People Before Profit blog

Let them eat opera: "The Ghosts of Versailles"

Fri, 27 Feb 2015 14:09:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES - A specter is haunting opera in this epic about revolution by Academy Award-winning composer John Corigliano and librettist William Hoffman. The Ghosts of Versailles is among the most ambitious, lavish, complex operas I've ever experienced, a fantastic fantasy about phantoms, full of meditations on the nature of theater and playwriting and ruminations on revolutionary struggles.

Versailles is the first of a trilogy that LA Opera is presenting this season as part of its "Figaro Unbound: Culture, Power and Revolution at Play" program, which includes Rossini's The Barber of Seville and Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, and related cultural offerings around town. Figaro - a proletarian often in opposition to the aristocrats - is the protagonist in the Rossini and Mozart works. Although baritone Lucas Meachem has an important, imposing presence as Figaro in Versailles, he is not this opera's central character.

The wildly imaginative, inventive plot of Versailles uses Beaumarchais' 1792 play The Guilty Mother as a launching pad, and features Beaumarchais (well-drawn by English baritone Christopher Maltman) writing a play-within-a-play (or rather an opera-within-an-opera) in order to rescue a ghostly Marie Antoinette (soprano Patricia Racette), with whom the dramatist is smitten, from her dreadful fate beneath the Committee of Public Safety's blade.

In the process, characters set in present time tread the boards in the-stage-within-a-stage to partake in the drama taking place in the past, as Corigliano and Hoffman's show moves back and forth in time with the cinematic adeptness of an Alain Resnais New Wave film. Except another layer is added to this tapestry in that some of the dramatis personae depicted are actual historical figures. So within the story Beaumarchais is not only rewriting his own production, but trying to rewrite history, too, in the process. In his quest to save the queen from the Jacobins, Beaumarchais seems, to paraphrase Marx, to believe that: "Playwrights have merely interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it." In the process of endeavoring to do so, he deals with more "notes" than a screenwriter beset by studio execs.

All this is very thought-provoking, heady stuff about the literary creative process, especially as rendered by William Hoffman, whose 1985 As Is - the first play about AIDS on Broadway - scored him an Obie and Drama Desk Award, as well as Tony and Pulitzer nominations.

Much of Act I in this 3-hour-plus production, which has rarely been performed in its entirety since Versailles' 1991 Metropolitan Opera debut, is an ebullient, joyous romp, although it's kicked off on a melancholy note. The weepy ghost of Marie Antoinette and phantoms of King Louis XVI's (Icelandic bass Kristinn Sigmundsson) court gather at her majesty's theater in Versailles to watch Beaumarchais' new play. Meachem's Figaro is a scheming scamp and lovable scoundrel who, among other things, makes monkeys out of the aristocrats, in particular of Count Almaviva (Angelino Joshua Guerrero, a tenor and winner of Plácido Domingo's Operalia 2014 contest), whom our man Figaro serves. Chinese soprano Guanqun Yu plays Rosina, the Countess Almaviva, who is estranged from her husband for committing the same marital indiscretion her husband did.

The highlight of this comical opera buffa's first act takes place at a reception for England's ambassador (South Korean baritone Museop Kim) at the Turkish embassy, presided over by a buffoonish Pasha Suleyman (bass-baritone Philip Cokorinos). In a showstopper, the dancing girl Samira, vivaciously, hilariously portrayed by the one, the only Patti LuPone, arrives borne on an elephant and performs a number that suggests a Bollywood musical choreographed and directed by Busby Berkeley tripping on Purple Owsley. Versailles marks the return of the mezzo-soprano, who won Tonys for Evita and Gypsy, to LA Opera, where LuPone co-starred in Brecht and Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny in 2007.

The scene stealing LuPone's gloriously whimsical pièce de résistance is sure to make ticket buyers happy to be alive, if only to witness such inspired insanity onstage. It alone is worth the price of admission to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Act II, however, veers sharply toward the tragic, as Beaumarchais frantically strives to rewrite history. The production, while remaining very creative, goes from opera buffa to grand opera. Marie Antoinette is swept up in the vortex of the French Revolution, and the production chillingly depicts the Jacobins' Reign of Terror. The guillotine appears, along with many heads stuck on pikes borne by revolutionaries. This critic has always been struck by how art reflects and even predicts the times we live in: Given the recent wave of ISIS beheadings of group and individual hostages, it was a bit disconcerting, if fascinating, to watch as history came alive onstage. (The cartoonish depiction of the Turks was worthy of note, although to be fair most of the characters are caricaturish, including the French monarchs and nobility.)

In any case, Bégearss (tenor Robert Brubaker) is appropriately villainous and duplicitous as an opportunist who exploits the revolution - it's appropriate that his name sounds a bit like "big ass." Tony Award winner Lindo Cho's costumes range from the aristocratic to the plebian to the spectral. The sheer optical opulence of Versailles' eye-popping sets, designed by Alexander Dodge and constructed by CBS Scenic Studios, along with Aaron Rhyne's projections, probably surpass anything I've ever seen staged at the Chandler.

James Conlon makes his longtime dream of presenting a Figaro trilogy come true and alive, vividly conducting Corigliano's good if not great score full of counterpoint. Director Darko Tresnjak pulls the disparate elements together, adroitly deploying his cast of dozens, an expert ensemble with sizzling soloists, on the boards. This opera, barely a quarter century old, points to the direction the form can take, as the medium forges a path in the 21^st century, where cinema, Cirque du Soleil, the Internet, etc., are vital forces.

Lovers of the operatic art should see and hear this tour de force - and take advantage of the opportunity to bask in the presence of the great LuPone. And after seeing Versailles opera lovers will better appreciate why the French revolutionary leader Danton said: "The Marriage of Figaro caused the French Revolution." Let them eat opera!

The Ghosts of Versailles is being performed only once more, on Sunday, March 1 at 2:00 pm at LA Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. For more info: (213) 972-8001; www.laopera.com.

Photo: www.laopera.com

"Birdman," "Turner," "McFarland": Triple-header film review

Fri, 27 Feb 2015 13:50:00 +0000

The Academy Award Best Picture-winning movie, Birdman, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, is a pretentious movie about pretentious people. In fact, the tension between the different characters develops from accusations of pretentiousness against one another. There is the pretentious former movie star who decides to produce and star in a Broadway play that explains all about love, playing off against the Broadway star who admits to being a phony in all things except his stage performances. Suffering from all this pretentiousness are the producer's daughter, girlfriend, and ex-wife, plus the Broadway star's ambitious girlfriend.

Michael Keaton, usually one of the most dynamic of screen characters, plays a delusional and melancholy has-been who once was famous for playing in a series about a comic-book character named Birdman. The inside joke is that Keaton was effective, years ago, in one of the better Batman movies. He even uses his Batman voice. Edward Norton, who usually exploits his excellent ability to play many-layered characters, plays the shallow Broadway star.

The film interrupts the talky scene-by-scene narrative with animated comic book movie scenes, to show how delusional Keaton's character has become.

My movie buddy and I didn't really mind seeing a movie about pretentious people, but we felt that the entire movie was pretentious. Why were we supposed to care about the broken-down movie star, either about his artistic success or about his love life? One of his main decisions has to do with mortgaging his house in Malibu. Should we care what he does with his house in Malibu? If the movie has a message or a point, it is something about how difficult it is for artsy people, and how far they will go, to find some foundation for their continuing pretentiousness. Also features Emma Stone, Naomi Watts, and Zach Galifianakis.

Mr Turner, written and directed by Mike Leigh, isn't about Mr. J.M.W. Turner. It's a 150-minute period piece, but it's not directly about the period in which Turner lived and painted his famous seascapes.

It isn't that Turner wasn't pretty interesting. His dalliances with his housekeeper and his probably bigamous married life were interesting enough. It was quite nice to see actor Timothy Spall interpret the painter's interest in his contemporaries and his devotion to his craft. At one point, he has himself tied in the crow's nest of a sailing ship so he can experience a storm firsthand. His work was sometimes controversial, too. One of his paintings depicted a storm in which seamen on a slave ship are throwing their living cargo overboard!

J.M.W.Turner painted when painting was at its apex. It was the best possible, almost the only, way to reproduce what people saw. During the movie, Turner himself goes to see an early camera - he calls it "the contraption" - and likes it well enough to have a couple of daguerreotypes made. The movie thus puts us on notice that, as far as simple visual reproductions go, painting was starting to slip behind.

I don't think I've ever seen such interesting period settings or costuming. The mid-19th century outfits really stand out. And that brings me to what Mr. Turner is really about: It's in the cinematography, artfully presented by Dick Pope. Pope brings us some of the same sea scenes that Turner painted, landscapes that are breathtaking and, on the big screen, visual impressions that are far beyond what a 19th-century painter, or any painter, might have hoped for.

My movie buddy and I didn't go to see Mr. Turner because we are interested in painting, although those interested in art history would like it. We went because we are interested in movies, and director Mike Leigh has never let us down. He is the master of the best modern art methods today, just as Turner was the master of what was available in visual art in his own time. It's a movie for moviegoers and it's about art. Features Dorothy Atkinson as Turner's faithful housekeeper.

McFarland USA, directed by Niki Caro, at 128 minutes, is more than sports and Kevin Costner. My movie buddy wanted to see it, frankly, because Kevin Costner is in it. She's never missed a Costner film. For my part, I can't remember being disappointed in one. We knew from the trailers that Costner plays yet another over-the-hill sports figure as he did in, for instance, Tin Cup and Bull Durham. We knew from the trailers that he was going to coach a winning cross-country running team. We were happy with those expectations and glad, when the movie was over, to see our expectations fulfilled.

But McFarland USA has quite a bit more to offer. It isn't just an old high-school coach, near the end of his career, who takes on a near-impossible project. It's also a white guy, with no experience in culture clashes and no direct interest in overcoming them, thrown into a different world. McFarland, in central California's agricultural lands, is a town where pickers live. The pickers, including high schoolers, rise before dawn to work in the fields. At school time, they hurry into town. After school, they rush back to the fields.

Hardly any of the boys know anyone who went beyond the ninth grade. Whatever academic ambitious they might have entertained are eroded away from them by hot, sweaty field work. Whatever regard or trust they might have had toward their teachers has long been replaced with deep, bitter cynicism. They call Costner's character, Coach Jim White, "White," or "Blanco." They barely, if at all, listen to his responses.

It's that distrust and cynicism that Coach White, a real guy who carries his own baggage, has to overcome. He also has to deal with his own fear of the strange new culture that he and his family are thrown into.

