[This is the third part of my collection of articles concerning John Simon’s New York magazine review of The Winter’s Tale at the New York Shakespeare Festival in April of 1989. Below are several more columns by theater commentators from various publications such as the now-defunct Village Voice and TheaterWeek, and the venerable New York Post (which was at the time owned by Rupert Murdoch, also the owner of New York).
[ROTters will also find comments from me
pertaining the foregoing articles and, sometimes, just my own
observations. If you haven’t read Parts
1 and 2, I suggest you go back to 28 November and 1 December and check out the
previous posts, especially the general introduction on the first installment.]
“SIGHTLINES”
by
Robert Massa
Village Voice
18
April 1989
[The Village Voice was a
weekly tabloid newspaper published in the East Village from 1955 to 2017
(print) and 2018 (on-line). The Voice
was an important journal in New York City for arts and cultural coverage,
especially in the non-commercial and non-mainstream venues; Robert Massa
(1958-94) was an editor at the Voice
for five years, until his death.]
Should New York Magazine fire John Simon? Joe Papp thinks so. He’s furious over Simon’s review of the
Public Theater’s The Winter’s Tale. “His racism has always been there,” says
Papp. “But here he has outdone
himself.” Colleen Dewhurst agrees. She wrote to Simon’s editor: “. . . as
President of Actors Equity, I call upon you to remove him from his present
position.”
Simon’s
review compares Mandy Patinkin to a caricature in the Nazi publication Der Stürmer, and says Alfre Woodard
resembles Topsy and Butterfly McQueen—“If Miss Woodard weren’t black, one might
suspect her of racism.” He was less
reserved in speaking to Post
columnist Diana Maychick: “. . . blacks do not belong in parts for white
actresses, unless they can pass for white.”
Florence
Fletcher at New York says Simon is
refusing further comment on the subject for now. In a letter to Dewhurst, New York’s editor, Ed Kosner, concedes that “from time to time . .
. Simon has exceeded the bounds that most of us are comfortable with”—but he
doesn’t consider this such a time.
Kosner considers Simon’s opposition to race-blind casting an aesthetic
position which the critic has a right to express “in appropriate terms.” (But not in inappropriate terms?) Further, Kosner maintains that in his
review[,] Simon identifies stereotypes but “in no way endorses” them.
Simon’s
opposition to nontraditional casting is difficult to defend even under the
cloak of aesthetics. Does Simon mean
that only 13-year-old Italian girls should play Juliet? Or, to be true to the theater of Shakespeare’s
day, 13-year-old boys? He made his case
a few years ago in William Shakespeare:
His World, His work, His Influence [a collection of essays edited by John
F. Andrews, which includes Simon’s “Shakespeare and the Modern Critic” (Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1985)]. Race blind
casting, he wrote, “contradicts too many aspects of the internal logic of the
play[s] as well as of the social conditions of the period and place.” The only exception he allowed is fantasy
characters; the fairies in A Midsummer
Night’s Dream can be played by blacks “provided they are all of them
black.”
Should a
writer be fired for his opinions, however vile?
Papp recently lashed out at Frank Rich in the pages of the Times; he tells me he’s lost patience
for critics in general: “They hold their jobs by being abusive.” Who’s next?
Who would be left? Papp backed
down: “My statement that he should be fired was hyperbolic.” Then he added: “He deserves to be, but I
wouldn’t want to be the one responsible.”
Equity may
take that role. “This is not a First
Amendment issue,” says executive secretary Alan Eisenberg. “You draw the line when you think it’s time
to draw the line. We think this is the
time.” Harry Newman of the
Non-Traditional Casting Project takes a more tempered view: “A frontal attack
on John Simon will only backfire. He
does it for the publicity.”
*
* * *
“THE MEAN-SPIRITED CRITIC”
by Eric Breindel
“Agendas”
New York Post
20 April 1989
A dispute
over a well-known theater critic’s tendency to mock the physical
characteristics of performers whose ethnicity—in his view—renders them unsuited
to the parts they play has turned into a major cultural controversy.
