“It’s easy to forget that acting is a fairly stupid profession. It’s basically glorified make-believe.”—Actress Olivia Thirlby, star of Juno and The Wackness, quoted in Entertainment Weekly, June 20, 2008 issue
(As a movie and theater fan, I’m not sure that I agree with Thirlby's sentiment, but I surely applaud the spectacle of a thespian without any illusions about her importance. She’s forcing me to reconsider my opposition to cloning!)
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
This Day in Exploration History (Marquette and Joliet Reach the Mississippi)
June 17, 1673 – Canoeing down the Wisconsin River, Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette and fur trader Louis Joliet encountered a broad, swift current of a mighty stream that Indians told them surged south—the Mississippi River.
Several years ago, while visiting one of my favorite states, Minnesota, I looked from a bus traveling across a bridge connecting Minneapolis and St. Paul. It was the first time I had ever encountered the northern part of the Mississippi, and I took a deep breath at what I beheld and imagined what lay just beyond my sight.
But my vision was nothing compared with what greeted Marquette and Joliet. I had guidebooks, friends offering sightseeing advice, bus schedules, and countless tales of travelers and historians recounting adventures along the river over the years. Marquette and Joliet had nothing but the word of natives, which could be excellent reporting, fabulous fantasy or a mixture of the two.
Moreover, while I encountered a post-industrial, digitally conscious metropolis; the two Frenchmen beheld a primeval wilderness, the fulfillment of Edmund Burke’s later criteria of “the sublime and beautiful”—i.e, "that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror.”
As a kid, I thought of “Marquette and Joliet” as practically a brand name, a phrase that ran together fast—like Ruth and Gehrig, Smith and Dale, Sears & Roebuck. But the phrase only represented names and dates to be memorized for a test. Years later, I knew little or nothing about where they came from, what motivated them, what they found, and how it affected them.
At the time of their discovery, Marquette was a 37-year-old priest who had used seven years in Canada to establish Indian missions and become fluent in six different Native American dialects. Joliet, nine years his junior, at one time might have followed his fellow explorer into the priesthood, but decided instead to venture out into the Canadian wilderness and make his fortune as a trapper.
From a mission outpost in Lake Superior, Marquette heard accounts from the Illinois Indians about a great river. Yet nobody seemed to know the mouth of this body of water. But along its banks lived thousands of Indians—potential new souls to be instructed in Christ and saved. Marquette jumped at the chance to go. The governor of New France, Count Frontenac, dispatched Joliet--one "experienced in these kinds of discoveries and who had been already very near the river”—to join him. The two spent the winter of 1672-73 eliciting information from the Indians and creating maps.
With five other Frenchmen, Marquette and Joliet embarked from St. Ignace Mission on their voyage of discovery in two canoes, moving first along the northern shore of Lake Michigan, then entering Green Bay. The Menonomee natives they encountered here gave them an unmistakable warning: don’t go any further—not only would the tribes along the great river massacre any stranger, but monsters and demons lay in danger for them.
The explorers chose to go on into the then into the Fox River, where they reached the Mascouten village on June 7. Joliet addressed the tribe elders, requesting two guides—and received two Miami Indians. The guides proved handy, Marquette noted in a report, because “the road is broken by so many swamps and small lakes that it is easy to lose one’s way, especially as the River leading thither is so full of wild oats that it is difficult to find the Channel.” The guides led them to a portage, then the Frenchmen plunged ahead into the Wisconsin River, “alone in this Unknown country, in the hands of providence.”
Their great discovery might be described best by Francis Parkman in La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, part of his historical epic France and England in the New World. Having seen the river in something close to its untouched beauty, the 19th-century New England was undoubtedly better able to appreciate than us the thrill of discovering this majestic river:
“On the 17th of June, they saw on their right the broad meadows, bounded in the distance by rugged hills, where now stand the town and fort of Prairie du Chien. Before them a wide and rapid current coursed athwart their way, by the foot of lofty heights wrapped thick in forests.”
At this point, it might be useful to discuss here the source of Marquette’s exploration zeal—his religious faith. Mark Twain’s explanation, in Life on the Mississippi, evinces something of the satirist’s deep religious skepticism, but there’s also a kind of admiration for the Jesuit’s persistence:
“Marquette had solemnly contracted, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, that if the Virgin would permit him to discover the great river, he would name it Conception, in her honor. He kept his word. In that day, all explorers traveled with an outfit of priests. De Soto had twenty-four with him. La Salle had several, also. The expeditions were often out of meat, and scant of clothes, but they always had the furniture and other requisites for the mass; they were always prepared, as one of the quaint chroniclers of the time phrased it, to 'explain hell to the salvages.'”
After paddling along further, Marquette’s canoe was struck by “monstrous fish” so violently, the missionary observed, that “I Thought that it was a great tree, about to break the Canoe to pieces.” At this point, he undoubtedly called to mind the warning they had received earlier from Indians about a demon “whose roar could be heard at a great distance, and who would engulf them in the abyss where he dwelt.”
The explorers passed the mouth of the Missouri, then the mouth of the Ohio River, then all the way down to Arkansas. The Frenchmen were ready to risk Indians they did not know, but not Spaniards who, they were told now, were further south. The Spaniards, they knew, would seize their notes and maps, and possibly subject them to Indian allies expert in the use of firearms. In any case, the Frenchmen had learned what they’d come to find out: the mighty Mississippi did not empty into the Gulf of California or the Atlantic Ocean, but instead the Gulf of Mexico.
Ironically, after making his way all the way back to Montreal, Joliet lost all his papers from his journey when his canoe was overturned. Nevertheless, his oral report of the journey back in France guided the colony’s administrators in its policy of fortifying the Mississippi and its tributaries, erecting a barrier against English encroachment that would not be breached for nearly another 100 years.
Nearly two years to the day after his great voyage of discovery, Marquette died at age 39 of a lingering cold. His remains were transported back to the Catholic mission at Mackinac in present-day Michigan. Joliet lived on for another quarter century, still restless in his quest to carve out a niche in what he believed to be a mercantile empire in the making for himself and his descendants.
Several years ago, while visiting one of my favorite states, Minnesota, I looked from a bus traveling across a bridge connecting Minneapolis and St. Paul. It was the first time I had ever encountered the northern part of the Mississippi, and I took a deep breath at what I beheld and imagined what lay just beyond my sight.