Of course he succeeds all around. We knew that from the trailers. But how he does it, that's what's especially good and worth a high recommendation, for McFarland USA.

Photo: "Birdman" | AP

Today in African American history: Happy birthday, Fats Domino!

Thu, 26 Feb 2015 13:53:00 +0000

World-renowned performer Antoine "Fats" Domino was born on this date in New Orleans in 1928. Among his best known songs are "Ain't That a Shame," "I'm in Love Again," and "Blueberry Hill."

Domino released five gold (million-copy) records before 1955. He also had 37 Top 40 American hits. His music is based on traditional rhythm and blues ensembles of bass, piano, electric guitar, drums, and saxophone.

Domino was born and raised in New Orleans, from a French Creole background; Louisiana Creole French was his first language. Domino was delivered at home by his midwife grandmother. Like most families in the city's Lower Ninth Ward, Domino's family were new arrivals from Vacherie, Louisiana. His father was a well known violinist, and Domino was inspired to play himself. He eventually learned from his uncle, jazz guitarist Harrison Verrett.

Although the song had earlier been recorded by other singers, Domino's 1956 version of the 1940 Vincent Rose, Al Lewis and Larry Stock song "Blueberry Hill" reached No. 2 in the Top 40, was No. 1 on the R&B charts for 11 weeks, and was his biggest hit. It sold more than 5 million copies worldwide in 1956-57. He released a succession of singles and albums, and appeared in two films released in 1956, Shake, Rattle & Rock! and The Girl Can't Help It.

In the 1980s, Domino decided he would no longer leave New Orleans, having a comfortable income from royalties and a dislike for touring, and claiming he could not get the food that he liked any place else. His induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and an invitation to perform at the White House failed to persuade Domino to make an exception to this policy. He was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987. In 1998, President Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Arts. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 25 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time." By the end of his career, Domino was credited with more charted rock hits than any other classic rock artist except for Elvis Presley.

Domino lived in a mansion in the predominantly working-class Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood. When Hurricane Katrina was approaching New Orleans in August 2005 Domino chose to stay at home with his family. His house was in an area that was heavily flooded. He lost everything, and for a time he was presumed dead.

But in fact Domino was rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter. While work proceeded to gut and repair Domino's home and office, the Domino family resided in the town of Harvey, Louisiana. Many black families needed to flee the devastated city, and never returned.

President George W. Bush made a personal visit and replaced Domino's National Medal of Arts. Record companies also replaced his gold records.

Laissez les bons temps rouler, Fats! Happy birthday!

Photo: Wikipedia (CC)

Spirit Awards for Indies; Academy Awards highlights

Thu, 26 Feb 2015 13:47:00 +0000

SANTA MONICA, Calif. - The 30th Film Independent Spirit Awards on Feb. 21, was held beneath an elaborate tent constructed at Santa Monica Beach. The ceremony and honors "champion the cause of independent film and support a community of artists who embody diversity, innovation and uniqueness of vision" at home and abroad, according to Film Independent's mission statement.

"It's so wonderful to be nominated. It means you've been validated," gushed Oprah Winfrey, who co-produced and co-starred as voter registration activist Annie Lee Cooper in Selma. The civil rights drama was nominated in five Spirit Award categories, including for Best Feature; Ava DuVernay for Best Director; Best Cinematography; Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King for Best Supporting Female; and David Oyelowo, who portrays Dr. King and walked the beachside red carpet near Oprah, for Best Male Lead.

Along these lines, Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski, whose Ida, about a novitiate nun who turns out to be Jewish and uncovers secrets about Nazism and in Poland, won for Best International Film, pointed out in the press room, "This recognition for an independently made black and white film with unknown actors - little miracles happen. They keep us going and encourage others to take risks. This film was a huge risk - it made no commercial sense whatsoever. And politically, too.... So these awards are great protection and encouragement for others."

Gary Michael Walters, who executive produced Whiplash and Nightcrawler - which scored three Spirit nominations (including for Jake Gyllenhaal as Best Male Lead) and won for Best First Feature and Best Screenplay - asserted that in comparison with most other show biz prizes "the Spirit Awards are more about filmmaking than celebrity," honoring "edgier films" that are independently made, as opposed to more commercial big budget productions by Hollywood studios. For example, the Iceland-shot Land Ho! won the John Cassavetes for best feature made for under $500,000.

Echoing this sentiment, Patricia Arquette, Best Supporting Female for Boyhood, said in the press room: "I just knew enough about the business, it's so hard to get financing for a small movie.... The likelihood...was slim to none. So that was what blew my mind.... I knew that nobody had ever done a scripted film before [shot over a 12-year period]. At this moment in film, it's so rare.... [Boyhood] is about the experience of normal human beings; these are not often people we make movies about.... It was so exciting for me as an artist to be part of it.... I turned down a lot of big movies for many years...that I didn't love as a movie...and sometimes it was very difficult, being a single mom at 20. Instead, I was doing independent films, and this is the Independent Film award," said Arquette.

I asked Best First Screenplay winner Justin Simien, "What's the state of race relations since making Dear White People?" "Incrementally better, but not terribly different," the writer/director of the campus racial satire replied in the press room, laughing. "We still got a long way to go. My movie, Selma and other movies like it, trying to push these new ideas and stories and ways of seeing ourselves in the culture, I think it helps."

I asked Ida director Pawlikowski, "What's the difference between Poland's film industry today and under communism?" "The paradox of communism is that it made the film industry flourish," answered the Best International Film winner. "First of all, budgets were available for non-commercial films. Secondly, there was a tension in the air, something to talk about, a lot at stake. It encouraged filmmakers.... The level of filmmaking was very high. Also, people knew audiences are listening, because the media, press, were full of lies and jargon. A good film would be devoured by people.

"Nowadays, you have to vie for attention. Then, if [Andrzej] Wajda, [Krzysztof] Zanussi, [Krzysztof] Kieślowski made a film, documentary, feature, whatever, there was a huge audience waiting for it. The more forbidden they were the more important they became. It was a strange paradox. State funding was also part of the success. The last 25 years of democracy...one has to vie for audiences, look for the lowest common denominator, ape the West. It wasn't clear that audiences were interested in what filmmakers had to say. So that kind of connection between audiences and filmmakers has been lost, up to a point, just like everywhere else," lamented Pawlikowski.

Best Screenplay winner Dan Gilroy, whose Nightcrawler also won the Best First Feature Spirit Award, is about a "maladjusted" freelance local news videographer for whom "capitalism has become his religion. It's a tough religion to follow." Asked by The Progressive "what Nightcrawler said about the American news media and capitalism," Gilroy proclaimed: "It's an indictment of both ultimately. I don't know of a better system than capitalism, but we're living in a time of hypercapitalism, in which...the strong are exploiting the weak.... That's where we are at the moment, it' a dangerous time to be. In terms of journalism it's an indictment to some degree of journalism, certainly.... We're all attracted to some degree to graphic, lurid images and they're very aware of that, it's a very effective formula to sell commercials.... Local news is like watching Kabuki theater.... Lou Bloom [Gyllenhaal's psychopathic character] is going to be running a major multinational corporation in 10 years."

Damien Chazelle, writer/director of Whiplash - the music school drama which snagged nominations for Best Feature and Best Director and won the Spirit Awards for Best Editing and J. K. Simmons for Best Supporting Male - said American "education has its ups and downs. Our movie is about college-level education, and it's a real problem. A whole generation is being deprived of educational opportunities because of student debt. Our film says something about today's youth."

An ebullient Simmons stated in the press room: "There are unfortunate inconsistencies. There are school systems that are suffering greatly and funding is a problem, but not the only problem. There are certainly many, many, many institutions that continue to do a brilliant job.... Having a musical background was huge," in helping Simmons to portray Whiplash's abusive, intense jazz teacher.

Julianne Moore - who previously earned a Golden Globe for her depiction of Sarah Palin in the 2012 HBO movie Game Change and won Best Female Lead Spirit Award for Still Alice - said, "The Alzheimer's community was so incredibly helpful and generous with its time and information. It was pretty extensive research.... I learned a lot. The people living with this disease are amazing, amazing. It's a long process. So I was glad to make a movie about living with something, not about dying.... [Making Still Alice] didn't make me sad; it made me appreciative, grateful for all that I have. This is a movie really not about loss but about love and life and what we value."

Richard Linklater won the Best Director Spirit Award for Boyhood, while Michael Keaton snagged the Best Male Lead trophy for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), which also won for Best Feature. Keaton appeared onstage with co-actors Emma Stone and Zach Galifianakis and co-writer director Alejandro Iñárritu in the press room. (For a complete list of winners see here.) The film about the struggle to stay true to one's own self and pursuing artistic integrity also won four Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Cinematography.

Citizenfour

After snagging the Best Documentary Spirit Award, Citizenfour director Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald got what may have been the biggest applause in the press room for the film about whistleblower Edward Snowden's NSA revelations. I asked: "What is the state of surveillance today?" "I mean, I mean, it's dire," insisted Poitras. "Not only is there mass, indiscriminate surveillance, it's happening on a global level. Also, our government's not telling us what's happening. It's a dire situation. There is some good news: We do see tech companies doing more encryption. We see individuals taking things into their own hands - everybody can use encryption and we don't need to wait for our governments to change policy."

I asked Greenwald, "Is it worse now or better than before the film?" "It's a lot better - just the knowledge people have of the extent to which their privacy is being compromised has revolutionized the way people protect their communications," replied the former Guardian columnist who, along with Poitras, now reports for The Intercept. "Governments around the world are genuinely indignant and taking serious steps to protect the privacy of their citizens' communications. Always, having an informed debate, rather than letting these things work in the darkness is inherently better. And on top of that there are really intangible changes that make it hard to spy on people.... If you go public and shine a light on what they're doing, that actually can be meaningful."

Asked what the various accolades for the Snowden reporting meant for Citizenfour - which at that point included a George Polk Award, Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize, Pulitzer, Progie, and an Academy Award nomination - the poised Poitras said, "We prepared for lots of bad case scenarios; we didn't spend lots of time thinking about good case scenarios.... It's incredible; there were some times when Glenn and I were debating whether we should go back to the U.S." Poitras resides in Berlin, Greenwald in Brazil.

Greenwald added: "It's great because there's a huge debate about what Edward Snowden did and the virtues of defying the government in order to bring transparency. This is a really good commentary on the nobility of doing that, regardless of what you think of the...debate.... [Snowden's] life has become a lot more normalized. He speaks freely at events, he writes columns, he gives interviews, he's become a really important voice in the events he helped galvanize. The recognition that this film has gotten - virtually uniformly positive - is a really positive commentary on what he did. I think it will further his normalization and the realization that he's not a criminal, not a traitor, but he's somebody who believes in democracy and did what we all should do when we're confronted by things so plainly unjust."

