On Criticism

 
“JOHN UPDIKE’S 6 RULES FOR CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM”
by Maria Popova

[Back on 17 July, my friend Kirk Woodward e-mailed me the following article from The Atlantic of 2 May 2012.  He entitled his message “Useful (and brilliant)” and added that in the article, about John Updike’s book Picked-Up Pieces, the writer was providing advice “on criticizing a written piece, but with more general application.”  (I strongly suspect that what Kirk was thinking about specifically was theater and perhaps film criticism and reviewing, a craft at which both he and I have turned our hands.)

[The Atlantic essayist, Maria Popova, makes the same point in her article.  Therefore, I pass her remarks and Updike’s along to readers of Rick On Theater.

[John Updike (1932-2009) was a novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic.  In her essay, Popova invokes two other writers of note, Sir Ken Robinson and E. B. White.  Popova has written short essays on these two men of letters and ideas and I’ve collected her comments on them with “John Updike’s 6 Rules” and posted all three together below.]

How to assess other people's work graciously and fairly.

As Sir Ken Robinson thoughtfully observed, we live in a kind of "opinion culture" where not having an opinion is a cultural abomination. At the same time, the barrier of entry for making one's opinions public is lower than ever. The tragedy of our time might well be that so many choose to set those opinions apart by making them as contrarian and abrasive as possible. But what E. B. White once wisely pointed to as the role and social responsibility of the writer—"to lift people up, not lower them down"—I believe to be true of the role and social responsibility of the critic as well, for thoughtful criticism is itself an art and a creative act.

We need to relearn the skills of making criticism constructive rather than destructive, and we need look no further than the introduction to John Updike's 1977 [sic] anthology of prose, Picked-Up Pieces [1976, Knopf/Random House; paperback: Fawcett, 1986], where the beloved author and critic codifies the ethics and poetics of criticism by offering the following six rules to reviewing graciously and fairly. Though they were written with literature in mind, at their heart is an ethos that applies to critique and criticism in any discipline.

My rules, drawn up inwardly when l embarked on this craft, and shaped intaglio-fashion by youthful traumas at the receiving end of critical opinion, were and are:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation—at least one extended passage—of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending. (How astounded and indignant was I, when innocent, to find reviewers blabbing, and with the sublime inaccuracy of drunken lords reporting on a peasants' revolt, all the turns of my suspenseful and surpriseful narrative! Most ironically, the only readers who approach a book as the author intends, unpolluted by pre-knowledge of the plot, are the detested reviewers themselves. And then, years later, the blessed fool who picks the volume at random from a library shelf.)

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's ouevre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser. Do not accept for review a book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like. Do not imagine yourself a caretaker of any tradition, an enforcer of any party standards, a warrior in an idealogical [sic] battle, a corrections officer of any kind. Never, never (John Aldridge, Norman Podhoretz) try to put the author 'in his place,' making him a pawn in a contest with other reviewers. Review the book, not the reputation. Submit to whatever spell, weak or strong, is being cast. Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.

[Maria Popova, a Bulgarian-born, American-based writer of literary and arts commentary and cultural criticism, is the editor of Brain Pickings (now The Marginalian), an online publication that The Atlantic has labeled “an Atlantic partner site.”  She also writes for Wired UK and GOOD, and is an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow.

[Updike’s examples of critics who write to humble or rebuke someone may not be familiar to everyone.  John Aldridge (1922-2007), a writer, literary critic, teacher, and scholar, was hostile to, as he himself wrote, “writers whose reputations seemed to me to have become inordinately enlarged and upon whom I saw it as my sacred duty to perform a deflating operation.”  Some writers, such as Gore Vidal, castigated Aldridge, while others, like Norman Mailer, praised him.

[Neoconservative commentator and former editor of Commentary magazine Norman Podhoretz (b. 1930), declares himself a “‘paleo-neoconservative’ because I’ve been one for so long.”  He’s a staunch believer in “Americanism”—which I take to mean American Exceptionalism, sometimes seen by conservatives as a belief that the United States may make its own rules of conduct because it’s special.  As an unwavering neocon, a movement he helped launch, Podhoretz sees only one way to defeat domestic anti-Americanism: “to fight it intellectually.”