But my vision was nothing compared with what greeted Marquette and Joliet. I had guidebooks, friends offering sightseeing advice, bus schedules, and countless tales of travelers and historians recounting adventures along the river over the years. Marquette and Joliet had nothing but the word of natives, which could be excellent reporting, fabulous fantasy or a mixture of the two.
Moreover, while I encountered a post-industrial, digitally conscious metropolis; the two Frenchmen beheld a primeval wilderness, the fulfillment of Edmund Burke’s later criteria of “the sublime and beautiful”—i.e, "that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror.”
As a kid, I thought of “Marquette and Joliet” as practically a brand name, a phrase that ran together fast—like Ruth and Gehrig, Smith and Dale, Sears & Roebuck. But the phrase only represented names and dates to be memorized for a test. Years later, I knew little or nothing about where they came from, what motivated them, what they found, and how it affected them.
At the time of their discovery, Marquette was a 37-year-old priest who had used seven years in Canada to establish Indian missions and become fluent in six different Native American dialects. Joliet, nine years his junior, at one time might have followed his fellow explorer into the priesthood, but decided instead to venture out into the Canadian wilderness and make his fortune as a trapper.
From a mission outpost in Lake Superior, Marquette heard accounts from the Illinois Indians about a great river. Yet nobody seemed to know the mouth of this body of water. But along its banks lived thousands of Indians—potential new souls to be instructed in Christ and saved. Marquette jumped at the chance to go. The governor of New France, Count Frontenac, dispatched Joliet--one "experienced in these kinds of discoveries and who had been already very near the river”—to join him. The two spent the winter of 1672-73 eliciting information from the Indians and creating maps.
With five other Frenchmen, Marquette and Joliet embarked from St. Ignace Mission on their voyage of discovery in two canoes, moving first along the northern shore of Lake Michigan, then entering Green Bay. The Menonomee natives they encountered here gave them an unmistakable warning: don’t go any further—not only would the tribes along the great river massacre any stranger, but monsters and demons lay in danger for them.
The explorers chose to go on into the then into the Fox River, where they reached the Mascouten village on June 7. Joliet addressed the tribe elders, requesting two guides—and received two Miami Indians. The guides proved handy, Marquette noted in a report, because “the road is broken by so many swamps and small lakes that it is easy to lose one’s way, especially as the River leading thither is so full of wild oats that it is difficult to find the Channel.” The guides led them to a portage, then the Frenchmen plunged ahead into the Wisconsin River, “alone in this Unknown country, in the hands of providence.”
Their great discovery might be described best by Francis Parkman in La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, part of his historical epic France and England in the New World. Having seen the river in something close to its untouched beauty, the 19th-century New England was undoubtedly better able to appreciate than us the thrill of discovering this majestic river:
“On the 17th of June, they saw on their right the broad meadows, bounded in the distance by rugged hills, where now stand the town and fort of Prairie du Chien. Before them a wide and rapid current coursed athwart their way, by the foot of lofty heights wrapped thick in forests.”
At this point, it might be useful to discuss here the source of Marquette’s exploration zeal—his religious faith. Mark Twain’s explanation, in Life on the Mississippi, evinces something of the satirist’s deep religious skepticism, but there’s also a kind of admiration for the Jesuit’s persistence:
“Marquette had solemnly contracted, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, that if the Virgin would permit him to discover the great river, he would name it Conception, in her honor. He kept his word. In that day, all explorers traveled with an outfit of priests. De Soto had twenty-four with him. La Salle had several, also. The expeditions were often out of meat, and scant of clothes, but they always had the furniture and other requisites for the mass; they were always prepared, as one of the quaint chroniclers of the time phrased it, to 'explain hell to the salvages.'”
After paddling along further, Marquette’s canoe was struck by “monstrous fish” so violently, the missionary observed, that “I Thought that it was a great tree, about to break the Canoe to pieces.” At this point, he undoubtedly called to mind the warning they had received earlier from Indians about a demon “whose roar could be heard at a great distance, and who would engulf them in the abyss where he dwelt.”
The explorers passed the mouth of the Missouri, then the mouth of the Ohio River, then all the way down to Arkansas. The Frenchmen were ready to risk Indians they did not know, but not Spaniards who, they were told now, were further south. The Spaniards, they knew, would seize their notes and maps, and possibly subject them to Indian allies expert in the use of firearms. In any case, the Frenchmen had learned what they’d come to find out: the mighty Mississippi did not empty into the Gulf of California or the Atlantic Ocean, but instead the Gulf of Mexico.
Ironically, after making his way all the way back to Montreal, Joliet lost all his papers from his journey when his canoe was overturned. Nevertheless, his oral report of the journey back in France guided the colony’s administrators in its policy of fortifying the Mississippi and its tributaries, erecting a barrier against English encroachment that would not be breached for nearly another 100 years.
Nearly two years to the day after his great voyage of discovery, Marquette died at age 39 of a lingering cold. His remains were transported back to the Catholic mission at Mackinac in present-day Michigan. Joliet lived on for another quarter century, still restless in his quest to carve out a niche in what he believed to be a mercantile empire in the making for himself and his descendants.
Quote of the Day (Brecht)
“After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?”—Bertolt Brecht, “The Solution”
(Brecht’s poem satirized the response of the Soviet Union and its East German satellite regime to an 80-worker construction strike on June 16, 1953 that, by the next day, had swelled into a 100,000-strong national uprising against the Communist government. Walter Ulbricht, East Germany’s First Secretary, called on Soviet military might to crush the revolt, and in due course 16 Soviet divisions with 20,000 soldiers arrived. At least 55 people were confirmed killed in the crackdown, though Western estimates ran a couple of hundred higher. Executions and harsh prison sentences added to the fallout from the crackdown. Brecht—who had fled to East Germany after his interrogation by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947—had initially written a letter to Ulbricht supporting the crackdown, but perhaps the bodies lying in the street led to a necessary attack of the conscience.)
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?”—Bertolt Brecht, “The Solution”
(Brecht’s poem satirized the response of the Soviet Union and its East German satellite regime to an 80-worker construction strike on June 16, 1953 that, by the next day, had swelled into a 100,000-strong national uprising against the Communist government. Walter Ulbricht, East Germany’s First Secretary, called on Soviet military might to crush the revolt, and in due course 16 Soviet divisions with 20,000 soldiers arrived. At least 55 people were confirmed killed in the crackdown, though Western estimates ran a couple of hundred higher. Executions and harsh prison sentences added to the fallout from the crackdown. Brecht—who had fled to East Germany after his interrogation by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947—had initially written a letter to Ulbricht supporting the crackdown, but perhaps the bodies lying in the street led to a necessary attack of the conscience.)
