseeing a lot of the re-tooling in America, estimates that over half of U.S. projection booths have now gone digital with the march to a complete transition as inevitable as a sequel in summertime.

TV's "Smash" is a Winner, But It Needs More History

by Bruce Chadwick

One of the most talked-about new series on television is NBC’s Smash, which premieres tonight at ten. A writer for TV Guide magazine even said that the new series, produced by film wunderkind Steven Spielberg, was being counted on to save the network. There’s been an uproar—and not the good kind of uproar—over the heavily-promoted Smash, because the focus of the series is on the development of a Broadway musical and stories of theater life. Most Americans outside of New York City, critics say, have little interest in the theater world and will not tune in to a series about the development of a stage musical about Marilyn Monroe. But critics should be cheering for Spielberg for using a play about history as the subject of this incredibly hyped and enormously expensive series. Monroe was, and remains, an icon of entertainment history. During her troubled life, though, she became more than that; she became one of the most famous women who ever lived. The story of Smash is her history. Episode 1, out early on Hulu, explains how veteran theater producers stumble upon the idea for a play about Marilyn and start to write songs and choreograph dance numbers for it. They look at clips of her most famous films, like the yacht seduction scene with Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot, discuss her vulnerability and start casting.

"The Convert": a Disturbing, Moving Look at Colonialism in Zimbabwe in the 1890s

by Bruce Chadwick

The Convert McCarter Theater Princeton, N.J. http://www.mccarter.orgThe Convert, Danal Gurira’s new play about Zimbabwe in the 1890s that just opened at Princeton, New Jersey’s McCarter Theater, starts off very slowly. A clever young Bantu native girl, Jekesai, arrives at the home of a bright, determined black Catholic catechist, Chilford, in 1895 as rumblings of a conflict between local tribes and the occupying British roll across the plains of Africa. Chilford has offered to stop her marriage to an elderly local man whom she does not like in return for her enrollment as his religious protégée. This deal was broker by Mai Tamba, Chilford’s servant. Chilford and the girl talk, and talk, and talk.

"Red Tails": World War II’s Tuskegee Airmen Fly Again in Film and on Stage but Much History is Ignored

by Bruce Chadwick

In the opening scene of Red Tails, the new film produced by George Lucas about the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II, hundreds of computerized planes emerge on screen in a pitched air battle. The tension-filled battle sequence ends and the action drifts down to the ground, where member of the all-black and very segregated Tuskegee squadrons complain that because of their color the army will not let them fly combat missions. If they could, they tell each other, they would shoot the Nazis out of the sky from one end of Europe to the other.

Chilling New Play "Oswald" in Los Angeles Tackles the Kennedy Assassination

Oswald: The Actual Interrogation Write Act Repertory Theatre 6128 Yucca Street Hollywood, CA http://www.oswaldtheplay.com Last summer, I strolled into a small New York East Side playhouse and sat down to watch Dennis Richard’s play Oswald,a story about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, one of the most dramatic events in the country’s history.  I expected yet another drama filled with forensics investigations, sound analysis, movie clips and extended wild conspiracy theories, like all the others over the years.Oswald was not like that at all. It was a riveting story about the police investigation of the Kennedy murderer based on the actual notes of Captain Will Fitz, the veteran Dallas police detective who talked to Oswald for most of the two days he was in custody.  The story unfolded from the time of the shooting to the moment Oswald himself was gunned down by Jack Ruby, live, on national television, two days after Kennedy died.

Horatio Alger Theater Festival Explores Ninteenth-Century Rags-to-Riches Theme

by Bruce Chadwick

Horatio Alger Festival Metropolitan Playhouse 220 E. 4th St. New York, N.Y. Barack Obama is a Horatio Alger story.  So too was Abraham Lincoln, Babe Ruth, Martin Luther King Jr., and Clara Barton.The Horatio Alger story is an historical treasure in America, and central to American culture.  The Alger tale, and there were more than a hundred different variations published, was that of a hard-working young man from humble beginnings who avoided trouble, was trusted by all and believed that success came to those who labored hard and exhibited determination and honesty.  If anyone wanted to understand the American Dream, how to obtain it, and be admired by all for doing so, nineteenth-century author Horatio Alger told them.