2015 Academy Awards: memorable moments

Citizenfour also triumphed in the Best Documentary Oscar category, trumping the awful rightwing propaganda mockumentary Last Days in Vietnam. After Poitras and Greenwald's acceptance speeches the Academy's live telecast's host Neil Patrick Harris quipped: "Edward Snowden could not be here, for some treason." The Academy also rejected another pro-war agitprop movie, American Sniper, which was nominated in a total of six categories, but won only a minor technical Oscar.

This year, the Academy had been criticized for the lack of diversity among the nominees, especially in the acting categories. Harris acknowledged this by opening the show with the joke, "Tonight we honor Hollywood's best and whitest - I mean brightest." The Academy seemed to go out of its way to address these concerns with its choice of presenters, such as Eddie Murphy, and even by focusing on audience members of color, such as actress Octavia Spencer, who'd won a Best Supporting Actress statuette for 2011's The Help.

A number of presenters and awardees made socially conscious speeches, including Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the first African-American president of the Motion Picture Academy, who declared cinema "has a responsibility to protect freedom of expression." During her Best Supporting Actress acceptance speech Boyhood co-star Patricia Arquette made a statement for womanhood: "It's time for us to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women."

In his Best Original Song acceptance speech for "Glory," referencing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, site of the extreme police brutality depicted in Selma, Common stated: "The spirit of this bridge connects the kid from the South Side of Chicago, dreaming of a better life, to those in France standing up for their freedom of expression to the people in Hong Kong protesting for democracy."

Co-writer John Legend added: "Nina Simone said it's an artist's duty to reflect the times in which we live. We wrote this song for a film that was based on events that were 50 years ago but we say that Selma is now, because the struggle for justice is right now. We know that the Voting Rights Act that they fought for 50 years ago is being compromised now in this country today. Right now the struggle for freedom and justice is real. We live in the most incarcerated country in the world. There are more Black men under correctional control today than were under slavery in 1850."

Accepting the Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay Oscar for The Imitation Game, about computer pioneer Alan Turing, who was persecuted because of his homosexuality, despite the fact that he helped win WWII by breaking the Nazis' Enigma code, Graham Moore movingly said: "I tried to commit suicide at 16 and now I'm standing here. I would like for this moment to be for that kid out there who feels like she doesn't fit in anywhere. You do. Stay weird. Stay different, and then when it's your turn and you are standing on this stage please pass the same message along."

Closing the 3.5 hour-plus live broadcast, when Birdman won for Best Picture, Iñárritu declared, about his home country of Mexico and about the United States: "I pray that we can find and build a government that we deserve, and the...generation of immigrants in this country, I just pray that they can be treated...as the ones who came before and built this incredible immigrant nation."

Photo: Birdman's cast from left to right: Emma Stone, Michael Keaton, director/co-writer Alejandro Iñárritu and Zach Galifianakis. Iñárritu also won the Best Director Oscar. Ed Rampell.

“This Land is Your Land”: 75 years and the fight’s still on

Wed, 25 Feb 2015 15:04:00 +0000

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born on Bastille Day, 1912, and some say that revolution was his birthright. Few before him, or since, can lay claim to the mastery of protest music as honestly as Woody. Though he battled the ravages of Huntington's disease in his later years and lived only into middle age, his time remains eternal. And his life story is the stuff legends are built on.

75 years ago, on February 23, 1940, Woody completed work on an acerbic song of fight-back he then sang as "God Blessed America for Me." Later, upon further reflection, Woody shifted its emphasis to include an embrace of the nation's beauty and promise as much as it damned its inequity. "This Land is Your Land" has, through the decades, come to be seen as the ultimate folk revival song, indeed, our second national anthem. A closer examination of it, though, reveals the revolutionary core.

"I have decided long ago that my songs and ballads would not get the hugs and kisses of the capitalistic experts." - Woody Guthrie

The hot, dry plains of Okemah, Oklahoma, bore witness to the birth of Woody Guthrie. The area's spacious straight configurations and windy hills shaped his formative years, spent in the company of the high-lonesome sounds of rural white America, the church and blues music of African American culture, and the customs, dialects and plight of Native Americans. With the introduction of basic guitar, harmonica and mandolin skills, Guthrie dealt with the pains and poverty of his young, tragic life through music.

His mother, Nora Guthrie, shared her gift of voice with young Woody and exposed him to an important repertoire. Sadly, she developed Huntington's symptoms during his childhood, culminating in what Woody perceived as a surrealistic madness, but not before he'd learned the ballads, old-time and popular songs that had sustained her.

As a young man, moved by the early influences and the times about him, Woody began composing new lyrics to traditional music. He referred to this borrowing of familiar tunes as "the folk process." Most of his repertoire can be traced to the lonely melodies that remained with him. But the new songs that grew reflected the hardship and insistent survival of working people. This body of work was social commentary, inspirational and prideful. In this regard, Woody stands as our prototypical protest singer.

Leaving the Dust Bowl

In the 1930s, Guthrie was among the many who climbed out of the western states' disastrous Dust Bowl; he brought with him original songs that catalogued the sights and emotions of the day: "So Long, It's Been Good to Know You," "I'm Blowin' Down This Old Dusty Road," "Talking Dust Bowl Blues," among many more. Once in California, Woody soon learned that it was no land of milk and honey. However, instead of toiling in fruit orchards, he became a radio performer, offering his old-timey and topical music to the southerners who'd migrated to the West Coast. While the station manager tried desperately to hold Woody to the country standards, somewhere in the mix appeared an original called "Mr. Tom Mooney is Free." This 1939 composition told of the recently pardoned labor activist, a cause célèbre in left circles, who'd been wrongly imprisoned for 22 years.

Through radical journalist Ed Robbin, whose own radio program aired just after Woody's, Guthrie was invited to a Communist Party dinner to welcome Mooney home. Backwoods, lanky and unkempt, Woody stood out in sharp contrast to most Party cultural workers - at that time, largely academic poets or modern classical composers. Yet almost immediately Woody walked into the role of "a Communist Joe Hill," that had been called for by Daily Worker columnist Mike Gold months prior.

Actor/activist Will Geer, also based in Los Angeles at the time, saw Woody's potential, and the two began working in tandem at events for the Southern Tenant Farmers Union and other left-wing labor organizations. Several months later, Geer was on Broadway starring in "Tobacco Road" and alerted Woody to the opportunities in New York for progressive artists.

New York City calling

During the winter of 1939-40, Woody made his way across country. This strange odyssey coincided with a terrible winter storm in which Woody initially attempted to drive. After his car broke down, determined Woody made his way to a bus station, but with resources so low he only got as far as Pennsylvania. Stepping off the bus in the midst of a raging white-out, his attempt to walk the highway became an impossible task. Near frozen, Woody was rescued by a forest ranger who put him up for the night and bought him a bus ticket to New York. Surely the irony was not lost on Woody the revolutionist that a member of the "establishment" authority had saved him, preserving the man as well as his future repertory of protest anthems.

Throughout the journey, Woody had continually heard the hit Kate Smith record of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" on juke-boxes and radios, a droning soundtrack. The song's passive sentiment of calling on the blessings of a higher power during the brutal Great Depression agitated him. Woody believed that the nation's ills required some very human activism to evoke change and repair. It occurred to him that this song required a response.

Not long after arriving in New York City, Woody moved into a shabby room in Hanover House, 43^rd Street and 6^th Avenue, near the then aptly-named Hell's Kitchen. He engaged in prolific songwriting each day in this period, performing in Bowery bars for change every evening. But the surging echoes of Kate Smith's flag-waver just wouldn't let up, inspiring his first sketch of "This Land is Your Land," then called "God Blessed America":

This land is your land/This land is my land/

From California/to Staten Island/

From the redwood forest/to the Gulf Stream waters/

God Blessed America for Me.

Reviewing Woody's handwritten lyric, one notes where he eventually scratched out modifications: "Staten Island" wouldn't remain long, soon afterward altered to "New York Island." But the important change of course is in the title, heard at the end of each verse. It's believed this change occurred during the throes of World War II's home front struggle. In addition to the familiar verses most of us sang in grade school or camp, there were two others that indicate Guthrie's defiantly socialist viewpoint. When he ultimately recorded the song (there were three versions he laid to vinyl), he never resurrected the satirical edge. Neither did he record the revolutionary lyrics in most versions. But for what it's worth, Woody's changes on that original manuscript never deleted these radical statements:

Was a big, high wall there/that tried to stop me/

A sign atop it said /'Private Property'/

But on the other side/it didn't say nothing/

That side was made for you and me.

One bright sunny morning/In the shadow of the Steeple/

By the Relief office/I've seen my people/

As they stood hungry/I stood there wonderin' if/

God Blessed America for Me.

Several years later, Woody would comment, "Singing and working and fighting are so close you can't hardly tell where one quits and the other begins." One can assess that his original penchant for populism had grown into revolutionary fervor. Woody's career as a musician was based on the larger needs of our society, even when his own family had to pay the terrible price of his "rambling." Living on various coasts, performing for union meetings or in honor of progressive political candidates, offering songs about the poor in Manhattan and then the construction of Grand Coulee Dam, singing for those wandering out of the South or rallying against Hitler, Woody laid down the foundation for the generation to come. He said, "I learned all I could from the speeches of William Z. Foster, Mother Bloor, Gurley Flynn, Blackie Myers. I heard them all and played my songs on their platforms."

By 1940, Woody joined forces with Pete Seeger in the Almanac Singers. The Almanacs, as a group, joined the Communist Party, part of its New York office's cultural section. Woody's guitar had by then been adorned with the hand-painted epitaph THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS, a slogan which held immense metaphoric power.

In this time he also founded an interracial quartet with Leadbelly, Sonny Terry and Cisco Houston, a veritable super-group he named the Headline Singers. This group unfortunately never recorded. The material must have stood as the height of protest song: Woody named it in opposition to a producer who advised Woody to "stop trying to sing the headlines." Woody told us that all you can write is what you see.

Following service in the Merchant Marines, during which time he struggled against Uncle Sam's segregation of the troops, Woody returned to cultural work. He made a series of records for Folkways including the brilliant concept albums, "Songs for Sacco and Vanzetti" and "Struggle." He also became a columnist for the Daily Worker and created an endless archive of songs, articles, sketches and visions in his down time.