Monday, June 16, 2008
This Day in Constitutional History (Patrick Henry Demands a Bill of Rights)
June 16, 1788 – With approval of the new Constitution of the United States hanging in the balance, one of its most formidable opponents, Patrick Henry, exercised his considerable oratorical powers in denouncing it at the Virginia Ratification Convention as an assault on the rights of individuals and states. So potent was his criticism that one of his most strenuous objections—to the lack of a “bill of rights” in the Constitution—required immediate redress to secure passage.
At the same time, Henry’s opposition demonstrates one of the enduring factors in American political history: more often than not, it’s personality clashes, not ideological differences, that make for the most poisonous relationships. Think Bobby Kennedy and LBJ, FDR and Al Smith in the 1930s, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama today.
Henry vs. Jefferson and Madison: The Personal Becomes the Political
Henry’s chief adversary at the Virginia Ratification Convention was James Madison. As the great friend and chief political ally of Thomas Jefferson, Madison caught residual flak that would have normally hit the Sage of Monticello. As it happened, though both Henry and Jefferson voiced words that have been memorized ever since by schoolchildren (“Give me liberty or give me death!” and “All men are created equal”), they fell out during the American Revolution.
The young Jefferson listened enthralled to Henry’s speeches in the Virginia House of Burgesses, echoing comparing his utterances to Homer. The two men’s relationship, however, deteriorated late in the war, when the legislature, at former governor Henry’s strong urging, launched an inquiry into whether Jefferson had adequately prepared Virginia for the British invasion that year. Jefferson survived the inquiry, but his resentment—and Henry’s—lingered.
Three years later, a new cause for argument sprang up between Jefferson and Henry—now back as governor. The religiously devout Henry had called for a general tax assessment on all freeholders to support churches and schools, but Madison convinced the legislature to pass instead Jefferson’s Statute of Religious Freedom.
Nearly a decade later, Jefferson paid a new, younger rival, Alexander Hamilton, the highest of inadvertent compliments by calling him “a host unto himself” who needed to be stopped. Madison paid a similar backhanded compliment by pushing Henry’s candidacy for governor.
You might be thinking this was a particularly kind way of thanking the great American patriot for his service to the cause. No such thing. What Madison was really after was to get Henry kicked upstairs, into an office where he could not sway legislators 24/7, as he used to do.
Henry and the Constitution: “I Smell a Rat”
When it came time for a constitutional convention, Madison could not ignore the state’s most popular vote-getter, so Henry was invited to attend as a delegate. Henry responded tersely, with another utterance that has become part of the American idiom: “I smell a rat.”
The “rat” in this case was the Constitution, designed to replace Articles of Confederation, the form of government used by the rebels after declaring independence. The war revealed its near-fatal weaknesses in multiple ways, and precious few people wanted it left intact. The more radical attendees at the convention wanted it scrapped; others, such as Henry, preferred to mend, rather than end, it.
By the end of May 1788, the Constitution’s proponents, the Federalists, had gained the approval of eight state ratifying conventions. The rest of the going, however, was by no means a sure thing. It took Rhode Island and North Carolina nearly two years to ratify, and even then they only did so after Congress agreed to send 12 amendments to the states for ratification. (Of course, only 10 ended up being approved in this original group.)
The battleground states became New Hampshire, Virginia and New York. Historians’ best guesses are that Federalists and Anti-Federalists were in a dead heat in New Hampshire and Virginia, while in New York the Federalists were outnumbered by more than two to one.
Because of the lack of speed of communication during that time, the Virginia delegates did not realize until several weeks later that New Hampshire had assured passage of the Constitution by the required nine states by voting affirmatively on June 21. I
At the same time, Henry’s opposition demonstrates one of the enduring factors in American political history: more often than not, it’s personality clashes, not ideological differences, that make for the most poisonous relationships. Think Bobby Kennedy and LBJ, FDR and Al Smith in the 1930s, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama today.
Henry vs. Jefferson and Madison: The Personal Becomes the Political
Henry’s chief adversary at the Virginia Ratification Convention was James Madison. As the great friend and chief political ally of Thomas Jefferson, Madison caught residual flak that would have normally hit the Sage of Monticello. As it happened, though both Henry and Jefferson voiced words that have been memorized ever since by schoolchildren (“Give me liberty or give me death!” and “All men are created equal”), they fell out during the American Revolution.
The young Jefferson listened enthralled to Henry’s speeches in the Virginia House of Burgesses, echoing comparing his utterances to Homer. The two men’s relationship, however, deteriorated late in the war, when the legislature, at former governor Henry’s strong urging, launched an inquiry into whether Jefferson had adequately prepared Virginia for the British invasion that year. Jefferson survived the inquiry, but his resentment—and Henry’s—lingered.
Three years later, a new cause for argument sprang up between Jefferson and Henry—now back as governor. The religiously devout Henry had called for a general tax assessment on all freeholders to support churches and schools, but Madison convinced the legislature to pass instead Jefferson’s Statute of Religious Freedom.
Nearly a decade later, Jefferson paid a new, younger rival, Alexander Hamilton, the highest of inadvertent compliments by calling him “a host unto himself” who needed to be stopped. Madison paid a similar backhanded compliment by pushing Henry’s candidacy for governor.
You might be thinking this was a particularly kind way of thanking the great American patriot for his service to the cause. No such thing. What Madison was really after was to get Henry kicked upstairs, into an office where he could not sway legislators 24/7, as he used to do.
Henry and the Constitution: “I Smell a Rat”
When it came time for a constitutional convention, Madison could not ignore the state’s most popular vote-getter, so Henry was invited to attend as a delegate. Henry responded tersely, with another utterance that has become part of the American idiom: “I smell a rat.”
The “rat” in this case was the Constitution, designed to replace Articles of Confederation, the form of government used by the rebels after declaring independence. The war revealed its near-fatal weaknesses in multiple ways, and precious few people wanted it left intact. The more radical attendees at the convention wanted it scrapped; others, such as Henry, preferred to mend, rather than end, it.