Colleen
Dewhurst, the president of Actors Equity, impresario Joe Papp and Hazel Dukes
of the NAACP are just a few among many who have called for the dismissal or
chastisement of New York magazine theater critic John Simon—in response to a
recent review by Simon of a Papp production.
In his review
of Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale,” Simon rides his ethnic-casting hobby
horse with particular vigor.
He maintains
that the production is marred by “perverse casting” and argues that the “chief
disaster” is allowing actor Mandy Patinkin to play King Leontes.
According to
Simon, Patinkin’s “bulky, hulking head, further swelled by a mass of raven hair,
makes him look rather like a caricature in the notorious Nazi publication Der
Stuermer.”
Simon’s
message: This obvious Jew has no business playing anything in Shakespeare’s
repertoire, save, perhaps, for Shylock and kindred Jewish roles. Certainly, Patinkin, given his appearance,
shouldn’t be on stage as King Leontes, Simon would have it.
In the same
review, a couple of paragraphs later, Simon also takes issue with the casting
of black actress Alfre Woodard as Paulina.
He says she looks like “a cross between Topsy [of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’]
and the Medusa.”
Simon goes on
to term Woodard a “pretty fair impersonation of Butterfly McQueen.” (McQueen, of course, was best known for her
portrayal of Scarlett O’Hara’s excitable slave-nanny in “Gone With the Wind.”)
This is
clearly mean-spirited and ugly stuff.
Papp’s response—“I’m really disgusted by this”—seems just about right,
although the impresario’s added suggestion that Simon “look in the mirror”
because he’s “hardly the ideal Aryan . . . and may be a denying, self-hating
Jew” goes a bit far. In fact, it drags
Papp down to Simon’s level.
Who, after
all, cares why the European-born
Simon is so repelled by Mandy Patinkin’s Semitic features that he can’t focus
on the play?
The calls for
Simon’s dismissal were rejected by New York magazine’s able publisher and
editor Edward Kosner, who views the question largely in free-speech terms.
Kosner, in an
“Editor’s Note” published in response to Dewhurst’s letter, defends Simon’s
right to hold an “unpopular view” on an “esthetic issue on which thoughtful
people may legitimately disagree.”
Surely,
Kosner is correct in affirming Simon’s right to argue that ethnic
considerations—and, indeed, physical characteristics—should play a role in
casting. In fact, this isn’t a
particularly radical stance—hunchbacks, after all, aren’t often cast as leading
men.
Simon, to be
sure, takes a rather absolutist view.
But the real
issue, in any event, isn’t Simon’s right to advance this point of view. The question is whether it is appropriate for
him to express it by likening a Jewish performer’s appearance to the
caricatures that appeared in Julius Streicher’s newspaper.
The
caricatures in question were a key feature of Der Stuermer, a
quasi-pornographic, high-circulation, Nuremberg-based scandal sheet which
depicted Jews—often on its front page—as misshapen, hook-nosed, reptilian
creatures engaged in defiling Aryan women.
Streicher was
a demented pervert and an embarrassment even to the Nazi elite; he was
half-crazed by the time he was put on trial after the Second World War.
But the
caricatures he published in Der Stuermer were important: They set the tone for
a central element in the Nazi propaganda onslaught against the Jews and were
widely imitated, on stage and even in film—chiefly because they served the
purpose of dehumanizing the Jew by likening him to an animal.
They rendered
concrete, in other words, the Nazi concept of the Jew as a “subhuman”
(untermensch) and thus helped pave the way, by contributing to the necessary
mass psychological reconditioning, for the Final Solution.
This isn’t
irrelevant historical background. Simon’s
description of Patinkin as looking like a Stuermer caricature involves a highly
specific historical reference; it’s important, therefore, to identify the
reference and to spell out what it evokes for those familiar with it.
The question
for the public isn’t whether Simon should be dismissed by New York
magazine—that’s between the critic and his editors.
Nor is the
issue—to reiterate—Simon’s right to argue his views in casting, ethnicity and
physical appearance.