These post-war years found Guthrie relatively stable and living in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn with his wife Marjorie Mazia and their children. But it would not be long before Huntington's disease would drain him of the songs and even some of the fight.

Woody died in 1967, after a slow, painful descent into the illness he'd feared all of his life. But his legacy of empowering a nation through song remains unshakeable.

John Pietaro is a writer, musician and cultural organizer from Brooklyn, N.Y. See his website.

Selma: The real winner of every Oscar in sight

Wed, 25 Feb 2015 14:37:00 +0000

PORT ANGELES, Wash. - We didn't see the Academy Awards on TV because we were at the Deer Park Cinema a few miles from our home. And what film did we go to see? Selma. On the big screen! As far as I am concerned, this film directed by Ava DuVernay should have won every award in sight - best film, best screenplay, best director, best leading actors, best supporting cast (in the thousands), best music, best cinematography.

The film dramatized the blood-soaked struggle to win voting rights for disenfranchised African Americans across the South, a battle focused on the little rural Alabama town of Selma, 34 miles south of the state capital, Montgomery.

There are so many high points - and low points - in this film I can't chose which one is the greatest. There are, of course, the repeated marches, and attempted marches, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Chills went up my spine when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - performed by British actor, David Oyelowo - at a church service in Selma delivers the eulogy for Jimmy Lee Jackson.

Jackson is a quietspoken local youth, an activist in the voting rights struggle shot down by white police officers in a café as he struggled to protect his mother.

Among the emotional high points of the film is the scene at the mortuary in which King and Rev. Ralph David Abernathy console Jackson's 84-year-old father who fights back tears as he views the body of his son.

"Who killed Jimmy Lee Jackson?" King thunders in his eulogy, reciting the list of those guilty of the homicide starting with the cops, Gov. George Wallace, but also including every man and woman who has remained silent as the struggle escalated to win the most basic right in a democracy.

There are powerful scenes of Dr. King meeting with President Lyndon B. Johnson, struggling to convince the President that upholding voting rights is an issue that cannot be postponed. As the mass movement grows in power and militancy, it comes up against Wallace and his white supremacist motto, "Segregation now, segregation forever!"

The youthful John Lewis, an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), throws his full support behind King's strategy of a nonviolent march from Selma to Montgomery to win the voting rights struggle.

Then comes the first march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, when Alabama state troopers beat Lewis almost to death. Lewis is revered today as the "conscience of the nation," serving in the Republican dominated U.S. House, every day denouncing their backward, racist policies.

In the film, King argues persuasively for nonviolent tactics aimed at winning over not only African Americans but also the vast majority of white working people as well. Hundreds of anti-racist white people such as the martyred Viola Liuzzo, join the Selma-Montgomery march.

Selma did win an Oscar for best original song, "Glory." The composers, John Legend and Common, sang it live on stage at the Academy Awards. They were backed up by an African American gospel chorus. Interspersed throughout the song are spoken lines, "That's why Rosa sat on the bus...That's why we walked through Ferguson with our hands up," and predicting that one day the people, of all races, will put "Jim Crow under a bald eagle."

In 2005, I traveled down to Selma to cover the "Bridge Crossing Jubilee." I interviewed the Rev. C.T. Vivian, one of Dr. King's closest co-workers (Corey Reynolds portrays Vivian in the film).

Vivian denounced the Supreme Court's decision, in Dec. 2000, to stop the vote count in Florida, installing George W. Bush in the White House, stripping thousands of African Americans of their voting rights.

This film could not be released at a more timely moment. The racist majority on the U.S. Supreme Court has thrown out the pre-clearance section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the most important enforcement tool of the law signed by Lyndon B. Johnson. Across the nation, the Republican right, heirs to George Wallace, are on the warpath, determined to strip Black and Latino people of their voting rights.

In accepting the Oscar for their song, Common told the crowd, "Recently, John (Legend) and I got to go to Selma and perform it on the same bridge that Martin Luther King walked over. Once a landmark of a divided nation, the spirit of this bridge is now for all people regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or social status. This bridge was built on hope and welded with compassion."

John Legend added, "We wrote this film for events that happened 50 years ago but we say that Selma is NOW. We live in the most incarcerated country in the world. There are more Black men incarcerated today than were in slavery in 1850." (And none of them can exercise their right to vote).

The crowd at the Academy Award ceremony stood and cheered. Somebody said that Selma stole the show. How true.

“Auschwitz”

Wed, 25 Feb 2015 13:39:00 +0000

Author Seymour Joseph writes: I pass this on, and for those of you who haven't seen my poetry collection I include a poem I wrote in 1955, after my visit to Auschwitz.

This ground has kept its secret.

As a sheet covers a corpse so time and grass

have conspired to mask the crimes committed here.

The earthen mouth that devoured the dead

is now green-blanketed with daisy patches.

Yet we know. We know from the rusting

barbed wire fences, the squalid barracks,

the brick wall chipped with bulletholes,

the showers, the ovens, a mountain of shoes:

men's shoes, women's shoes, children's shoes,

work shoes, dress shoes, black, brown, white,

worn and new.

Outside the flowers and sweetened breeze

belie what went before.

Our guide, older than his years, when bidding us goodbye

his eyes welled up with tears

and through his quivering lips he said,

"No more of this, no more."

Photo: Hungarian Jews not selected as laborers were murdered in the gas chambers almost immediately after arrival. Photo from the Auschwitz Album (May 1944). CC BY-SA 3.0 de. Wikimedia Commons.

“Sassy Mamas”: Generational and gender role reversals

Wed, 25 Feb 2015 12:56:00 +0000

Sassy Mamas, by NAACP Image Award-winning playwright Celeste Bedford Walker, is a comedy-drama about three longtime girlfriends in Washington, D.C., who, in the autumns of their lives, find themselves flying solo. Hospital administrator Jo Billie (the indomitable Iona Morris, who also helmed this remount) is recently widowed, while Mary's (Elayn J. Taylor) ambassador husband has broken diplomatic relations with her by throwing Mary to the curb in favor of a younger woman. The never married, career-driven National Security Adviser Wilhelmina (not Condoleezza), played by Honolulu-born actress Denise Dowse, has been too busy pursuing international relations to have a personal relationship. What's a single woman to do?

Prodded by Jo Billie, who appears to be the sassiest of the gal pals, they ponder why it's socially acceptable for a male to have a much younger female mate, and they decide to "flip the script." So, using the advantages of their social status, wealth and position, the upper crust trio seek younger sex partners. In the first act it seems as if Sassy will be a raucous, raunchy farce about "cougars" - or, in this case, "black panthers" - and their, shall we say, young "bucks." But over the course of almost three hours, Walker's two-acter reveals that there's much more to her characters and plot than just the older woman-younger man paradigm.

Complications and hilarity ensue, along with some drama and pathos. Jo Billie, portrayed by the youngest and sexiest of the three actresses, acquires a boy toy with whom the businesswoman signs a contract for his sexual services (paging Ms. E. L. James!). LaDonte (Jah Shams) and Jo Billie have an especially high-larious scene involving some hanky-spanky role playing, with the impish Morris wearing a sort of "I Dream of Jeannie" costume. This sidesplitting sequence is worth the price of admission alone, in a play that has much more to offer as well.

Veering from the comic to the dramatic, Shams does a good job revealing that this "stud," who is about half Jo Billie's age, arrives on the scene with a back story and baggage of his own. Jo Billie discovers that playing a conventional male role (which may be why the dramatist gave this character a sort-of man's name) isn't all it's cracked up to be.

The play also follows Wilhelmina and Mary, who - acting under the influence (of Jo Billie, that is, although lots of wine, etc., is guzzled during the course of the action) - become involved and enraptured with their own younger beaus, ex-pro athlete Wesley (portrayed by Derek Shaun, who has a Bill Duke type vibe) and gardener Colby (Kareem Grimes).

The Sassy character who evolves the most is Mary, and this is insightfully expressed through, of all things, her hair. At first, the ambassador's wife has straightened hair but by the end of Act II Mary is sporting dreads (which Ms. Taylor told this reviewer is actually her own natural hair). Not only does this symbolize the straitlaced Mary sexually loosening up and becoming, quite literally, kinkier, but it signifies her returning, again literally, to her African roots.

In his autobiography, Malcolm X (assassinated 50 years ago this month) wrote about the painful process of "conking" hair: "This was my first really big step toward self-degradation: when I endured all of that pain, literally burning my flesh to have it look like a white man's hair. I had joined that multitude of Negro men and women in America who are brainwashed into believing that the black people are 'inferior' - and white people 'superior' - that they will even violate and mutilate their God-created bodies to try to look 'pretty' by white standards." Kudos to Taylor and makeup and hair designer Gayla Belay for cleverly expressing character through follicles.

Sassy's set, designed by Jeff Murray, is also clever as it embodies three separate apartments under one roof, each with its own ambiance. The ensemble and action are skillfully directed by co-star Morris, a force of nature who of course is show biz royalty (her Dad Greg co-starred in the 1960s Mission Impossible TV series). All of the actresses are veterans with credits stretching longer than a giraffe's neck. Walker's lengthy script works OK as is, but a skillful editor could probably cut it by an hour, which would make it more accessible to theatergoers.

Indeed, Sassy Mamas could be adapted with the same cast for television, perhaps as a sitcom or even as an hour-long weekly comedy-drama; perhaps they could call it "How to Get Away with Mamas?" In any case, this production seems to be more about generational and gender issues than ethnicity, and probes some eyebrow-raising topics - with lots of laughs and a few tears along the way.

Sassy Mamas plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 pm and on Sundays at 2:00 pm through March 29 at Theatre Theater, 5041 Pico Blvd., Los Angeles 90019. For info: (323) 571-3232; www.facebook.com/sassymamasplay. For tickets: http://sassymamas.brownpapertickets.com/.

Lead Belly discography released

Mon, 23 Feb 2015 10:26:00 +0000

Folkways, the folks from the Smithsonian, releases a new five-disk collection of the songs recorded by Huddie William Ledbetter (1888-1949) on Feb. 24, during Black History Month. It comes with a beautiful coffee-table size book of 139 pages with excellent photos of that "hard man" throughout. Can any folk music aficionado resist? They can pre-order here.

At least one song, "Bellevue Hospital Blues," was previously unreleased. All the disks seem to have excellent sound quality, which is remarkable considering the various conditions under which they were recorded.

The facts about the life of Huddie Ledbetter, as well as they can be ascertained, are in the book. The Lead Belly legends are also explored. Is it really true that the long scar across his throat came from a knife fight? Did he really sing his way out of Southern prisons twice? Did he really travel and sing with the legendary Blind Lemon Jefferson?