By the end of May 1788, the Constitution’s proponents, the Federalists, had gained the approval of eight state ratifying conventions. The rest of the going, however, was by no means a sure thing. It took Rhode Island and North Carolina nearly two years to ratify, and even then they only did so after Congress agreed to send 12 amendments to the states for ratification. (Of course, only 10 ended up being approved in this original group.)
The battleground states became New Hampshire, Virginia and New York. Historians’ best guesses are that Federalists and Anti-Federalists were in a dead heat in New Hampshire and Virginia, while in New York the Federalists were outnumbered by more than two to one.
Because of the lack of speed of communication during that time, the Virginia delegates did not realize until several weeks later that New Hampshire had assured passage of the Constitution by the required nine states by voting affirmatively on June 21. I
n another sense, however, it didn’t matter. The new union could certainly survive without Rhode Island and might even make it without North Carolina. Without the two largest states of New York and Virginia, however, the new form of government would be dealt a crushing, maybe fatal, blow.
The Virginia Ratification Convention: Clash of Titans
The Federalists and Anti-Federalists fielded a host of future luminaries on each side. Arguing affirmatively with Madison for the Constitution were future Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court John Marshall and Governor Edmund Randolph, later to become George Washington’s Attorney General and Secretary of State. Lining up behind Henry in opposition were George Mason, author of the Virginia Bill of Rights (who refused to sign the finished Constitution) and future President James Monroe.
Once again, Henry showed why he was a dangerous adversary in political battle. Even before he really got going, he already had the ratification convention in an uproar by refusing to abide by the delegates’ initial agreement to debate the document point by point. No, he insisted, it must be considered in totality.
Then Henry made it personal: Wasn’t Governor Randolph being “inconsistent” by refusing to sign the Constitution when he had the choice to do so in Philadelphia as a delegate?
Randolph’s response was about as effective as John Kerry’s claim, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” With eight states ratifying it and the country in crisis, why not close ranks, Randolph pleaded nervously? In the meantime, didn’t he deserve an apology from Henry for his “aspersions and his insinuations”?
The Old Spellbinder Works His Magic Again
Nothing doing. Somewhat stooped at six feet tall, wearing spectacles, Henry could still command attention when his blue eyes came alive. Jefferson might have been the inventor of the democratic engine and Madison its ace mechanic, but Henry was its Richard Petty.
Even before the orator said a word, noted Madison, a simple gesture of his could undo an hour’s work of his opponents. And when that confident voice rose, boomed and fell – well, let’s just say it was a far cry from Madison, who, on more than one occasion, according to an account of the proceedings, “spoke too low to be understood.” (After one particularly strenuous debate, Madison took to his bed for the following three days.)
Henry poured scorn on the Constitution for its centralized government that opened the way to dictatorship. Among other points, he charged that the Constitution:
* lacked adequate checks and balances
* gave the central government the power of direct taxation
* opened the central government to the possibility of tyrants.
In all, Henry spoke on 18 out of the 23 days at the ratification convention, comprising a quarter of all speeches recorded. On June 16 alone, four speeches took on different weaknesses he saw in the Constitution: the Army, the militia, the District of Columbia, and, most consequentially, the perils of a republic without a bill of rights:
“The officers of Congress may come upon you now, fortified with all with all the terrors of paramount federal authority. Excisemen may come in multitudes; for the limitation of their numbers no man knows. They may, unless the general government be restrained by a bill of rights, or some similar restriction, go into your cellars and rooms, and search, ransack, and measure, every thing you eat, drink, and wear.”
Catherine Drinker Bowen’s Miracle at Philadelphia vividly recounts Henry’s impact in a quote from delegate Hugh Grigsby, who noted that one of his fellow listeners “involuntarily felt his wrists to assure himself that the fetters were not already pressing his flesh. The gallery on which he was sitting seemed to become dark as a dudgeon.”
When the final vote came, Henry had lost, but by only an 89-79 margin. I would argue that his loss was the American people’s gain. To swing votes away from Henry, Madison had to agree to introduce a Bill of Rights at the first available opportunity in the new Congress.
Once More Into the Breach
Henry’s call for a second Constitutional Convention, to repair the mistakes made the first time, fell on deaf ears. With his health uncertain and his family obligations increasing, he needed to attend to clients who were willing to pay for his spellbinding oratory before jurors.
For a long time, Henry also saw no necessity to join a government whose form he opposed, so he turned down offers by George Washington to become a justice of the Supreme Court and secretary of state. However, though his sympathy for Federalism didn’t increase markedly, his antipathy for Jefferson and Madison did.
The French Revolution’s growing anti-clericalism (in Henry’s view, its atheistic tendencies) and the Democratic-Republicans’ defense of the regime lured the Virginian out of retirement. In a stance that represented something of a 180-degree turn in his previous thinking, he opposed the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions (created anonymously by Jefferson and Madison as means to interpose state authority against the Alien and Sedition Acts) as threats to the federal authority he had long feared.
Preceding Washington by more than a decade in his loathing for virtually all things Jeffersonian, Henry now proved amenable to the old general’s appeals to re-enter the political arena by running again for the Virginia state legislature as a Federalist. Henry’s stance alienated that not-inconsiderable portion of his old political base that now belonged to Jefferson and Madison, but he managed to win the election.
Yet the stress of the campaign broke his already fragile health, and like Washington he died in 1799—in this case, reconciled, if only by certain longstanding personal antagonisms, to a form of government on which he had once rained rhetorical thunderbolts. Tim Russert, may he rest in peace, had he been alive at the creation of the republic, would undoubtedly have read one of the Son of Thunder’s old soundbites and asked him to explain his current seeming inconsistency.
The Virginia Ratification Convention: Clash of Titans
The Federalists and Anti-Federalists fielded a host of future luminaries on each side. Arguing affirmatively with Madison for the Constitution were future Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court John Marshall and Governor Edmund Randolph, later to become George Washington’s Attorney General and Secretary of State. Lining up behind Henry in opposition were George Mason, author of the Virginia Bill of Rights (who refused to sign the finished Constitution) and future President James Monroe.
Once again, Henry showed why he was a dangerous adversary in political battle. Even before he really got going, he already had the ratification convention in an uproar by refusing to abide by the delegates’ initial agreement to debate the document point by point. No, he insisted, it must be considered in totality.
Then Henry made it personal: Wasn’t Governor Randolph being “inconsistent” by refusing to sign the Constitution when he had the choice to do so in Philadelphia as a delegate?