[ROT has run many articles on theater reviews, reviewing, and criticism.  Some of them provide examples of Updike’s advice—and others describe exemplars of approaches of which Updike would disapprove:

•   “On Reviewing,” 22 March 2009

•   “The Art of Writing Reviews by Kirk Woodward,” 4, 8, 11, and 14 November 2009

•   “Eric Bentley – An Appreciation” by Kirk Woodward, 4 December 2012

•   “Culture War,” 6 February 2014

•   “Joan Acocella: Critic, Historian, Or Critic-Historian. An Interview, 28 November 1988” (archival text with New Yorker review), 31 May 2019

•   “‘Moron! Vermin! Curate! Cretin! Crritic!!’: John Simon (1925-2019),” 28 November and 1, 4, and 7 December 2019

•   “Reviewers” by Lily Janiak, Jeremy Gerard, and Alice Saville, 6 July 2020

•   “In Memoriam: Eric Bentley (1916-2020)” by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt and Nathaniel G. Nesmith, 2 September 2020

•   “Max Beerbohm’s Theater Reviews” by Kirk Woodward, 2 November 2020

•   “Kenneth Tynan” by Kirk Woodward, 29 September 2021

[There are also copious examples of reviews and criticism on the blog and other articles about writers who have produced criticism, but which cover other aspects of their work.  That list would be excessively long.]

*  *  *  *

“E. B. WHITE ON THE ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITY OF THE WRITER”
by Maria Popova
 

[The essay below was posted on The Marginalian on 17 March 2012 at https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/04/17/e-b-white-paris-review-interview/.

[The writer E. B. White (1899-1985) was the author of highly popular books for children, including Stuart Little (1945), Charlotte’s Web (1952), and The Trumpet of the Swan (1970). 

[He was also the co-author of the English language style guide The Elements of Style (originally written by William Strunk, Jr. [1869-1946], in 1918, and published in 1920; enlarged and revised by White in 1959).  The style guide became widely known by writers and writing students simply as “Strunk and White.”]

“Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.”

Recently, heading to Columbia to take part in a symposium on the future of journalism — a subject that feels at once on some great cusp and under the weight of a myriad conflicting pressures — I found myself revisiting E.B. White’s spectacular 1969 conversation with The Paris Review’s George Plimpton and sidekick Frank H. Crowther [“The Art of the Essay,” 1969], included in the altogether superb interview, included in the altogether unputdownable The Paris Review Interviews, vol. IV [Picador, 2009].

White — who has also voiced strong opinions on the free press and, of course, the architecture of language — shares some timeless yet strikingly timely insights on the role and the responsibility of the writer:

A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter. I feel no obligation to deal with politics. I do feel a responsibility to society because of going into print: a writer has the duty to be good, not lousy; true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down. Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.

One important reflection is that in 1969, implicit to the very nature of print was a kind of accountability, a truth standard that engendered in White this sense of “responsibility to society.” As news and opinion have shifted online, a medium much more fluid and dynamic, this notion of baked-in accountability no longer holds true and, one might observe, has allowed journalistic laziness that would never have been acceptable in White’s heyday. What standards and expectations we adopt and instill in writers and publishers today will “inform and shape life.”

When asked how he sees the role of the writer in an era “increasingly enamored of and dependent upon science and technology” — bear in mind, this is 1969 — White answers:

The writer’s role is what it has always been: he is a custodian, a secretary. Science and technology have perhaps deepened his responsibility but not changed it. In [the 1956 essay] ‘The Ring of Time,’ I wrote: ‘As a writing man, or secretary, I have always felt charged with the safekeeping of all unexpected items of worldly or unworldly enchantment, as though I might be held personally responsible if even a small one were to be lost. But it is not easy to communicate anything of this nature.’