Putting aside the background points, anybody with ears will enjoy these masterful performances of "Good Night Irene," "Bourgeois Blues," "Midnight Special," and the many other songs that Lead Belly made famous. His 12-string blues guitar and painfully strong baritone force reality into every line about the sufferings of African Americans in the South, whether they were merely in love or chained together in hot sweaty road gangs.

The book doesn't say a lot about Lead Belly's own politics, but he sang for working people and helped raise money for working peoples' causes. Friends of George Myers, longtime trade union leader of the Communist Party, know that Lead Belly performed in a Myers-organized fundraiser in the "bourgeois town" of Washington, D.C.

Lead Belly fans might also be surprised at the number of whimsical children's songs he wrote and sang. During his final years in New York City, his home on 10th Avenue was a favorite stop-off for young relatives and children of the area.

Lead Belly may be gone, and there will never be another like him, but Folkways has made it possible for us to continue benefiting from interacting with him through music and study.

Photo: Wikipedia (CC)

Racism isn't new in Texas

Fri, 20 Feb 2015 13:02:00 +0000

When federal judge Andrew S. Hanen, an Anglo in Brownsville, Texas, ruled on Feb. 17 that four million undocumented workers should give up the hopes inspired by President Obama's plan to ease up on deportations, he was following a long precedent from his area. Racism in Brownsville set off fabled historical events in 1859 that are explored in Mexican author Carmen Boullosa's new book.

The historical events were the "Cortina Wars," in which ranchero Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, whose family had owned all the land on which Brownsville sat, brought his ragtag army from Monterrey, just across the Rio Grande, to invade the city, twice! Boullosa's book doesn't claim historical accuracy, but uses an approach similar to "magical realism" to explore the people and the times.

In her version, Juan Nepomuceno is the most fabulous man of the area. He's accurate with his lasso, sure on his horse, and fast with his gun. Women swoon over him, every Mexican American man tries to emulate him, and every Anglo man despises him vehemently. After Nepomuceno has a racist encounter with a deputy sheriff, who was quick with his mouth but not so much with his hands, this great symbol of the rancheros has to high-tail it across the Rio Bravo.

To be honest, Boullosa says that most people don't care one way or another. But everyone who does care takes cover or takes sides.

The reason for the strong reaction comes from the simple facts the book explains about the area. Because they could not completely overcome the Comanches, the Mexican government had allowed a certain number of Anglos to settle in their northern region. Of course, a lot more Anglos, legal or not, poured in, and soon they carried out the land-grab known on this side of the Rio Grande as the Texas Revolution. They claimed all the land extending southward to the Nueces River.

After Texas joined the United States, and when the Anglos wanted to grab more Mexican land, they claimed that the actual border was much farther south, at the Rio Bravo, which they called the Rio Grande. After provoking and winning the war, of course, they took not only the new southern border of Texas but also New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and California!

The story of how the rancheros were driven out over the following 70 or so years is well documented. Carmen Boullosa has done us a great service, and provided us a marvelously good read, by speculating how real people might have reacted during the entire awful bloody period.

"Texas: The Great Theft"

Carmen Boullosa

Deep Vellum Publishing, 2013

Today in African American history: A double birthday

Fri, 20 Feb 2015 11:20:00 +0000

Sir Sidney Poitier, Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE), was born in Miami, Fla., on February 20, 1927, of Bahamian parentage. He is a world-renowned actor, film director, author and diplomat. He acted in the first production of A Raisin in the Sun on Broadway in 1959, and later starred in the film version released in 1961.

In 1964,Poitier became the first black person to win an Academy Award for Best Actor, for his role in Lilies of the Field. In 1967 he starred in three successful films, all of which deal with issues involving race: To Sir, with Love; In the Heat of the Night; and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, making him the top box-office star of that year. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Poitier among the 25 Greatest Male Stars of All Time.

Poitier has directed a number of popular movies. In 2002, Poitier was chosen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive an Honorary Award "in recognition of his remarkable accomplishments as an artist and as a human being." Since 1997, he has been the Bahamian ambassador to Japan. On August 12, 2009, Sidney Poitier was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S., by President Obama.

Also born February 20, one decade later in 1937, in Chillicothe, Ohio, Nancy Wilson is a singer with more than 70 albums, and three Grammy Awards. She sings blues, jazz, cabaret, pop, and standards, but prefers to be known as a "song stylist." Her first Grammy, in 1964, was for the album How Glad I Am. Among her many other recognitions, she received an award from the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in 1993; the NAACP Image Award - Hall of Fame Award in 1998, and was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1999. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (at 6541 Hollywood Blvd.) Wilson has a street named after her in her hometown of Chillicothe. She co-founded the Nancy Wilson Foundation, which exposes inner-city children to the country. Wilson was a major figure in civil rights marches of the 1960s.

Photo: Adapted from Wikipedia (CC)

West Coast premiere of "Hellman v. McCarthy"

Fri, 20 Feb 2015 11:10:00 +0000

BEVERLY HILLS, Ca. - As a Hollywood Blacklist historian, I've eagerly looked forward to seeing the fact-based Hellman v. McCarthy. Its West Coast premiere did not disappoint. Playwright Brian Richard Mori's vivid, fast moving account of the clash of the literary titans - between lefty lionesses Lillian Hellman (Flora Plumb) and Mary McCarthy (Marcia Rodd) after the latter allegedly defamed the former on host Dick Cavett's (Dick Cavett) PBS TV talk show in 1979 - is exceptionally well constructed and acted.

A New Orleans-born Jew, Hellman was a first lady of American letters as a playwright (The Children's Hour, The Little Foxes and the "prematurely" antifascist Watch on the Rhine), memoirist (the controversial Pentimento, from whence the 1977 film Julia was derived), novelist and screenwriter. In addition to film adaptations of her plays she also wrote 1943's The North Star, about Soviets battling Nazi invaders - which Ayn Rand denounced to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) because its peasants smiled too much - and 1966's The Chase, directed by Arthur Penn, starring Marlon Brando, Robert Redford and Jane Fonda.

She was also, as she says in Hellman v. McCarthy, "a Marxist," who supported the Spanish Republic (according to IMDB.com she had a hand in writing the classic 1937 documentary The Spanish Earth), defended the USSR, and defied HUAC during the Blacklist period. While others cravenly caved when testifying before HUAC, Hellman courageously stood up to the witch-hunters, boldly proclaiming: "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashion." She went on to write a memoir of the Red Scare inquisition era, 1976's Scoundrel Time.

Essayist, journalist and novelist Mary McCarthy was less successful than Hellman. Her most popular work - believed to be semi-autobiographical - was the 1963 novel The Group, about a set of Vassar graduates, class of '33, which was on the New York Times bestseller list for two years. This was the year McCarthy herself graduated, and like her character Polly Andrews, she supported the ousted Bolshevik leader and apostle of world revolution, Leon Trotsky. The 1966 screen adaptation directed by Sidney Lumet co-starred Candice Bergen, with Shirley Knight playing Polly.

The Trotsky-Stalin split forms a political subtext for Hellman v. McCarthy and the longtime dispute between the writers, with the latter attacking the former as a "Stalinist." But it was McCarthy's statement about Hellman on Cavett's chat show that "every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'" that propelled the longtime animus between the two lefty writers out of the salons and into the courtrooms.

Hellman, by then near the end of her career and life, took great umbrage and sued McCarthy for defamation of character - and $2.5 million. Although McCarthy's remark may have been an offhanded wisecrack - prompted, Cavett explained, by the talk show host's attempt to steer his guest toward discussing an up-and-coming writer - the author of The Group and perhaps Hellman herself ended up ruing the legal tangle the court case ensnared the two literati in for more or less the rest of their lives.

Hellman was criticized (not just by McCarthy) for allegedly fictionalizing the antifascist piece that became Fred Zinneman's feature Julia, starring Jane Fonda as Hellman, with Oscars going to Vanessa Redgrave as the title character, Jason Robards as Dashiell Hammett and Alvin Sargent for Best Writing of a Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, plus eight other Academy Award nominations, including for Fonda and Best Picture. But even if Hellman did fudge the facts in her Pentimento memoir (and who really knows?), this hardly means, as the snarky McCarthy accused on television, that "every word she wr[ote] is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'"

Dishonesty always a timely topic

Hellman's purported "dishonesty" is timely to consider at this moment, as Brian Williams steps down from his NBC News anchorman's perch for apparently lying and/or inaccurately remembering an Iraq War helicopter shooting incident. Did anybody notice that Williams' initial "explanation" was extremely self serving, and delivered in a way to burnish his own soiled reputation, the worst rationalization since Newt Gingrich likewise used patriotism to justify his adultery? (Hey, here's an idea: Perhaps Williams, the dubious, embedded celebrity "real" newsman, and the truthtelling, fake newsman Jon Stewart, the outgoing Daily Show anchor, should switch places?)

Williams' willing suspension of disbelief has more to do with inflation - rather than defamation - of character. It is more to the point to contemplate the lawsuit threatened by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo against Fox "News" after allegations were made on Rupert Murdoch's network that areas of the City of Lights were "no-go zones" taboo for non-Muslims.

When it was lodged, many felt Hellman's lawsuit against McCarthy was way over the top and constituted a threat to free speech. However, as a journalist who set a First Amendment precedent in the U.S. federal courts in 1989 by defeating a libel suit against him that was thrown out of court, this reporter knows a thing or two about the subject. The facts of the matter are that the First Amendment does not protect libel, and that libel, slander and defamation of character are not constitutionally protected forms of speech. Indeed, if any enterprising pro bono barrister out there in lawyer-land would like to sue Fox "News" on the grounds that its "fair and balanced" motto is a blatant, outright lie and a form of false advertising, etc., I'd happily sign on as plaintiff. (Any takers? Let's become millionaires! We couldn't lose this no-brainer suit.)

So if Lillian Hellman, toward the end of her days, would not defend her honor, who would? Of course, unlike the defrocked anchorman Williams, Hellman wasn't generally viewed as a journalist, and was best known as a playwright (although if she did indeed knowingly falsify things in her memoirs, that is indeed troublesome). In any case, Flora Plumb portrays Hellman with much aplomb, while Marcia Rodd likewise does a stellar job in bringing the embattled Mary McCarthy back to life in this drama about a libel suit that arguably killed both of these aging storytellers.