Randolph’s response was about as effective as John Kerry’s claim, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” With eight states ratifying it and the country in crisis, why not close ranks, Randolph pleaded nervously? In the meantime, didn’t he deserve an apology from Henry for his “aspersions and his insinuations”?
The Old Spellbinder Works His Magic Again
Nothing doing. Somewhat stooped at six feet tall, wearing spectacles, Henry could still command attention when his blue eyes came alive. Jefferson might have been the inventor of the democratic engine and Madison its ace mechanic, but Henry was its Richard Petty.
Even before the orator said a word, noted Madison, a simple gesture of his could undo an hour’s work of his opponents. And when that confident voice rose, boomed and fell – well, let’s just say it was a far cry from Madison, who, on more than one occasion, according to an account of the proceedings, “spoke too low to be understood.” (After one particularly strenuous debate, Madison took to his bed for the following three days.)
Henry poured scorn on the Constitution for its centralized government that opened the way to dictatorship. Among other points, he charged that the Constitution:
* lacked adequate checks and balances
* gave the central government the power of direct taxation
* opened the central government to the possibility of tyrants.
In all, Henry spoke on 18 out of the 23 days at the ratification convention, comprising a quarter of all speeches recorded. On June 16 alone, four speeches took on different weaknesses he saw in the Constitution: the Army, the militia, the District of Columbia, and, most consequentially, the perils of a republic without a bill of rights:
“The officers of Congress may come upon you now, fortified with all with all the terrors of paramount federal authority. Excisemen may come in multitudes; for the limitation of their numbers no man knows. They may, unless the general government be restrained by a bill of rights, or some similar restriction, go into your cellars and rooms, and search, ransack, and measure, every thing you eat, drink, and wear.”
Catherine Drinker Bowen’s Miracle at Philadelphia vividly recounts Henry’s impact in a quote from delegate Hugh Grigsby, who noted that one of his fellow listeners “involuntarily felt his wrists to assure himself that the fetters were not already pressing his flesh. The gallery on which he was sitting seemed to become dark as a dudgeon.”
When the final vote came, Henry had lost, but by only an 89-79 margin. I would argue that his loss was the American people’s gain. To swing votes away from Henry, Madison had to agree to introduce a Bill of Rights at the first available opportunity in the new Congress.
Once More Into the Breach
Henry’s call for a second Constitutional Convention, to repair the mistakes made the first time, fell on deaf ears. With his health uncertain and his family obligations increasing, he needed to attend to clients who were willing to pay for his spellbinding oratory before jurors.
For a long time, Henry also saw no necessity to join a government whose form he opposed, so he turned down offers by George Washington to become a justice of the Supreme Court and secretary of state. However, though his sympathy for Federalism didn’t increase markedly, his antipathy for Jefferson and Madison did.
The French Revolution’s growing anti-clericalism (in Henry’s view, its atheistic tendencies) and the Democratic-Republicans’ defense of the regime lured the Virginian out of retirement. In a stance that represented something of a 180-degree turn in his previous thinking, he opposed the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions (created anonymously by Jefferson and Madison as means to interpose state authority against the Alien and Sedition Acts) as threats to the federal authority he had long feared.
Preceding Washington by more than a decade in his loathing for virtually all things Jeffersonian, Henry now proved amenable to the old general’s appeals to re-enter the political arena by running again for the Virginia state legislature as a Federalist. Henry’s stance alienated that not-inconsiderable portion of his old political base that now belonged to Jefferson and Madison, but he managed to win the election.
Yet the stress of the campaign broke his already fragile health, and like Washington he died in 1799—in this case, reconciled, if only by certain longstanding personal antagonisms, to a form of government on which he had once rained rhetorical thunderbolts. Tim Russert, may he rest in peace, had he been alive at the creation of the republic, would undoubtedly have read one of the Son of Thunder’s old soundbites and asked him to explain his current seeming inconsistency.
Don't Ask, "What Would Patrick Do?"
Patrick Henry’s battle over the Constitution illustrates the truth of the adage often attributed to Mark Twain: “History doesn’t repeat itself—it rhymes.” In other words, certain present and past circumstances may seem similar, but their differences require our scrutiny.
Specifically, the issues raised by Henry about the role of the federal government remain as alive today as in his own time. The Bill of Rights that he advocated has helped immeasurably in protecting the rights of individuals, though it is an open question whether Henry would welcome federal courts’ growing willingness to apply the protections of amendments to the constitution to state as well as federal law.
Nevertheless, it’s dangerous to ask “What would Patrick (or George, or Thomas, or James) do?” Henry’s career vividly illustrates how personal differences can mix with purely ideological arguments, even ones, such as his with Madison and the Federalists, conducted at the highest intellectual levels. Though they prided themselves – and continue to be regarded as such by a grateful posterity—as the most rational of men, the Founding Fathers were also led inevitably, by the forces of pride and resentment, into political battles that neither they nor we could have foreseen by a cold, hard reading of their early speeches and actions.
Quote of the Day (Disraeli)
“How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.” — British statesman Benjamin Disraeli, speech at the House of Commons, January 24, 1860
(Thanks to Brian for the suggestion)
(Thanks to Brian for the suggestion)
Sunday, June 15, 2008
This Day in Film History (Baseball Classic “Bull Durham” Scores)
June 15, 1988—Make up any list of the greatest baseball films and the greatest romantic comedies, and one movie will likely appear on both: Bull Durham, which premiered on this date 20 years ago and promptly became a popular and critical hit.
The movie marked the passage of several talents coming into their own: stars Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, and Tim Robbins—and, most significant for its eventual success, I would argue, writer-director Ron Shelton, who captured the anxieties and idiosyncrasies of minor-league players so well because it reflected his own experience in the game he had quit 15 years before.
Bull Durham strikes me now like one of those “Folly Floaters” that Yankee reliever Steve Hamilton used on nonplussed hitters in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s: A lazy pitch that sneaked up on you and was a hilarious wonder to behold (so long, of course, as you weren’t at the receiving end of it).
To their immense credit, critics got it about Shelton’s offbeat take on love and the Great American Pastime, as his screenplay netted both the New York Film Critics Circle and L.A. Film Critics Association Awards.
The movie marked the passage of several talents coming into their own: stars Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, and Tim Robbins—and, most significant for its eventual success, I would argue, writer-director Ron Shelton, who captured the anxieties and idiosyncrasies of minor-league players so well because it reflected his own experience in the game he had quit 15 years before.