The real
question—again—is whether Simon, in the course if making his case, crosses over
into the realm of the inappropriate.
What’s
appropriate and what’s not is invariably a judgment call. And it’s true Simon uses the word “notorious”
to describe Der Stuermer—a device intended to protect him from charges that he
condones the caricatures. But this
transparent effort doesn’t change the bottom line.
In the last
analysis, Simon, introducing from nowhere a Nazi reference in order to enliven
his point, compares the physical appearance of a Jewish performer to a Stuermer
caricature. If that’s not inappropriate,
it’s hard to imagine what is.
[Julius Streicher (1885-1946), founder and editor of Der Stürmer (also spelled Stuermer; ‘the striker’), became a virulent
anti-Semite after he was released from World War I service with the German army
after the 1918 armistice. He hadn’t
exhibited such tendencies before and it’s unclear what precipitated Streicher’s
sudden embrace of the most radical anti-Semitism of all the Nazi
hierarchy.
[He joined several nationalist groups and eventually
became a Nazi in 1921. He almost
immediately became a member of Hitler’s inner circle. The other Nazi elites soon began to distance
themselves from Streicher because of his vocal and violent hatred of Jews for
fear that he would eventually embarrass the party, but Hitler remained loyal to
his close friend.
[I’m not sure what Breindel meant by labeling Streicher a
“demented pervert,” however. When he was
finally stripped of his party rank and offices in 1940, he was accused of being
a flagrant adulterer; of carrying a bullwhip around Nuremberg, his hometown
where he was Gauleiter; and of telling and printing outrageous and fabricated
stories about other senior members of the Nazi Party.
[He was tried by the first Nuremberg war-crimes tribunal,
accused of being an accessory to murder for his high-profile campaign against
the Jews and was executed for crimes against humanity in October 1946. He went to the gallows shouting “Heil
Hitler!” and cursing the Jews and the Allies.
[I don’t know if a director today would cast a
“hunchback” as a leading man—Richard III, perhaps, a figurative and literal lady-killer—but
we have just seen an Ado Annie from Oklahoma!
in a wheelchair (Ali Stroker, who won a Tony) and prior to that, a Laura
Wingfield of Tennessee Williams’s Glass Menagerie also in a wheelchair (Madison Ferris).
[Untermensch (it
would be capitalized in German, as are all nouns) is obviously the opposite of Übermensch (‘superman’) and literally means ‘underman,’
or, as Breindel had it, ‘subhuman.’]
*
* * *
“THE PUBLIC vs. SIMON”
by Simi Horwitz
TheaterWeek
24-30 April 1989
[TheaterWeek was a
popular magazine about all varieties and aspects of theater, published in New
York City from 1987 to 1996. Founded by Mike
Salinas, a theater reporter, it was finally defeated by poor financial
management.]
How John
Simon brought down the house—on himself
[“]John Simon’s
review of The Winter’s Tale is the
most scurrilous I have ever read. It’s a
Nazi viewpoint,” asserts producer Joe Papp.
“Simon’s theater criticism stems from the concept of the ubermensch, the super person, the
beautiful Aryan. For Simon, the only thing
that’s beautiful is the nubile, pubescent girl of Nordic descent, on or off
stage.”
Simon’s
well-publicized New York magazine
review of Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival production of The Winter’s Tale, directed by James
Lapine, has sparked a donnybrook in theatrical and editorial circles. Position statements have been issued by the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the
Anti-Defamation League. Actors’ Equity
president Colleen Dewhurst has called for Simon’s dismissal by his publisher,
Ed Kosner. Angry letters and rebuttals
have been exchanged, and there has been lots of mud-slinging on all sides. The immediate source of the brouhaha is Simon’s
commentary on the casting of Mandy Patinkin as Leontes, the jealousy enraged
King of Sicilia, and Alfre Woodard as Paulina, a compassionate and resolute
lady of the court, a key figure in Shakespeare’s romance.