It was also a treat to see Dick Cavett in the flesh, after watching him on ABC-TV from 1968-1974. It boggles the mind to think of the years of research that went into his preparing for the role of playing himself - much more time than it took Richard Linklater to film Boyhood. In any case, my half-Aunt Caryl's uncle was an ABC censor, who used to tell me as a teenager that whenever any of the Fondas appeared on The Dick Cavett Show he'd phone home to tell his wife that he'd be home late. In a post-play Q&A that Cavett held with the audience he agreed that Peter Fonda's appearances did indeed require lots of bleeping but, alas, could not recall the censor's name.

Playwright Mori does a superb job delineating these characters, and it's sheer brilliance to introduce Hellman while she's playing Scrabble: What pithier way to stress she was a wordsmith? Mori explained in an email: "It was a bit of artistic license, but Hellman was an avid Scrabble player - and, for that matter, cheat. Sources include Rosemary Mahoney's wonderful A Likely Story, One Summer with Lillian Hellman; at least two of her biographies; and, I believe, Alexandra Styron's memoir about her father [William Styron]."

Howard Storm's direction is a perfect storm with a cinematic panache: Jeff Rack's set indelibly lends itself to suggesting a split screen, with great effect.

This one-act play transplanted from Off-Broadway to Beverly Hills may not be everyone's cup of hemlock. But it's absolutely ideal for those interested in the characters and subjects depicted: The authors, Cavett himself, courtroom dramas, Lillian's love affair with Dash, the Old Left, the Hollywood Blacklist, freedom of expression, etc. Somehow, to paraphrase the lady who became a legend in her own time, Mori, and company have managed to cut the content to fit this year's passion.

Hellman v. McCarthy is being performed Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8:00 pm, 2:00 pm on Saturday, Feb. 21, and Sundays at 2:00 pm through Feb. 28 in Theatre 40 in the Reuben Cordova Theatre, 241 S. Moreno Dr., Beverly Hills, CA 90212. This is on the campus of Beverly Hills High School; there is free parking in a garage beneath the theater (follow the "Event" signs). For info: (310) 364-3606; www.theatre40.org.

“The Night Alive”: Dubliners wish upon a star

Thu, 19 Feb 2015 14:30:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES - A poster from the 1963 movie The Great Escape is a visual cue that provides a vital clue and key to what's going on in Irish playwright Conor McPherson's The Night Alive. This one-acter, enjoying its West Coast premiere at the Geffen Playhouse, is essentially about five Dubliners who live marginal lives. The onstage action takes place in the untidy "apartment" - without so much as a refrigerator - that middle-aged Tommy (Irish-born Paul Vincent O'Connor) rents from an older guardian of sorts named Maurice (Denis Arndt), who insists on calling it a mere "room" in his Edwardian house. Doc (Dan Donohue) is a 30-ish, dimwitted hanger-on and laborer who drifts between sleeping at his sister's home, Tommy's place, and a van.

Enter into the pecking order - and into the drab, lonely lives of these three solo men - aimless Aimee (Irish actress Fiona O'Shaughnessy), a 20-something woman with a murky past whom Tommy rides to the rescue of on a white horse, saving this total stranger from a dire predicament. In offering her refuge, he turns the three men's presumably celibate lives upside down. In the process, Tommy believes he comes alive and is being given a second chance at life.

Although, as said, Alive is a one-act play, what could pass for, more or less, Act I, is quite low key and uneventful - some might even consider it talky and dull. But things really pick up when Kenneth (Irish actor Peter O'Meara, a Trinity College grad who joined the Abbey Theatre Dublin) enters, stage right, from out of nowhere as a kind of bogeyman, turning things topsy-turvy as we learn more about who Aimee really is, and why she needed sanctuary.

This play is essentially about fringe characters yearning to get away from their boring existences. In particular, Tommy is a study in male menopause and mid-life crisis. Separated from his wife and children, somehow eking out a living by tending to "bits and pieces," residing in Maurice's room/apartment, he believes Aimee presents him with the opportunity to break free of the mundane, ho-hum routine of his sexless day-to-day monotony. His legs aren't so much limbs as they are stumps; clearly, this aging, balding man has seen better days. (But maybe not much better.) The details of his and Aimee's sex life, or what passes for it, are pretty grim - listen closely (there's a good joke about what causes "repetitive strain injury"). But it's better than nothing. Doc offhandedly confesses that he's impotent, while the forlorn Maurice mourns his deceased wife.

Tommy constructs a wild plan to flee Ireland to start anew with Aimee in a place I for one have never before heard referred to as a haven for shattered souls seeking a second lease on life. (Really?) Be that as it may, the aforementioned Great Escape poster tacked to Tommy's wall is a pop culture reference to the inner meaning of McPherson's drama.

In that John Sturges World War II classic, Allied POWs plot to escape from a Nazi prison camp. As the "Cooler King," Steve McQueen (the actor, not the director) nears the border with neutral Switzerland, desperately trying to jump the barbwire fence on a motorcycle in a scene that encompasses humans' existential struggles for freedom. This sequence is indelibly etched in the mind's eye of anyone who has ever seen it onscreen, and no one can fail to root for McQueen and his valiant effort to escape from the Nazis to freedom in democratic Switzerland, so near yet so far across the barbed wire.

For Tommy, Aimee is arguably his motorcycle. Will he jump the barbed wire to find freedom?

Alive's able, ensemble acting is well directed by Randall Arney, who previously helmed American Buffalo at the Geffen. This seems appropriate, as Alive's down-and-out characters brought to mind David Mamet's 1975 Buffalo characters. (The interactions between Tommy and Doc are also reminiscent of the relationship between George and Lenny in John Steinbeck's heartbreaking Of Mice and Men.) Takeshi Kata's set, with its high ceiling, strikes just the right sordid note of dinginess. Daniel Ionazzi's lighting comes, well, alive in the mystical grand finale.

Peter O'Meara's Wolfman-like Kenneth puts the "fear" into McPherson's drama, which takes unexpected turns. O'Shaughnessy, who has played the title role in Oscar Wilde's Salome at the Gate Theatre Dublin, isn't particularly sexy as Aimee. But perhaps that's precisely the point: O'Connor invests Tommy with so much desperation and sexual longing that any female in her twenties seems to have the erotic powers of an Aphrodite.

In 2014, Conor McPherson adapted a new version of The Dance of Death for A Noise Within's L.A. production of Swedish playwright August Strindberg's 1900 play. The much-touted and awarded Dublin-born McPherson, who previously wrote The Weir, is in the tradition of those great Gaelic scribes, such as Sean O'Casey and James Joyce, and the Welsh Dylan Thomas. McPherson may perpetuate that image of the Irish as storytellers by making the dopey Doc a writer who scribbles into his notebook. But thankfully, although there is some drinking in Alive, McPherson eschews the stereotype of the Irish as drunks. The Geffen's production of this 2013 play, with its magical realist, enigmatic ending that had theatergoers scratching their noggins (again, I refer you to the Great Escape poster and another pop cultural signpost, a rendition of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On"), gives Angeleno audiences another opportunity to sample this bard's vision.

The Night Alive plays through March 15 on Tuesdays through Fridays at 8:00 pm, Saturdays 3:00 pm and 8:00 pm, and Sundays at 2:00 pm and 7:00 pm at the Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., L.A. 90024. For info: www.geffenplayhouse.com or (310) 208-5454.

Today in African American history: Dr. Dre turns 50

Wed, 18 Feb 2015 13:19:00 +0000

Dr. Dre, record producer and Grammy-winning rapper, born Andre Romelle Young in Compton, Calif., in 1965, turns 50 today.

Dr. Dre founded Aftermath Entertainment and Beats Electronics. He was previously the co-owner of, and an artist on, Death Row Records. He has produced albums for and overseen the careers of many rappers, including Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Xzibit, 50 Cent, The Game, and Kendrick Lamar. He was a key figure in the popularization of West Coast G-funk, a style of rap music characterized as synthesizer-based with slow, heavy beats. In 2014, Dr. Dre was ranked by Forbes magazine as the second richest figure in the American hip hop scene, with a net worth of $550 million. But Apple subsequently paid $3 billion last year to Dr. Dre for his Beats company.

Dre's career exemplifies the way explicit lyrics in rap detail the violence of street life. His 1992 solo debut The Chronic, released under Death Row Records, led him to become one of the best-selling American performing artists of 1993 and to win a Grammy Award for the single "Let Me Ride." That same year he produced Snoop Dogg's quadruple platinum debut Doggystyle.

In 1996, he established his own label, Aftermath Entertainment. His albums have won him six Grammy Awards, including Producer of the Year. Dr. Dre has also had acting roles in a number of movies. Rolling Stone ranked Dre at 56 on their list of "100 Greatest Artists of All-Time."

As recently reported in the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Dre sold his home in the Hollywood Hills, with 9,696 square feet of living space, neighboring the homes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Keanu Reeves, for $32 million. Dr. Dre also owns a four-acre Brentwood estate, another home in Malibu, and additional property for his horses.

Adapted from Wikipedia and other sources.

Photo: Wikipedia (CC)

“Field of Honor”: A movie you might have missed

Fri, 13 Feb 2015 14:12:00 +0000

The film Field of Honor puts the viewer in mind of the adage, "It's a rich man's war and a poor man's fight."

The setting for this 1987 film, directed by Jean-Pierre Denis, is the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The picture opens with a view of the French countryside, but all is not well in this pastoral setting. We are introduced to a family of tenant farmers lamenting the loss of their valuable ox. The character Pierre, convincingly played by actor Cris Campion, is a young woodcutter who comes to the rescue of his family by selling the only asset he has, his lucky draft lottery number. Possessing this number, he will never be called up for five years' service in the army. He has the legal right, however, to sell this number, and does so, to the scion of the rich family that owns the land on which his family labors.

Once in uniform, Pierre and his compatriots exhibit a casual camaraderie, comparing how much money they sold their draft numbers for. Their light-hearted banter will shortly be blown to pieces on the field of battle against superior Prussian forces.

Field of Honor film presents a very well directed scene of close-quarter combat once the armies meet for the first time. In the aftermath of the cannon fire and bayonet charges, Pierre wanders from the battlefield, concussed and slightly wounded. Pierre tells himself that he is searching the countryside for the remnants of his regiment, but he continues to shed more of his uniform and gear as he proceeds. Eventually he comes across a young boy, hiding in an abandoned farmhouse. The child is Alsatian, so there is a bit of a language barrier, but they take to each other and continue their journey together. When night falls, Pierre is seriously wounded by a stray bullet from a nearby skirmish.

Back in Pierre's home town the casualty lists begin to arrive, and the villagers react quite properly with the remark, "All the Napoleons do is take our sons." The film also illustrates another unfortunate symptom of war time, a feverish public that turns on itself, inspired by propaganda to search out the disloyal and spies.