A writer must reflect and interpret his society, his world; he must also provide inspiration and guidance and challenge. Much writing today strikes me as deprecating, destructive, and angry. There are good reasons for anger, and I have nothing against anger. But I think some writers have lost their sense of proportion, their sense of humor, and their sense of appreciation. I am often mad, but I would hate to be nothing but mad: and I think I would lose what little value I may have as a writer if I were to refuse, as a matter of principle, to accept the warming rays of the sun, and to report them, whenever, and if ever, they happen to strike me. One role of the writer today is to sound the alarm. The environment is disintegrating, the hour is late, and not much is being done. Instead of carting rocks from the moon, we should be carting the feces out of Lake Erie.

I love this notion of a custodian, or secretary, or interpreter, of culture. Though the word “curator” is tragically flawed, the ideals at its heart — to shine a light on the meaningful, to frame for the reader or viewer what matters in the world and why — remain an important piece of the evolution of authorship. What White describes as the role of the writer is very much the role of the cultural custodian today, in the broadest, most platform-agnostic sense of the role possible.

But perhaps most brilliantly, in one swift sentence White captures everything that’s wrong with the sensationalism that permeates media today, from the HuffPostification of headlines to the general linkbait alarmism of language designed to squeeze out another barely-monetized pageview:

Shocking writing is like murder: the questions the jury must decide are the questions of motive and intent.

Complement with White on the future of reading, what makes a great city, why he wrote Charlotte’s Web, the two faces of discipline and his warm letter of assurance to a man who had lost faith in humanity, then plunge into this evolving library of wisdom on writing from some of humanity’s greatest writers. 

[I’m somewhat of a fan of E. B. White.  One of his other books is a collection of essays, The Points of My Compass (Harper & Row, 1962).  It’s been in my library for 58 years (for some reason my copy is British, published the next year).  I read White’s essays avidly when I was still in high school.  I liked the way he wrote, easily and unaffectedly, with considerable, but understated, humor.  

[I never much considered writing at that age.  In fact, writing didn’t become remotely important in my life until graduate school.  But if I ever did write anything worth reading, I would have liked it to be like White’s essays.  At 17, I had read Points like a novel, as if there were a plot that drew me on inexorably.

[The Elements of Style is another matter.  I don’t remember when I first got a copy, probably also in high school.  The copy of Strunk and White I have now dates from 1972, which puts it in my army years.  I certainly never had need of it then: the army had its own, inimitable writing style.  (As an intelligence agent, I did have a lot of on-the-job writing—reports of various kinds, and even one book-length staff study.)  

[But along came grad school and a master’s thesis.  I also took a criticism class that required regular reviews.  Strunk and White got very useful all of a sudden.  Believe me, it’s well-thumbed by now!]

*  *  *  *

“SIR KEN ROBINSON ON HOW FINDING YOUR ELEMENT CHANGES EVERYTHING”
by Maria Popova
 

[Also posted on The Marginalian on 17 March 2012, the article below is available at https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/04/17/sir-ken-robinson-school-of-life/.

[Sir Ken Robinson (1950-2020) was a British author, speaker, and international advisor on education in the arts.  He’s written extensively on arts education; The Arts in Schools: Principles, Practice, and Provision (Greener Books Ltd, 1982), is now a key text on arts and education internationally. 

[Among his several awards and honors, in 2008, he won the Peabody Medal for contributions to the arts and culture in the United States and the Benjamin Franklin Medal of the Royal Society of Arts for contributions to cultural relations between the United Kingdom and the United States.  He was knighted in 2003 for services to the arts.]

What knowing the limits of knowledge has to do with finding the frontiers of creativity.

Sir Ken Robinson has previously challenged and delighted us with his vision for changing educational paradigms to better optimize a broken system for creativity.

In this wonderful talk from The School of Life, Robinson articulates the ethos at the heart of The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything [Penguin, 2009] — one of 7 essential books on education — and echoes, with his signature blend of wit and wisdom, many of the insights in this indispensable collection of advice on how to find your purpose and do what you love.