The Return of Radical Writer Susan Sontag: History Ignored

by Bruce Chadwick

If you don’t remember Susan Sontag’s writings, you must remember the famous photo of her with the shoulder length jet black hair, pensive face and penetrating eyes.  Sontag was a novelist and fiery essayist, who started writing in the 1950s and continued through her death in 2004.  She was, with others, a highly charged critic of much of American life throughout the volatile decades of the ‘60s and ‘70s.You would not know that sitting through Sontag: Reborn, a weak one-woman show starring Moe Angelos that opened last week at the Public Theater as part of New York’s annual Under the Radar Festival, which features experimental new plays.Susan Sontag was a controversial figure, often attacked for her writing.  In 1967, she wrote an essay in the Partisan Review in which she said that “the white race is the cancer of human history” and spent a long time trying to explain it away.  Later, she was accused of plagiarism and had to defend herself against those charges.She traveled to Hanoi during the Vietnam War and wrote extensively about life in  North Vietnam, attracting the same kind of American vitriol that was hurled at actress Jane Fonda when she visited North Vietnam.

Brutal 1973 "Goodbar" Murder Now Subject of Confused Musical

by Bruce Chadwick

The 1973 murder of Roseann Quinn in New York City was one of the most vicious and well-publicized crimes in the city’s history.  By day, Quinn was a meek, mild teacher at St. Joseph’s, a school for deaf children, but by night she was, police said, a sexual predator who grinded her way through bar after bar in search of rough men who treated her badly.  One night things got out of hand and she was brutally slain after being stabbed eighteen times and then raped.The slaying came at the height of an intense crime wave in New York and highlighted the murderous atmosphere of the city when the sun went down.  The press turned the killing, and the subsequent investigation, into a long front page pageant of salacious stories (the suspect in the case hanged him self in jail).  Judith Rossner’s 1975 novel based on the story, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, became a best seller and actress Diane Keaton starred in the popular 1977 movie.Now, nearly forty years after the murder, Looking for Mr. Goodbar has been turned into the shaky Goodbar, a confused and loud—very loud—musical that is part of the annual Under the Radar Festival at the New York Public Theater.  The purpose of the festival is to debut experimental new plays and hope that they work.  Goodbar does not.

The Lost Decade: The 1950s Comes Back with a Roar

by Bruce Chadwick

If you are of a certain age, you remember the 1950s like the decade was yesterday. Ike was president, the Soviets and the U.S. threatened each other daily but never actually did anything, Elvis ruled the music world and the Yankees won most of the World Series. Mom stayed at home cleaning and cooking, cars were huge, and scientists droned on about this odd thing called a computer. The Fifties were a wonderful time in American history. World War II was over, the economy prospered, it seemed like all of your friends owned a home, the I Love Lucy television show was everybody’s favorite, teenaged girls wore poodle skirts, polio was cured and street protests were comparatively few. It was a golden age of innocence. Or was it?

It’s the Holidays and Time for History’s Dark Fairy Tale Champs, Hansel and Gretel

by Bruce Chadwick

Hansel & Gretel Metropolitan Opera Lincoln Center New York, N.Y. If it’s the holiday season, it’s time for a bevy of Nutcrackers and a few productions of the more than one-hundred-year-old opera Hansel & Gretel, a dark and sinister story, written as an historical folk tale, about witches murdering children written back in the 1690s that manages to delight and scare people today. Hansel & Gretel is a story soaked in history that began as a folk tale three hundred years ago in Germany.  The basic story was so popular, and struck so many cultural chords, that Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, two German professors, rewrote it for a collection of fairy tales they published in their first book in 1812.  The Brothers Grimm, two respected academics and historical figures, later published a series of books on fairy tales, such as Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, and Cinderella.  The books sold millions of copies, their fame spread far and wide, and today the Brothers Grimm are considered the fathers of the fairy tale.