The ending of the film is a perfect reminder that the true instincts of mankind are not warfare and combat, but home, family, and peace. This is a timely message as the master class around the world today continues to drive people toward war with saber-rattling rhetoric and imperialist provocations.

Photo: Wikipedia (CC)

"The Water Engine" features wonderful performances

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 13:52:00 +0000

The Water Engine opens in the red glow of flames from a factory furnace, while workers operate drill presses and grinding wheels in a shower of sparks. Among these laborers we find veteran character actor William H. Macy, who plays a brilliant, if awkward and unassuming machinist.

The setting for this 1992 film is Chicago, and the time is 1934, where the World's Fair is in full swing. The fair, hailing "A Century of Progress," attracts patrons to the displays of marvels, but not far away, in a discreet lab, our hero constructs an engine that runs on tap water.

The script comes from the pen of David Mamet, and the dialogue often reflects the tense bursts associated with his style. It also features wonderful performances from a number of reliable players.

John Mahoney is excellent as a skeptical, bemused, and later nervous, patent attorney. Joe Mantegna is even better as a highly polished corrupt slug who promptly informs our hero that a good case could be made that the machine he created actually belongs to the company where he is employed, since it was built with some tools he pinched from the workplace, and thus he informs the inventor that he is just as likely to end up in jail as he is with a patent to a world-changing device.

As he trudges between his factory job, his hand-built laboratory, and his small apartment that he shares with a sister recently blinded in an industrial accident, Macy alternately passes a billboard touting the American ideal and its proclaimed "world's highest standard of living," and a speakers platform. The platform plays host to a parade of men and women who harangue small crowds with vaguely socialist speeches.

The film quickly turns dark, as those who wish to buy, steal or destroy the device close in, and our humble machinist casts about, looking to save his invention as well as his skin.

The Water Engine properly gives the lie to the capitalist myth that hard work and ingenuity will be rewarded with riches and fame. The truth is that for every innovator who strikes it rich, there are a legion of dreamers and inventors who wind up swindled, heartbroken, and left on the side of the road by the monopolists who control not only the economy, politics, press, and judiciary as well.

Switzerland’s Best Foreign Film Oscar submission goes full circle

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 13:46:00 +0000

Swiss co-writer/director Stefan Haupt's The Circle (Der Kreis) is a strong fact-based drama about the struggle for gay rights in Switzerland. Well made and heartfelt, it is Switzerland's official submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards and winner of the Panorama Audience Award at 2014's Berlin International Film Festival, the Teddy Award at 2014's Berlin International Film Festival, and of the Grand Jury Award at 2014's Outfest Los Angeles.

The film's title refers to an actual gay self-help organization that arose in 1930s Zurich, founded by the renowned St. Gallen-born actor Karl Meir (who used the pseudonym "Rolf" and is portrayed onscreen by an avuncular Stephan Witschi). The group's activities included publishing a multi-lingual magazine called "The Circle" and operating a gay bar which provided a regular meeting place and venue for annual costume balls which took place during the 1950s (when most of the story is set), attended by up to 800 homosexuals who traveled from all around Europe to dress up and dance.

(This pub is now the site of Neumarkt Theater, where live stage plays are currently presented. Nearby is Zurich's ancient Jewish section plus a historical plaque commemorating the hundreds of Swiss women who went to Spain in the 1930s to fight against Franco and fascism and for democracy and liberty during the Spanish Civil War. Who knew? Well now you do.)

At the heart of The Circle is a true-life love story between teacher Ernest Ostertag (Matthias Hungerbühler) and cross dressing performer Robi Rapp (Sven Schelker). Throughout Haupt's film the narrative is intercut (or some might say "disrupted") by contemporary interviews with the actual Ostertag and Rapp, talking heads who are now elderly gentlemen. The departure from feature format to documentary style was due to financial constraints, according to helmer Haupt. Some may find Haupt's mixture of techniques to be jarring, while other viewers will presumably think it enhances this gay liberation saga's veracity. In terms of film form, perhaps the hybrid Circle is closest to the docudrama. In any case, it has qualified for Oscar consideration.

We see the organization experiencing its ups and downs, as do Ostertag and Rapp and their relationship. The long-term romance of the educator and drag artist, through thick and thin, appears to be admirable and is reminiscent of the love between John Lithgow and Alfred Molina's characters in the recent feature Love is Strange, as well as 1978's La Cage aux Folles and its 1996 Hollywood version The Birdcage, starring Robin Williams, Nathan Lane, and Gene Hackman.

The Circle also calls to mind a great pro-gay play presented in 2011 at L.A.'s Blank Theatre called "The Temperamentals." In that drama American gay rights pioneer Harry Hay is also shown to have been a card-carrying, dues-paying Communist Party member. Similarly, in The Circle, motorcycle-riding Felix (played by Anatole Taubman, who has matinee idol looks) is a hothead pushing for equality and a Marxist, whose confrontational tactics clash with those of the more moderate, older Rolf. (In an interview Haupt told this reviewer that Felix is actually a fictitious character. Haupt added that although he himself is not gay, his brother is, and went on to say that all people, straight and homosexual, should support equal rights for everybody, irrespective of sexual preferences.)

In 2012 Haupt directed the documentary Sagrada: The Mystery of Creation, about architect Antoni Gaudí's iconic, unfinished late 19th-century Barcelona church. His films have been awarded prizes, including the Swiss Film Award for Best Picture, in addition to dozens of nominations and accolades across Europe. Haupt's next feature film project is Finsteres Glück (Dark Bliss), based on Lukas Hartmann's eponymous novel. Haupt's oeuvre demonstrates that Swiss cinema is a filmic force to be reckoned with on the global scene.

The Circle was "the mother of European gay organizations." Why did it thrive for decades in Switzerland? Because this Alpine nation is a bastion of neutrality and democracy that was never conquered by Hitler's hordes. Of course, that doesn't mean this group didn't run into its fair share of opposition.

What Ostertag and Rapp went on to do later in life set a precedent in Swiss history (no spoiler here). Both of these gay icons attended a party in their and the film's honor at Swiss Consul-General Jean-François Lichtenstern's residence in Los Angeles. Of course the grounds include a swimming pool and guesthouse, and during the crowded luncheon Rapp fell through a plate of glass that broke into a thousand pieces. Nevertheless, with much aplomb he arose and emerged without a scratch. Now in his 80s, Robi Rapp is still literally shattering glass ceilings.

The Oscar-worthy The Circle is being theatrically released in about 10 cities nationwide.

"Dancer in the Revolution": Memoir of Stretch Johnson, Harlem communist

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 13:24:00 +0000

History is a curious thing, full of drama, intrigue, plot twists and misadventures. Howard "Stretch" Johnson's posthumously published memoir is similarly curious.

A Dancer in the Revolution: Stretch Johnson, Harlem Communist at the Cotton Club is a quick-paced, fascinating glimpse into the life a one-time Communist Party USA leader. Part anecdotal, part history - though all entertaining - I breezed through A Dancer over a weekend.

I especially enjoyed the matter-of-fact tone of Johnson's story. His narrative jumps from Depression-era dancer to international communist, from youthful drugs and debauchery to isolation, loneliness and alcoholism during the McCarthy era, when he and other communists went underground, separated from his wife and family.

While working in the mob-run, world-famous jazz scene that was the 1930s Cotton Club, "Stretch" Johnson received "a postgraduate course in the complexities of class relationships in America." According to him, the Cotton Club was "the laboratory": The "arrogance of the mob toward society in general was exponentially multiplied when it was mixed with white racist attitudes."

It was Johnson's first-hand experiences with racism, as an entertainer, that would shape his political outlook and lead him to eventually join the Communist Party USA. "It was a perfectly logical step in my development," he wrote, "to join the American Communist Party. Being Black and beginning to look for some solution to the problem of survival, there seemed to be nothing else to do. American society had excluded us."

It was through the Harlem Young Communist League and American Youth Congress - a party-led, broad-based youth organization - that Johnson gained valuable early experience as an organizer and learned that "Blacks, generally, were not as easily hoodwinked about the advantages of capitalism." The "disadvantages and penalties the system imposed" through "institutionalized processes and norms that maintain the racist infrastructure," served to weaken African American loyalty to an economy and ideology that had had quite literally sold them down the river.

In 1941, Johnson attended the Southern Negro Youth Congress convention. SNYC, "a model communist-led youth organization," challenged racism and Jim Crow head-on in the South. According to Johnson, "The cadre brought forward [by the SNYC and its communist leadership] in the South became the shock troops of the later developing civil rights movement." James Jackson, Esther Cooper-Jackson, "Stretch" Johnson and many other young communists undoubtedly laid the groundwork and paved the way for the tremendous changes soon to come. They are only now beginning to be recognized for their outstanding, selfless commitment and leadership.

By 1946 Johnson had returned home from war, having spent part of that time with communist partisans in Italy. Now a veteran, he helped to found and organize the communist-led United Negro and Allied Veterans of America (UNAVA), an organizational illustration of "our practical activity," which "develop[ed] a nationwide campaign on the terminal leave pay issue." By some estimates, upwards of $300 million - a staggering sum, especially during this time - "was being denied veterans in the South through the control of the distribution of application forms by the [racist] plantation owners."

Additionally, when African American veterans did receive their terminal leave pay, "white plantation bosses would charge from 50 percent to 75 percent of the value of the checks to cash it." Terminal leave pay was usually around $300, or about one year's pay. Undoubtedly, racist plantation owners did not like the idea of a "labor shortage" or of financially independent African Americans.

Eventually, Johnson and the rest of the UNAVA leadership secured an agreement with the War Department "to distribute the terminal leave pay application forms nationally," which they did with "big fanfare and send-off from our New York headquarters," where "1 million terminal leave pay blanks had been delivered quite dramatically." Johnson estimates that "close to $30 million reached the veterans, a sum they would not have obtained without our efforts."

Johnson's telling of the UNAVA campaign (an amazing piece of history!), as well as his other adventures, has energy, direction, and propulsive drive. His stories whet the appetite and provide just enough of a hint to lead the curious, like myself, down the rabbit hole, searching for ever more clues to this intriguing phenomenon called history. Johnson is at his best when recounting these stories.

After Khrushchev's 1956 revelations of Stalin's crimes, Johnson "quietly" left the Party, "discontinuing my eighteen-year association" without red-baiting or repudiating "my whole past activism in the labor and civil rights struggles."

While no longer a party member, Johnson continued as an academic and activist until his passing on May 25, 2000.