On Patinkin,
Simon writes: “Since . . . he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, he tends
to keep them behind his back, as if he were handcuffed or an international
financier. This, combining with his
bulky, hulking head further swelled by a mass of raven hair makes him look
rather like a caricature in the notorious Nazi publication Der Stürmer.”
He describes
Woodard as “. . . visually a cross between Topsy and Medusa, aurally (at any
rate in the first half) a pretty fair impersonation of Butterfly McQueen. If Miss Woodard weren’t black, one might
suspect her of racism; as it is one suspects her merely of not having the
foggiest notion about how to play a classical role.”
Is this
legitimate theater criticism? Or is it
racism and anti-Semitism passing itself off as criticism?
For actress
Colleen Dewhurst it’s the latter. In her
irate letter to New York publisher and
editor Edward Kosner, she insists, “Simon has written on a level that
unwittingly condones bigotry and racism . . . worse, with the appearance of
this virulent review in a national magazine, Mr. Simon has played to the
narrow-mindedness of others across the nation with similar feelings, confirming
for them that their bigotry is acceptable. . .
Mr. Simon has irresponsibly attacked and defamed the theater, a
producer, and a cast committed to presenting on stage the face of our nation,
on the basis of race and national origin.
This is completely unwarranted and unacceptable. And therefore as President of Actors Equity,
I call upon you to remove him from his present position,”
To Dewhurst’s letter Kosner responds:
“. . . Simon has put forth his views in scholarly essays and other forums. You and Actors’ Equity are free to attack
Simon’s position in this regard, to urge others to criticize him or to suggest
he be shunned in the marketplace of ideas.
That’s the American way. But it
is quite another thing to call for his dismissal over an aesthetic issue in
which thoughtful people may legitimately disagree. John’s view may be unpopular, but he does
have the right to express it in appropriate terms.
“Were his observations about Patinkin
and Woodard anti-Semitic and racist? If
read hurriedly, one might wonder. But I
feel strongly that an attentive reading of these passages yields quite another
interpretation: to my eye, at least, Simon is identifying stereotypes and—commenting on the relationship of these performances
to the stereotypes. He in no way
endorses the stereotypes.” (The emphasis
is Kosner’s.)
Simon’s review has brought to the
surface one of the most emotionally, politically, and culturally charged issues
this reporter has covered. Talking to the
principals (those who would comment at all), it become obvious that The Winter’s Tale review is only part of
a larger story, one that has unleashed feelings that go beyond debate over
racism and anti-Semitism. Most of the
comments were characterized by either angry free-associative ramblings (the
word “appalled” popped up a lot), or terse prepared statements with concomitant
refusals to elaborate further. Some of
those interviewed chose to play dumb.
When asked if he sees it as racist to object to inter-ethnic casting, or
to acknowledge that ethnic differences existed at all, Actors’ Equity executive
secretary Alan Eisenberg responds, “That question is too abstract for me.” In his own letter to Kosner, written a day
after Dewhurst’s, he characterizes Simon’s work as “spittle-spotted criticism.”
At bottom are several sore points, not
the least of which is Simon’s history of cruel attacks on the looks and
personae of actors he is reviewing. He
was also involved in an imbroglio in 1985 when Liz Smith reported a homophobic
comment he allegedly made to a companion in the theater lobby: “Homosexuals in
the theater! I can’t wait until AIDS
gets all of them!”
But beyond the retaliatory impulses,
this hotly debated little episode raises serious issues about the critic’s
role, his power, and his right to express his views, even if they are seen as
racist or anti-Semitic or homophobic.
The larger question, of course, concerns the definition of those terms.
“The John Simon review poses a
conflict for us,” says American Civil Liberties Union spokesperson Loren
Siegel. “Race consciousness in itself
doesn’t mean he should be fired. We
certainly support his freedom to say what he wants in print. However, if as a result of his statement—and
he is a public figure—discriminating hiring practices are put into effect, that’s
another story. I don’t know what the
answer is.”
And finally, there’s the whole sticky
interrelationship between aesthetics—which may indeed be culturally biased—and
politics and their application to the theater.