"War Horse" a Winner Whether on Stage or Screen

by Bruce Chadwick

Is a story better in a play or on the silver screen?  Which format tells history better?  Which is more memorable?People have been arguing that question since films were invented and history first probed in cinema.  Does the power of the live theater, with actors just a few feet away, carry you away as completely as the power of film and its ability to bring you extraordinary close-ups and sweeping panoramic landscapes, all set to stirring music?  Does your imagination soar farther listening to someone describe something on stage or watching it in a movie?Which makes you shout for joy louder or weep longer?  Which better evokes the story of the past?

Why is Penn State Playing Football in the Midwest Anyway?

by Carl Abbott

On January 2, 2012, Wisconsin and Oregon will face off in the Rose Bowl.  For someone with a sense of the past, that’s right and fitting.  The Rose Bowl has long meant Big Ten + Pac 8/10/12.  It’s been matching teams from the two identifiable regions of Middle West and Pacific Slope for more than a half century.Those of us interested in the cultural geography of the United States, however, have reason to be uneasy.  Neither the Big Ten nor the Pac 12 is what it once was—an athletic conference with a clear regional identity.  And they’re pretty well grounded compared to some of the other conferences.My complaint starts with Penn State, and it has nothing to do with current scandals.  It dates back to 1990, when Penn State—an Eastern school—moved to join the Big Ten athletic conference.

On Lonesome Highways: Haunted by History, an Interview with Writer/Photographer James A. Reeves

by Robin Lindley

So many things crash through your senses while racing down the road: billboards, church signs, memorials to car wreck victims,  sinister factories blowing fire into the night.   All of it is important, all of it seems full of secret meaning.  Clues to something personal or national, it’s hard to say, but the bus depots, shabby motels, title pawn shops, penitentiaries, and blinking neon feel like pieces to a grand puzzle that will shatter as soon as you cut the ignition.—James A. Reeves, The Road to Somewhere: An American MemoirIn 2005, James A. Reeves embarked on an unusual odyssey.  He crisscrossed America alone in rental cars on weekends and during work breaks for the next five years.  He logged over fifty-five thousand miles, traveled to every state in the lower 48 but Maine, collected a dozen speeding tickets, and recorded with pen and camera the reality of America on back roads and superhighways. 

2,400 Years Later, Greek Vixen Lysistrata Rides Again, This Time on the Basketball Court

by Bruce Chadwick

Lysistrata Jones Walter Kerr Theater 219 W. 48th Street New York, NY 2,400 years ago, Greek playwright Aristophanes wrote his classic play about the endless wars between men and women, Lysistrata.  In the comedy, Lysistrata convinces other women who are wives and lovers of soldiers on both sides of the long- standing and fractious Peloponnesian War to withhold sex from their men to get them to end the conflict.  The seemingly task soon gets complicated due to the complexities in the romantic relationships of the couples.The sexual Lysistrata strategy has been employed several times in history by women eager to end conflicts of some kind.  In 2006, the wives of gangsters in Colombia withheld sex to stop a cartel war.  That same year, women in Kenya married to political figures withheld sex to gain political goals.  Just this year, in the Philippines, in a well-publicized crusade, women on both sides of a civil war withheld sex and succeeded in ending the strife.

On Christopher Hitchens, Atheism, and Inanity

by James Livingston

You can’t read an obituary of Christopher Hitchens without being reminded of his best-selling atheism.  And the more you think about it, the more you have to wonder what all the fuss was about.  He died nobly, writing about Chesterton in the very last stages of his struggle with esophogal cancer, and renouncing any last-minute bet on Pascal’s cagy position. Still, what are we to learn from Hitchens’s atheism?  That it’s irrational to believe in God because anything that can be explained by reference to this prime mover can be more easily and elegantly explained by science—or by the application of reason?  That God is not good because religion, unlike science, poisons everything?