A Dancer in the Revolution: Stretch Johnson, Harlem Communist at the Cotton Club is honest, maybe sometimes too honest. The events described in Johnson's memoir paint a flawed, often contradictory, always humanizing picture. "Stretch" Johnson was a dancer and a communist, but he was also so much more. His memoir is well worth the read.

A Dancer in the Revolution: Stretch Johnson, Harlem Communist at the Cotton Club

By Howard Eugene Johnson with Wendy Johnson

Fordham University Press, 2014, 191 pages

Radical dude: Figaro unbound

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 11:53:00 +0000

Los Angeles Opera is not generally known as a hotbed of red-hot radicalism, although back in 2010 it did produce the world premiere of an opera about the Chilean communist poet Pablo Neruda.

But during the spring season, L.A. Opera has launched "a city-wide celebration of the revolutionary spirit of Beaumarchais' Figaro in conjunction with its staging of Rossini's The Barber of Seville, Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, and the contemporary American composer John Corigliano's opera to a libretto by William M. Hoffman, The Ghosts of Versailles. Through its connections with a number of other cultural institutions, the opera company has invited Angelenos to examine multi-disciplinary aspects of "culture, power, and revolution at play."

Who was Beaumarchais? Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799) was a French playwright best known for The Barber of Seville (1775), The Marriage of Figaro (1778 but not performed until 1784), and the later, but infrequently performed The Guilty Mother, his trilogy centered on the character of Figaro. Beaumarchais was an ardent democrat for his day, and actively aided the American Revolution by organizing funding, arms, supplies and ships.

Readers will remember that the French Revolution broke out in 1789, and yes, it is abundantly clear that the enormous popularity of Beaumarchais' plays and his lovable, roguish Figaro contributed to the fast-moving change in the French attitude toward their absolute monarchy.

Although set in what the French saw then as exotic, far-off Spain, the plays reflect the writer's profound belief in egalitarianism at home. It is consistent with Beaumarchais' outlook that he spent the years 1785-90 publishing the first edition of the works of the Enlightenment giant Voltaire.

Figaro represented a new presence on the French stage, which until Beaumarchais had largely been populated by figures from classical antiquity or mythology. The playwright drew from the Spanish literary and theatrical tradition, which frequently contained servants and workers as characters. One need only think of Sancho Panza in Cervantes' Don Quixote, or the servant Leporello in the Mozart opera Don Giovanni, derived from the many Don Juan representations in Spanish plays.

In those works, and in the Figaro trilogy, the authors excel at confounding the plots - and audiences - with topsy-turvy scenes of cross-dressing, servants and masters, maids and mistresses exchanging clothes and roles, and mistaken identities in dark, moonless gardens. There are also broad attacks on privilege and ridicule of aristocratic pretense. Among the most hated customs of the "old régime" in Europe was the "right of first night," according to which the seigneur reserved for himself the right to take the virginity of any maiden living within his realm. Angry criticism of this "right" comes up in the Figaro plays. The outright subversion of the established order made explicit in The Marriage of Figaro is what held up the performance of that play in the censor's office for six years.

Figaro fashionista

Figaro is, of course, the barber of Seville, who by his engaging wit and wile saves the day for true love - itself an emerging concept in the 18th century, when marriages were often arranged by families with little or no consent from the partners.

The barber is based on the idea of the Spanish "majo," a working-class dandy, smart, urbane, ambitious, a "factotum," the confident kind of guy who is adept at many skills and wise to the ways of the arrogant, malevolent aristocracy he serves. Naturally he dresses more simply, his basic style deriving from rural attire.

After the success of Beaumarchais' plays, a kind of Figaromania took hold in France, whereby aristocrats would "dress down" to imitate what they imagined as the rustic, untroubled life of the peasantry, sometimes even constructing a model agricultural plot on their estates where they would play-act as humble farmers and shepherds. Quite a novelty for people who never worked a day in their lives! Of course the fabrics they used for their costumes were not the rough, rustic cloths peasants used year-round until they wore out, with at best one slightly better-quality garment for church and special occasions. The rich adapted rural dress forms, including aprons, but had their seamstresses recreate them with embroidered satins and silks, elegant buttons, ribbons, sashes, and buckles.

Widespread doubt entered the French mind as to whether, if servant and master could exchange dress and role, they were essentially any differently deserving of being stuck in such disparate classes and fates. Democratic ideas began to take hold. Fashion changed dramatically from the Figaro effect, especially after the Revolution, when it became a social liability to display such elegant clothing obviously meant for aristocratic wear.

At a recent lecture and fashion display on the L.A. Opera Figaro series, held at the Fashion Institute of Design and Marketing (FIDM) downtown, Dr. Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell spoke about her new book, "Fashion Victims: Dress at the Court of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette," which contains a whole chapter on the Figaro craze. Even the adoption of the ankle-length dress comes from this period: While aristocratic women paraded around with long trains and hemlines that dusted the floor, working-class and peasant women could ill afford to be tripping over their skirts all day long as they went about their chores. Powdered wigs also went out in the Figaro era.

Dr. Chrisman-Campbell showed slides to illustrate her talk, and concluded with timely examples of the Figaro mentality still very much with us in the way movie stars, fashion models, and high-tech magnates such as Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg often present themselves in torn jeans and t-shirts (remember the farmer overalls with one shoulder buckle alluringly left undone?). Even high-end businesses and law firms adopt "casual Friday" dress to emphasize their identification with the mufti masses. Peasant-chic, homeless-chic and grunge-chic are all recognizable icons in the media and on the street.

I remember back in 1980 when the documentary film From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China came out. Stern was a widely beloved violin maestro invited to give master classes in China and promote musical exchanges. Shown on camera conversing with a Chinese music professor who explains that Mozart lived at a critical juncture between feudal and emergent capitalist society, Stern looks bored and impatient, then cajoles his host to set aside this needless, intrusive ideology and simply acknowledge the composer's timeless individual genius. With a flourishing clean sweep of the mind, Stern dismisses the social context of the composer of The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and The Magic Flute, three of the most revolutionary operas ever written. I will never forget Stern rolling his eyes in contemptuous disparagement of the Chinese professor. Well, L.A. Opera and its cooperating institutions are helping us to reset our understanding of those revolutionary times.

Figaro here, Figaro there

Los Angeles Opera performances of the Beaumarchais trilogy run from February through April. For more info: LAOpera.org or 213.972.8001.

The UCLA Opera Department is staging rare performances of I Due Figaro (The Two Figaros) by Saverio Mercadante, an early 19th-century Italian composer, on Feb. 13, 15, 20 and 22. Info: www.music.ucla.edu/Performance/Opera.

"Opulent Art: 18th-Century Dress from The Helen Larson Historic Fashion Collection" is on view now through July 4 at the FIDM Museum & Galleries, 919 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. Gallery hours are Tuesday-Saturday, 10 am - 5 pm. Info at FIDMMuseum.org or 213.623.5821.

LA Theatre Works stages the third Beaumarchais play, The Guilty Mother, on Feb. 13 and 14. Info: LAOpera.org or 213.972.8001.

A Noise Within, an L.A. regional theater company, stages Figaro by Charles Morey, freely adapted from The Marriage of Figaro, March 1 through May 10. Info: ANoiseWithin.org or 626.356.3100.

The Barbers of Zarzuela, a concert of popular Spanish operetta versions featuring the Figaro character, will take place at El Pueblo in downtown L.A., free and open to the public. Info: LAOpera.org/COCN or 213.972.3157.

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA, both locations downtown) features "The Revolution in Art Continues" from March 21 through April 30. Show your L.A. Opera ticket or stub for free admission. Info: MOCA.org or 213.626.6222.

A young artist recital featuring Figaro arias takes place at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) on March 22 at 6 pm. Info: 323.857.6000 or www.lacma.org/programs/music/Sundays-live. LACMA also has self-guided tours of Visual Art in the Time of Figaro, now through April. LACMA.org/Figaro.

The Getty Center features a focus tour "Fit for a King" in February and March. Info: www.Getty.edu or 310.440.7330.

Photo: An actual surviving costume for the role of Figaro from the late 18th century, from "Opulent Art" at the FIDM Gallery. | Eric Gordon/PW

Today in African American history: Opera soprano Leontyne Price

Wed, 11 Feb 2015 13:52:00 +0000

World-famous operatic diva Leontyne Price was born on February 10, 1927 in Laurel, Mississippi, to James Anthony Price, a carpenter, and Kate Baker Price, a midwife with a beautiful singing voice. Price showed an interest in music from a young age and sang in the choir at her hometown St. Paul Methodist Church.

Following her time at Oak Park Vocational High School, where she was a standout pianist and member of the glee club, Price enrolled at the College of Education and Industrial Arts in Wilberforce, Ohio. She began with a focus on music education, but later switched to voice. After graduation, Price headed to New York City to attend The Juilliard School on a full scholarship.

At Juilliard, Price studied under her beloved vocal instructor, Florence Page Kimball. Price's beautiful lyric soprano voice landed her feature roles in many of the school's operas. After witnessing Price perform the role of Alice Ford in a student production of Verdi's Falstaff, composer Virgil Thomson leapt at the chance to bring her into one of his productions.

In April 1952, Price made her Broadway debut as St. Cecilia in the revival of Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts. Immediately following that, she joined a world tour of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, and for the next two years, she dazzled audiences with her stunning portrayal of Bess, gaining global acclaim. During that tour, she married co-star William Warfield, who portrayed Porgy.

In her operatic stage debut in San Francisco in 1957, Price took on the role of Madame Lidoine in Francis Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites. Within a year she was appearing at such famous venues as London's Covent Garden and La Scala in Milan. She had become an international star.

Price debuted at the New York's Metropolitan Opera in 1961 as Leonora in Il Trovatore, launching her residency as one of the Met's principal sopranos. She flourished in such roles such as Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, Minnie in La Fanciulla del West and, perhaps most notably, as Cleopatra in Samuel Barber's Antony and Cleopatra that opened the new Met at Lincoln Center in 1966.

As the first African-American singer to gain an international reputation in opera, Price opened the doors to many who followed. As her operatic career tapered off, she focused mainly on recitals. Price delivered her farewell performance in Aida at the Met in 1985, which was telecast and hailed as one of the most successful operatic performances in the Met's history.

Leontyne Price's recordings earned her numerous honors, including more than a dozen Grammy Awards. She rose to stardom as a woman of color in a time and profession where the odds were not in her favor.

Happy birthday, Ms. Price!

Photo: Jack Mitchell/Wikipedia (CC)

Watch a video of Price singing "O patria mia" from Aida here.

Adapted from biography.com.