Dewhurst stresses in her letter to Kosner that “The concept of
non-traditional casting, defined as the casting of ethnic minority, female, and
disabled actors in roles where race, ethnicity, or sex is not germane to the
character or play’s development is most important to Actors’ Equity
Association. As President of Equity I
have stated this as a number-one priority.”
And it is no secret that Joe Papp
believes theater is at least in part a political vehicle, a springboard to
reflect and advocate particular social agendas.
“I believe casting must be color-blind, especially in the classics,”
asserts Papp. “Perhaps in contemporary
plays color-blind casting is more difficult.
The chances are you’re not going to cast a black as a billionaire. And you’re not going to cast a black as a Ku
Klux Klansman. Casting has to be
appropriate to the milieu, although the audience can adjust to almost any
casting very quickly. And if they can’t,
it’s more a reflection of their attitudes.
Racism in this country is deeply rooted.
“Could I have gotten a better white
actress to Paulina than Alfre Woodard?
Frankly, I’m not sure. In any
case, I believe a black can bring an added dimension to a performance because
of the black experience. With inter-ethnic
casting you’re ultimately doing yourself a favor. And, with repeated exposures, initially
resistant audiences will rethink their attitudes.”
Dewhurst recalls that when she played
Gertrude to James Earl Jones’s Claudius in Papp’s production of Hamlet 16 years ago, it was Jones who
walked off with the critics’ plaudits.
“Mr. Jones’s talent was such that both critics and audiences alike
recognized only that he was the King and that I, as the Queen, was obviously
mad for him,” she writes Kosner.
Dewhurst and Papp’s popular liberal
viewpoint is very much at odds with Simon, who has made it vividly clear that
he is a traditionalist and purist. And
although he did not object to the casting of a black star as Claudius, he
blasted Papp’s Hamlet production, describing
James Earl Jones this way: “His built-in echo-chamber voice roller-coasts
aimlessly up and down the octaves, his body is dragged about like a large side
of beef by a butcher embarrassed to have strayed onto a stage . . .” As for Dewhurst’s performance, he said she
was alternatingly “kittenish, or clomps about like a hoplite, and forces her
voice down into a whispering baritone.”
Simon would not comment (according to
his assistant, “He’s talked to enough reporters and he has said all he’s going
to say”), but his usual—or at least current—views on inter-ethnic casting are
widely known.
Indeed, in a recent interview with New York Post columnist Diana Maychick
he is quoted as saying, “You can’t play the king of a Greek or Roman kingdom if
you look too ethnic. . . And blacks do
not belong in parts for white actresses, unless they can pass for white. That’s wrong—historically, sociologically and
logically.” [This refers to Maychick’s
30 March column, posted in Part 1 of this collection, 28 November.]
It was that statement, even more than
the original reviews, that set off the current ruckus. “We are appalled by John Simon’s narrow and
stilted view,” says Jeffrey [P. S]inensky, director of Anti-Defamation League’s
civil rights division. “It’s not simply
that he objects to inter-ethnic casting, he goes way beyond that when he talks
about the inappropriateness of casting ethnic minorities in Shakespeare. . . If you carry Simon’s position to its logical
end, you would have to conclude that Shakespeare should not be performed in
either Israel or the entire continent of Africa. We find that position unacceptable.” Asked if he supports the call for Simon’s
dismissal, [S]inensky says, “We will not comment on that or involve ourselves
in that question.”
Equity’s Alan Eisenberg fudges the
issue this way: “Actors’ Equity supports a reporter’s right to say what he
wants. Freedom of speech protects
cruelty. So that’s not the issue. I would like to see John Simon fired because
he’s a terrible critic. It’s not only The Winter’s Tale review. It’s his total body of work. He’s so non-constructive, no longer amusing
on any level. Ugly. So totally out of tune.”