Robinson seconds Stuart Firestein’s insight on the importance of ignorance in exploration and growth:

In our culture, not to know is to be at fault socially . . . [.] People pretend to know lots of things they don’t know. Because the worst thing to do is appear to be uninformed about something, to not have an opinion. . . [.] We should know the limits of our knowledge and understand what we don’t know, and be willing to explore things we don’t know without feeling embarrassed of not knowing about them.

Among Robinson’s many astute observations is also one about our socially distorted metrics of achievement, in line with Alain de Botton’s admonition about “success”:

It’s not enough to be good at something to be in your element. . . [.] We’re being brought up with this idea that life is linear. This is an idea that’s perpetuated when you come to write your CV — that you set out your life in a series of dates and achievements, in a linear way, as if your whole existence has progressed in an ordered, structured way, to bring you to this current interview.

If you haven’t yet read The Element, do — it might just change how you relate to everything you do.

[The School of Life, an educational organization that offers guidance on a variety “life issues,” was founded by a group of intellectuals in 2008 and has its headquarters in London and branches in Amsterdam, Berlin, Istanbul, Paris, São Paulo, and Taipei.  It is not without its critics and detractors.

[Stuart Firestein is a biologist and chairman of the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University.  Raised in Philadephia, he became active in theater in Los Angeles and San Francisco and worked in the field there and on the East Coast for 20 years.  At 30, he enrolled full time in San Francisco State University and at 40, got an advanced degree.

[Firestein published Ignorance: How it Drives Science (Oxford University Press, 2012) and spoke frequently on the subject of the significance of ignorance in scientific inquiry.  Science, he says, is often like searching for a black cat in a dark room, and there might not be a cat.

[Alain de Botton (b. 1969) is a Swiss-born British philosopher and author.  (De Botton was one of the founders of The School of Life.)  Popova doesn’t identify the “admonition about ‘success,’” but in her 27 February 2012 essay on The Marginalian, “How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love” (https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/02/27/purpose-work-love/), Popova quotes from de Botton’s 2009 TED talk “A kinder, gentler philosophy of success” (https://www.ted.com/talks/alain_de_botton_a_kinder_gentler_philosophy_of_success).

[(It’s somewhat ambiguous, but Popova’s quotation at the end of her essay is from Robinson, but not from The Element; it appears to have been something he said, perhaps in a lecture.  It’s not from anything composed by de Botton, however.)]

Plagiarizing Oneself . . .

. . . And Other Courtroom Inanities

[Back in the 1980s and ’90s, I kept a collection of clippings and notes that I thought could be ideas for plays.  Since I’m not a playwright, though, I never followed up, so the notes and ideas sat accusingly in a folder. 

[Then along came Rick On Theater in March of 2009 and I repurposed several of the ideas into blog posts: “The Group of Hissed Authors” (7 May 2009), “Romeo Coates” (30 May, 31 May, and 2 June 2009), “Sailor on Horseback” (1 September 2009), “Akhzivland” (24 December 2010).  The posts aren’t as exciting as plays would have been, but at least the ideas didn’t die entirely.  And they made pretty good posts, I thought.

[Among the ideas was one represented by a number of clippings about lawsuits concerning the plagiarism of one artist’s work by another or the asserted ownership of the rights to the work or story of one party by another.  They all struck me as examples of “the arrogance of producers who push their ownership rights to absurd lengths.”  Some of the cases struck me as so absurd that I kept the clippings for future possibilities. 

[Now I wonder if the copyright stories could make a decent post.  All the fun of seeing a staged version of the hearings will be lost—I’d have to describe it rather than show it live on stage with singing, playing, and dancing.  (There was no dancing in the trials, but in my head, there’d have to be—raucous, even—in the plays.)  Here, then, is my attempt to capture the inanities of some of these absurd cases.]