Bull Durham strikes me now like one of those “Folly Floaters” that Yankee reliever Steve Hamilton used on nonplussed hitters in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s: A lazy pitch that sneaked up on you and was a hilarious wonder to behold (so long, of course, as you weren’t at the receiving end of it).
To their immense credit, critics got it about Shelton’s offbeat take on love and the Great American Pastime, as his screenplay netted both the New York Film Critics Circle and L.A. Film Critics Association Awards.
To its shame, Hollywood didn’t, giving the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay instead to Rain Man—hardly a bad film, by any means, but one that, when you get right down to it, never deviated far from its road-film and buddy-film genres.
(Even odder, Sarandon was never nominated for her career-defining role as Annie Savoy, the community college English instructor who makes it a point to take a new player under her wing, so to speak, each year.)
In contrast, I think it’s safe to say there was no baseball film quite like Bull Durham beforehand, and there’s been none since then.
In contrast, I think it’s safe to say there was no baseball film quite like Bull Durham beforehand, and there’s been none since then.
(In fact, the odds are high against it: no less an authority than Shelton himself believes that nowadays his seminal work would only see the light of day as an indie, and even in that instance getting it launched would be dicey, because of that market’s heavy reliance on foreign sales.)
Consider the other major baseball films that appeared in a five-year span from 1984 to 1989:
The picture whose success probably helped get Shelton’s project greenlighted was the Robert Redford film The Natural in 1984. Like Kevin Costner’s other significant baseball film made only year later after Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, the Redford movie appeals heavily not only to the mythic and nostalgic elements of the game, but also to the longed-for connection between fathers and sons.
John Sayles’ Eight Men Out, based on the Eliot Asinof account of the “Black Sox” betting scandal in the 1919 World Series, for all its finely wrought and historically accurate detail, follows a straight-through narrative—owner Charles Comiskey’s greed, the players’ fateful decision to bet (or, in the case of third baseman Buck Weaver, not to bet but not to inform), and the legal fallout.
David Ward’s Major League had the dubious distinction of following the far superior Bull Durham. Its fine cast could not surmount a painfully pedestrian plot whose twists could be guessed at within 10 minutes of the opening credits.
Shelton’s script, in contrast, threw out the conventions of the baseball film. There’s no real-life hero, such as in Pride of the Yankees; no American Pastoral (the Durham Bulls’ home games are in a small city ballpark that everyone walks to); and, most of all, no Opening Day and World Series. Quick – summarize the plot in a sentence. (Didn’t think you could!)
Instead, it’s built on a series of terrific scenes that highlight the players’ flakiness: the wild fastball of Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh; the pitcher’s mound conference involving Nuke’s jammed eyelids, a live rooster to take a curse off a glove, and “what to get Millie or Jimmy for their wedding present”; and Nuke’s misinterpreted lyrics of “Try a Little Tenderness.”
And there are also some of the most famous monologues in film history, notably Annie’s opening “Church of Baseball” speech and Crash’s summary of his 21 magical days in the major leagues, or “The Show” (“You hit white balls for batting practice, the ballparks are like cathedrals, the hotels all have room service, and the women all have long legs and brains”).
Pitchers as a class are so flaky that Nuke is hardly an exaggeration. Any list of baseball characters is bound to include ball-addressing, mound-landscaping Mark “The Bird” Fidrych; reliever Al “The Mad Hungarian” Hrabosky; and perhaps the wildest eccentric of them all, Rube Waddell, who, when he wasn’t delayed for games because of drunkenness or playing marbles with street urchins, would run out of the stadium, mid-windup, the second he heard a fire engine.
In his madcap reverence for the strikeout (pronounced “fascist” by Crash), Nuke most resembles Roger Clemens, who has named all of his children with the letter “k”; in his taste in exotic underwear fashions (“The rose goes in front, big guy,” deadpans Crash), he appears to have inspired Jason Giambi.
I don’t believe the three principals have ever been better, despite Oscars they earned in other films.
Consider the other major baseball films that appeared in a five-year span from 1984 to 1989:
The picture whose success probably helped get Shelton’s project greenlighted was the Robert Redford film The Natural in 1984. Like Kevin Costner’s other significant baseball film made only year later after Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, the Redford movie appeals heavily not only to the mythic and nostalgic elements of the game, but also to the longed-for connection between fathers and sons.
John Sayles’ Eight Men Out, based on the Eliot Asinof account of the “Black Sox” betting scandal in the 1919 World Series, for all its finely wrought and historically accurate detail, follows a straight-through narrative—owner Charles Comiskey’s greed, the players’ fateful decision to bet (or, in the case of third baseman Buck Weaver, not to bet but not to inform), and the legal fallout.
David Ward’s Major League had the dubious distinction of following the far superior Bull Durham. Its fine cast could not surmount a painfully pedestrian plot whose twists could be guessed at within 10 minutes of the opening credits.
Shelton’s script, in contrast, threw out the conventions of the baseball film. There’s no real-life hero, such as in Pride of the Yankees; no American Pastoral (the Durham Bulls’ home games are in a small city ballpark that everyone walks to); and, most of all, no Opening Day and World Series. Quick – summarize the plot in a sentence. (Didn’t think you could!)
Instead, it’s built on a series of terrific scenes that highlight the players’ flakiness: the wild fastball of Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh; the pitcher’s mound conference involving Nuke’s jammed eyelids, a live rooster to take a curse off a glove, and “what to get Millie or Jimmy for their wedding present”; and Nuke’s misinterpreted lyrics of “Try a Little Tenderness.”
And there are also some of the most famous monologues in film history, notably Annie’s opening “Church of Baseball” speech and Crash’s summary of his 21 magical days in the major leagues, or “The Show” (“You hit white balls for batting practice, the ballparks are like cathedrals, the hotels all have room service, and the women all have long legs and brains”).
Pitchers as a class are so flaky that Nuke is hardly an exaggeration. Any list of baseball characters is bound to include ball-addressing, mound-landscaping Mark “The Bird” Fidrych; reliever Al “The Mad Hungarian” Hrabosky; and perhaps the wildest eccentric of them all, Rube Waddell, who, when he wasn’t delayed for games because of drunkenness or playing marbles with street urchins, would run out of the stadium, mid-windup, the second he heard a fire engine.
In his madcap reverence for the strikeout (pronounced “fascist” by Crash), Nuke most resembles Roger Clemens, who has named all of his children with the letter “k”; in his taste in exotic underwear fashions (“The rose goes in front, big guy,” deadpans Crash), he appears to have inspired Jason Giambi.