“He’s an anachronism, a throwback,”
agrees Amsterdam News publisher Bill
Tatum. “He’s a mean, embittered old man,
not particularly attractive himself, who finds people of color offensive in
roles written for whites. Yet he has no
problem with blacks being portrayed in blackface à la Al Jolson or Eddie
Cantor. He will probably object to Forbidden City [the late Bill Gunn’s
black family drama, directed by Papp, that opened last week at the Public]
because it portrays a black family speaking perfect English. They don’t sound like pickaninnies.” In fact, Simon hated Forbidden City, though not for that reason.
“But Simon’s problem goes beyond
racism,” continues Tatum. “His only
talent is for vituperation. Equality of
venom is no criteria for acceptability, nor does it make him any less racist. .
. Do I think he should be fired? That’s up to Ed [Kosner] to decide if this is
the kind of thinking he wants his magazine to represent.”
Answers Kosner, in a letter to Colleen
Dewhurst, “There is no place for anti-Semitism, racism, or anti-homosexual
attitudes in New York magazine, and
you won’t find any.”
Initially, Papp also called for Simon’s
dismissal, but apparently he’s reneged a bit.
His position as a civil libertarian is well known. “No, I don’t want to see him fired. The man is too unimportant. Anyway, it’s out of my hands. It’s not producer vs. critic anymore. It’s much bigger than that. It’s a societal issue and society has to take
a stand on whether it’ll tolerate obnoxious statements like Simon’s without
responding.
“I’m not advocating anything, but
people who object could be involved in civil disobedience demonstrations,
letter-writing campaigns, or they could boycott advertisers. That’s a democracy. . . frankly, I could keep
Simon from the theater. Not that I
would. He’s too small.”
Papp’s wrath is not exclusively
targeted at Simon. When the reporter
points out that Daily News reviewer
Howard Kissel also objected to Patinkin’s performance on the grounds that
Patinkin “often sounds very Jewish which helps neither the verse nor the play,”
:Papp says, “He said that? Let me get a hold of that paper.” [Rustling of pages can be heard in the . . . (some
text seems to have dropped out during production).] [“]. . . did say it. The man is a
schmuck! Let me spell that for you. S-C-H-M-U-C-K. Schmuck.
You know, when the Daily News
hired him, I wrote to the publisher to tell them what a poor choice he
was. Kissel writes things like that
because he’s frustrated. Nobody listens
to him.”
Told of Papp’s comments, Kissel
responds, “Well, I’m glad to know I was hired despite his letter.” Regarding his Winter’s Tale review, he says, “When a performer’s style or speech
calls attention to itself, it’s just inappropriate to Shakespeare. But then, given the weirdness of the whole
production, in which anyone was allowed to do almost anything, it all
fits.” As for Papp’s “schmuck” remarks,
Kissel adds, “No one has done more to lower the standard of Shakespearean
performance than Joe Papp. Since I’ve
been saying this for many years, I’m not surprised at the vehemence of his
remarks. I find him amusing.”
Kissel’s amusement is not shared by
Papp, who says, “My problem with all of them, and that includes Frank Rich at
the Times, is why these reviews are not held to the same level of accountability
as the reporter covering say, Peking. Theater is news. Reviewers are reporters, not stars. Yet they’re treated as stars. They’re the only ones on a newspaper or magazine who do not even have to
reflect the publication’s viewpoint.”
“I disagree,” Kosner retorts. “I can tell you that at New York magazine John and the other reviewers all meet the
standards we set forth: intelligence, conscientiousness, seriousness of
purpose, and attentiveness. As for
reviewers not being obliged to conform to the magazine’s viewpoint, not
true! At New York, we have no particular viewpoint!”
“You know what I’d like, what I’d really like,” Papp says. “I’d like to see all the reviewers in New
York put in a room, the doors sealed permanently. And then let them all talk each other to
death forever.”
[The contretemps between the theater
press and producer Joe Papp (1921-91) got a little over the top, I think. Papp certainly did. His ultimate punishment for reviewers,
locking them in a room together forever, sounds a little No
Exit to me! I suppose that makes it appropriately
theatrical—not to mention absurd.