A Cold Christmas for this "Christmas Carol"

by Bruce Chadwick

A Christmas Carol Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey Drew University Madison, N.J. In one word, this unique version of Charles Dickens’s classic story A Christmas Carol at the Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey is dark.  Very dark. Playwright Neil Bartlett has adapted Dickens’s A Christmas Carol for the Shakespeare Theater and in doing so has changed its look.  It is still the story of the redemption of Ebeneezer Scrooge and the attempted salvation of lovable little Tiny Tim, but my, does it wallow in darkness. The story about the fiscally-challenged Scrooge, a mean old codger hated by everyone who knows him in mid-nineteenth century London, is familiar to all.  On Christmas Eve, the irascible Scrooge is visited by three ghosts who show him Christmas past, present and future.  The journey with the ghosts (a rather scary trio, by the way) enables him to see the man he was, and lost, and the man, or ogre, he has become.

For Thomas Jefferson and Maria Cosway, It’s Love on the East Side

by Bruce Chadwick

More Between Heaven and EarthAbigail Adams Smith Theater417 E. 61st StreetNew York, N.Y.The Salon/Sanctuary Concerts series in New York typically features classical music from the past, such as La Serenissima: the Music of Venice.  It was something of a surprise—to this reviewer, at least—to learn that on December 17 the series will stage More between Heaven and Earth, a brand-new play with musical interludes wrapped around the romance between Thomas Jefferson and his Parisian love, the painter/musician/composer and very married Maria Cosway.A torrid love affair among the violins?

Bonnie & Clyde Shoot Up America in the Great Depression

by Bruce Chadwick

Bonnie & Clyde Gerald Schoenfeld Theater  236  W. 45th Street New York, N.Y. A few years ago, my wife and I visited the Newsmuseum in Washington, D.C.  We saw an exhibit on crime in America.  The exhibit had memorabilia from all of the major criminals in U.S. history, but the item everybody gathered around and photographed was Bonnie and Clyde’s death car. I was astounded that the pair was so famous. How did that happen? There is a moment shortly into the second act of Bonnie & Clyde, the new musical about those 1930s outlaws, when Clyde Barrow holds up a bank.  He flies into an angry rant about how the banks had foreclosed on the homes of hundreds of thousands of families and taken their land away from them.  He screeches that he had to live in a tent under an overpass for three years and all of that was the bank’s fault.

"J. Edgar" Fails to Deliver the Historical Goods

by Aaron J. Stockham

With the holiday season approaching, many find time to head to their local cinema.  One choice filmgoers have this year is the Clint Eastwood-directed biopic J. Edgar, written by Dustin Lance Black (who also wrote the critically acclaimed Milk) and starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role.  As a historian of the FBI, I was certainly intrigued by what the film got right.  While critics have their own criteria judging a film, I was more interested in the film's portrayal of the facts behind the larger-than-life director of the FBI.  As one might expect of a film about such a complex figure, the Hollywood Hoover tends to simplify and condense his actions.  The film, ultimately, is basically accurate in showing the audience what Hoover did but does not fully explore the motivations behind those actions.

Merry Christmas to All: the American Theater Recycles Films of the Past for Historic Holiday Cheer this Season

by Bruce Chadwick

This holiday season three blockbuster Hollywood films from the past are being turned into stage plays by Santa and his elves to help theaters celebrate Christmas. I’s a first.Over the past few years, a stage version of Frank Capra’s enchanting 1940s Christmas film, It’s A Wonderful Life, with good old George Bailey, of Bailey Building and Loan, and Clarence, the angel in search of his wings, has been produced as It’s A Wonderful Life: The Radio Play.  Along with it, a new stage version of the hit 1954 Bing Crosby/Danny Kaye musical, White Christmas, about a pair of ex-GIs who stage a play to save the bankrupt New England inn of their beloved old general on Christmas Eve, is hitting theaters coast to coast.