I don’t believe the three principals have ever been better, despite Oscars they earned in other films.
Costner is best at his loosest, as Shelton sensed not only in casting him for this but also in his fine golf film, Tin Cup.
Sarandon’s role as Annie may have been the most significant sexy older woman role since Mrs. Robinson, and it was criminal that she was not even nominated for a role that called on her to be by turns funny, alluring, rueful, maternal and smart.
Robbins’ dim bulb of a rookie was so convincing that I had trouble for a long time imagining him as anything else.
There is an undercurrent of sadness in the film, typified by the sequence when Annie bids goodbye to Nuke and Crash is released. The two realize the full truth now of Annie’s remark that “The world is not made for people cursed with self-awareness,” and the kindred spirits’ recognition of this draws them close together at last—and brings this classic to its inevitable conclusion.
(As luckless as Crash and Annie are, it’s nothing compared with the real-life manager of the Durham Bulls at the time of the film’s release, Grady Little – yes, the same poor guy who, as manager of the Boston Red Sox, lost to Joe Torre’s Yankees in 2003, then lost his job with the Los Angeles Dodgers to the same Torre this past off-season. “There’s no crying in baseball,” Tom Hanks famously proclaimed in A League of Their Own. Also, I might add, no fairness or justice.)
There is an undercurrent of sadness in the film, typified by the sequence when Annie bids goodbye to Nuke and Crash is released. The two realize the full truth now of Annie’s remark that “The world is not made for people cursed with self-awareness,” and the kindred spirits’ recognition of this draws them close together at last—and brings this classic to its inevitable conclusion.
(As luckless as Crash and Annie are, it’s nothing compared with the real-life manager of the Durham Bulls at the time of the film’s release, Grady Little – yes, the same poor guy who, as manager of the Boston Red Sox, lost to Joe Torre’s Yankees in 2003, then lost his job with the Los Angeles Dodgers to the same Torre this past off-season. “There’s no crying in baseball,” Tom Hanks famously proclaimed in A League of Their Own. Also, I might add, no fairness or justice.)
Theater Review: Neil Simon’s “Chapter Two,” in Hackensack, N.J.
When Brian Parks shuffled onstage at the beginning of the recent production of Neil Simon's "serious comedy" Chapter Two, at the Hackensack (N.J.) Cultural Arts Center, he conveyed immediately, and without words, the spiritual death of his character, Simon's alter-ego, George Schneider. The shoulders drooped; the eyes stared vacantly; and the legs carried him to a destination he didn't know and didn't care to reach.
Schneider was just one of four excellent reasons to attend this particular show. The other three reasons are his fellow cast members. I did not see Judd Hirsch, Anita Gillette, Ann Wedgeworth, or Cliff Gorman when the play premiered in 1977, nor have I yet caught James Caan, Marsha Mason, Joseph Bologna, and Valerie Harper in the film version two years later. But despite the considerable fame and talent of all these fine actors, I have a tough time imagining them embodying their characters with greater humor or rueful truth than Parks and his three co-stars do here.
Those of you outside Northern New Jersey might well remember Billy Joel's reference to the town in "Movin' Out," or, if you're a film buff, might recall the millionaire "John D. Hackensacker" in Preston Sturges' brilliant Palm Beach Story. So, you might do a double-take when you hear the word "culture" and "Hackensack" in the same phrase.
Moreover, I must admit to a prejudice against community theater. Less expensive drama, featuring a cast not found on Broadway—how could it possibly be that good?
Well, I have to 'fess up: I was wrong. Simon has been extremely well served by this production of Chapter Two, with the heartache played as adeptly as the hilarity.
Some people continue to maintain a prejudice against Simon as a commercial colossus who built a comedy empire on a cascade of one-liners that, collectively, amounted to little substantive. The endurance of this stereotype puzzles me, particularly in light of the fact that, beginning with The Gingerbread Lady in 1971, Simon has increasingly explored childhood traumas and adult neuroses. Like Woody Allen, his co-worker on Your Show of Shows, Simon’s work became emotionally richer in the mid-1970s.
Simon’s most painful and autobiographical work, Chapter Two, he freely acknowledges, was inspired by his second marriage, to Marsha Mason (who, like Allen’s ‘70s muse Diane Keaton, was rewarded with an Oscar nomination for essentially reenacting her real-life role as the artist’s love interest).
But this marriage, within one year after the death of his first wife Joan, occurred before Simon had adequately worked through his sense of loss. The playwright’s 1996 memoir, Rewrites, contains some of the most rhapsodic and moving passages that any writer has ever committed to paper about a loved one. (In many ways, I doubt that he ever did get over the loss of this vibrant and beautiful woman—Simon’s four subsequent marriages have not even approached the 20 years he had with Joan before she died of cancer.)
In this 1977 play, Simon mined this dark emotional territory in depth, but put it in a wider context, too: the scary re-entry into the dating scene by the middle-aged, whether through death or divorce. ) Jennie, the soap-opera actress that finally catches the despondent George’s interest, is not any luckier in love than he is: her marriage to a football player lasted six years but was only happy for one. Leo, George’s brother, and Faye, Jennie’s brassy best friend, conspire to throw the two together, but also have to face their own quietly desperate marital situations.
Louis Scarpati directed this romantic comedy-drama as a frankly period piece, with a set split between the apartments of George and Jennie featuring a rotary phone, typewriter and ‘70s songs (including one of Billy Joel’s earliest, “Great Suburban Showdown”). Taking this all in, I was afraid the script would seem dated.
But the only jokes that flopped related more to geography than to time. Blonde bimbos, for instance, such as the one Leo sets George up with on a previous occasion, have never faded from the scene since Jean Harlow took Hollywood by storm, and they’re just as reliable for laughs. (“I should never have introduced you to Bambi,” Leo exclaims ruefully at one point. “After Bambi you were ready for anything.”)
But strangely, the audience didn’t know how to react to New York jokes. I’m sure, for instance, that an opening-scene gag, about the desirability of parking space in the Big Apple, would bring the house down in any Broadway revival. Across the Hudson, it sank like a carp weighed down with toxic chemicals—and this despite the presence of many in the audience who either work in New York, have visited relatives there, or even lived there themselves.