[Historically, though, the conflict
that broke out here, John Simon aside for the time being, has a parallel. I introduce my article “The Power of the
Reviewer—Myth or Fact?,” posted on ROT on 23 and 26 January 2011, with the story:
In “Reviewing
a Play Under Injunction” (4 April 1915), the New York
Times reported the following incident:
Beginning the
day after there had been printed in The New York Times an unfavorable review of “Taking Chances,”
a new farce presented on March 17 [1915] at the Thirty-ninth Street Theatre,
Alexander Woollcott, dramatic critic of The Times, received several indirect notifications that he would thereafter be
excluded from all theatres under the control of the Messrs. Shubert.
. . . .
Last Thursday
evening the Shuberts executed their threat against Mr. Woollcott by excluding
him from Maxine Elliott’s Theatre when he presented purchased tickets entitling
him to orchestra seats.
Woollcott (1887-1943),
arguably the most famous theater reviewer of his day, had bought tickets to
Edward Locke’s (1869–1945) The Revolt because the Shuberts, the most powerful producers in the country, had
already ceased sending press seats to the Times for him. When the producers
prevented a legal ticketholder from entering the theater, legislation was
proposed in Albany making such action illegal.
This may not have been the first case of a producer taking action
against a reviewer, but it may have been the point at which their adversarial
relationship solidified. Within days
after J. J. Shubert (c. 1879-1963) and two house managers physically blocked
Woollcott from seeing the play, the reviewer, backed by his paper, got an
injunction prohibiting the Shuberts from keeping him out of their theaters and
sued them under the Civil Rights Act of 1871.
Times publisher Adolph Ochs (1858-1935)
canceled the Shuberts’ advertising, sued them for “prior restraint of the
press,” and awarded Woollcott more space, a byline, and a raise. Within a few weeks, the injunction was
lifted, Woollcott and the Times
eventually lost their suits, and the Shuberts were able to bring pressure in
Albany to defeat legislation prohibiting them from denying entry to any
law-abiding person, but by that time the damage to the producers’ cause had
been long done. All the New York papers
lined up behind the Times, and
Woollcott was thrust into the forefront of New York theater journalism and the
paper began its rise to its present-day prominence.
Despite the
Shuberts’ eventual victory in court, the battle ended badly for the
producers: “The power of New York
theater critics . . . was confirmed by the time the curtain came down and the
Shuberts conceded,” reads one subsequent report.
[In more recent years, Papp and
several fellow producers have taken to a new tactic—or a variation of an old
one. In an echo from the 1915
Shubert-Woollcott clash, some non-commercial producers have begun to run shows
in previews, to which the press isn’t invited and, by convention, about which
they cannot write, virtually until the show’s scheduled to close.
[Beyond that, Papp’s remarks about
non-traditional casting above were graceless and clumsy, but when he observed
that no one was likely to cast an African-American actor as a Klansman, he
couldn’t have predicted the 2018 Spike Lee film BlacKkKlansman—even though the incident it depicts
occurred in 1978, 11 years before the Simon controversy arose.
[Furthermore, Papp couldn’t have
foreseen that in 2019, Forbes magazine would report that there are 12 black billionaires in the world,
plus three multi-racial persons with a billion dollars or more in assets.
[The production of Hamler
to which Dewhurst refers, in which she
played Gertrude to James Earl Jones’s Claudius, was staged by Gerald Freedman
at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park in June and July 1972. Stacy Keach was Hamlet and other illustrious
members of the cast included Charles Durning as the 1st Gravedigger, Linda Hunt
as the Player Queen, Barnard Hughes as Polonius, Raul Julia as Oscric, and Sam
Waterston as Laertes; Christine Baranski was a Lady of the court.
[By the way: A hoplite (mentioned
above in a Simon quotation) is a heavily-armed infantry soldier of Ancient
Greece.]
* *
* *
[Thank you for reading Parts 1 through
3 of “‘Moron! Vermin! Curate! Cretin! Crritic!!’: John Simon (1925-2019),” my recognition
of the death of the notorious theater reviewer.
Please come back to Rick On Theater on 7 December for the final installment of
this series and my concluding remarks.)
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