Nevertheless, Scarpati used an excellent cast to best effect. I have already mentioned the fine work of Brian Parks as George, but matching him is the director’s wife, Andrea Prendamano, playing Jennie. George may be the moved character, but Jennie is the one with what F. Scott Fitzgerald called “an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness,” and with every wry line reading and sparkle in her eyes, Prendamano made listeners understand how Jennie manages to administer emotional CPR to George. Most important, she shows us someone ready, when the going gets toughest, to fight to save her marriage—and to save George from a second spiritual death. Their interplay—whether in the hilarious phone sequence in which, in effect, they “meet cute”—to the denouement, in which George and Jennie confront the most painful facts about how much they can give to each other emotionally—was superb.
The actors playing the two sidekicks are equally adept. As Leo, David Russo might have the trickiest role in the play: a seemingly glib press agent with unexpected depths of concern for his brother. He was at the center of the play’s most farcical scene—an attempted seduction—and its most poignant—a long, shattering description to Jennie about George’s emotional devastation after Barbara’s death. Remarkably, he delivered equally well in each.
I first noticed this play because of a Bergen Record feature on the actress playing Faye, Nancy Malleo. With her throaty laugh, the tall blonde commanded the stage with aplomb, exuding Faye’s been-there-done-that aura effortlessly. She and her fellow members of "The Company" left me eager to hear about what their follow-up will be to their sharp and moving "Chapter Two."
Schneider was just one of four excellent reasons to attend this particular show. The other three reasons are his fellow cast members. I did not see Judd Hirsch, Anita Gillette, Ann Wedgeworth, or Cliff Gorman when the play premiered in 1977, nor have I yet caught James Caan, Marsha Mason, Joseph Bologna, and Valerie Harper in the film version two years later. But despite the considerable fame and talent of all these fine actors, I have a tough time imagining them embodying their characters with greater humor or rueful truth than Parks and his three co-stars do here.
Those of you outside Northern New Jersey might well remember Billy Joel's reference to the town in "Movin' Out," or, if you're a film buff, might recall the millionaire "John D. Hackensacker" in Preston Sturges' brilliant Palm Beach Story. So, you might do a double-take when you hear the word "culture" and "Hackensack" in the same phrase.
Moreover, I must admit to a prejudice against community theater. Less expensive drama, featuring a cast not found on Broadway—how could it possibly be that good?
Well, I have to 'fess up: I was wrong. Simon has been extremely well served by this production of Chapter Two, with the heartache played as adeptly as the hilarity.
Some people continue to maintain a prejudice against Simon as a commercial colossus who built a comedy empire on a cascade of one-liners that, collectively, amounted to little substantive. The endurance of this stereotype puzzles me, particularly in light of the fact that, beginning with The Gingerbread Lady in 1971, Simon has increasingly explored childhood traumas and adult neuroses. Like Woody Allen, his co-worker on Your Show of Shows, Simon’s work became emotionally richer in the mid-1970s.
Simon’s most painful and autobiographical work, Chapter Two, he freely acknowledges, was inspired by his second marriage, to Marsha Mason (who, like Allen’s ‘70s muse Diane Keaton, was rewarded with an Oscar nomination for essentially reenacting her real-life role as the artist’s love interest).
But this marriage, within one year after the death of his first wife Joan, occurred before Simon had adequately worked through his sense of loss. The playwright’s 1996 memoir, Rewrites, contains some of the most rhapsodic and moving passages that any writer has ever committed to paper about a loved one. (In many ways, I doubt that he ever did get over the loss of this vibrant and beautiful woman—Simon’s four subsequent marriages have not even approached the 20 years he had with Joan before she died of cancer.)
In this 1977 play, Simon mined this dark emotional territory in depth, but put it in a wider context, too: the scary re-entry into the dating scene by the middle-aged, whether through death or divorce. ) Jennie, the soap-opera actress that finally catches the despondent George’s interest, is not any luckier in love than he is: her marriage to a football player lasted six years but was only happy for one. Leo, George’s brother, and Faye, Jennie’s brassy best friend, conspire to throw the two together, but also have to face their own quietly desperate marital situations.
Louis Scarpati directed this romantic comedy-drama as a frankly period piece, with a set split between the apartments of George and Jennie featuring a rotary phone, typewriter and ‘70s songs (including one of Billy Joel’s earliest, “Great Suburban Showdown”). Taking this all in, I was afraid the script would seem dated.
But the only jokes that flopped related more to geography than to time. Blonde bimbos, for instance, such as the one Leo sets George up with on a previous occasion, have never faded from the scene since Jean Harlow took Hollywood by storm, and they’re just as reliable for laughs. (“I should never have introduced you to Bambi,” Leo exclaims ruefully at one point. “After Bambi you were ready for anything.”)
But strangely, the audience didn’t know how to react to New York jokes. I’m sure, for instance, that an opening-scene gag, about the desirability of parking space in the Big Apple, would bring the house down in any Broadway revival. Across the Hudson, it sank like a carp weighed down with toxic chemicals—and this despite the presence of many in the audience who either work in New York, have visited relatives there, or even lived there themselves.
Nevertheless, Scarpati used an excellent cast to best effect. I have already mentioned the fine work of Brian Parks as George, but matching him is the director’s wife, Andrea Prendamano, playing Jennie. George may be the moved character, but Jennie is the one with what F. Scott Fitzgerald called “an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness,” and with every wry line reading and sparkle in her eyes, Prendamano made listeners understand how Jennie manages to administer emotional CPR to George. Most important, she shows us someone ready, when the going gets toughest, to fight to save her marriage—and to save George from a second spiritual death. Their interplay—whether in the hilarious phone sequence in which, in effect, they “meet cute”—to the denouement, in which George and Jennie confront the most painful facts about how much they can give to each other emotionally—was superb.
The actors playing the two sidekicks are equally adept. As Leo, David Russo might have the trickiest role in the play: a seemingly glib press agent with unexpected depths of concern for his brother. He was at the center of the play’s most farcical scene—an attempted seduction—and its most poignant—a long, shattering description to Jennie about George’s emotional devastation after Barbara’s death. Remarkably, he delivered equally well in each.
I first noticed this play because of a Bergen Record feature on the actress playing Faye, Nancy Malleo. With her throaty laugh, the tall blonde commanded the stage with aplomb, exuding Faye’s been-there-done-that aura effortlessly. She and her fellow members of "The Company" left me eager to hear about what their follow-up will be to their sharp and moving "Chapter Two."
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