In February of 1989, in an instance I labeled “the height of that arrogance” which I mentioned in my introduction above, the producer of Three Faces of Eve (1957) claimed that the release signed by the woman whose situation was the factual basis of the movie gave 20th Century Fox the rights to her entire life, permitting them to prevent her from selling the film rights to a new book she’d written.  

As reported in the 1-7 February 1989 Variety, Chris Costner Sizemore (1927-2016) sued Fox on the argument that the release she signed in 1956 didn’t permit the studio to prohibit her from selling the movie rights to her forthcoming book. 

Sizemore, even though Three Faces was a huge hit, earning $1.4 million in the U.S. when it was released, had received only $7,000.  Aside from that, she was still mentally ill when she signed the release in the office of Corbett H. Thigpen, who acted as her agent as well as his own agent, even though he was also her psychiatrist.

(The new book was published by William Morrow & Co. in September 1989 as A Mind of My Own, but at the time of Variety’s publication of this notice, it was called In Sickness & in Health . . . .  In 1958, under the name Evelyn Lancaster, Sizemore had written Strangers in My Body: The Final Face of Eve with James Poling and, in 1977, she published I’m Eve, written with a cousin, Elen Sain Pittillo.  The 1989 book recounts Sizemore’s life since her recovery from multiple-personality disorder.)

Fox claimed that the 1956 release did, in fact, give it the rights to Sizemore’s whole life, not just the years covered by the movie, which was based on the book of the same title (McGraw-Hill, 1957) by her psychiatrists, Thigpen (1919-99) and Hervey M. Cleckley (1903-84).

Sizemore ultimately accepted a settlement from the studio and no further movie was made.  The case, particularly Fox’s claim to ownership of Sizemore’s entire life story, including the part that hadn’t even happened yet, struck me as an example of the hubris of the rich and powerful—with deep pockets and scores of lawyers to fight through the courts till the individual is brought to heel.  Even when they lose in court, they manage to win on the bottom line.

My friend Kirk Woodward, who comes from a family of lawyers (see his post “A Lawyer and a Life,” posted on Rick On Theater on 11 November 2010), told me of another case that illustrates this same haughtiness.  

In a case litigated by his cousin on behalf of Dr. David Maurer (1906-81), a professor of linguistics at the University of Louisville who wrote a number of books about underworld argots, including The Big Con (originally published by Bobbs Merrill, 1940).  Maurer’s book was used as a source for Universal Pictures’ 1973 The Sting without permission.  In 1974, the author sued Universal for $10 million for plagiarism.

Kirk told me that while his cousin was chasing down evidence in the Sting case, Universal told him to feel free to look through their files.  He found a letter saying, essentially, “We’ve based the script on Maurer’s book, but we just won’t tell him.”  

“A smoking gun,” concluded Kirk.  Maurer settled the case with Universal in 1976 for $300,000, but the studio delayed paying restitution until Maurer died.

Back in the ’80s and ’90s, there were a number of lawsuits concerning the plagiarism of an artist’s work.  Some of the cases struck me as absurd, so I kept the clipping file for future possibilities.  

One case was against John Fogerty (b. 1945), former lead singer and guitarist, and principal songwriter of the rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival from 1967 to 1972.  Fogarty was sued by the group’s former music publisher, Fantasy Inc., who owned the rights to CCR’s old catalogue from 1967 to 1972.  

In 1988, Fantasy accused Fogerty of plagiarizing himself by using a chorus from his 1970 hit “Run Through the Jungle” in a 1984 song “Old Man Down the Road” (which the company didn’t own).  The record company asked for $140 million in damages.

I’m not even convinced that an artist can plagiarize him- or herself to start with, but in this case, the reappearance of elements from one song (or painting, poem, novel, play, or any artwork) to another, I argue, is what makes an artist’s “style”—the thing that makes him or her unique and recognizable.  It’s innate in his or her art, not a copy of something done before. 

Fogerty, himself, complained, “I was sued for sounding like myself”!  His lawyer, Kenneth I. Sidle, of the Los Angeles firm of Gipson, Hoffman & Pancione, explained it this way: “What similarities there were between the two songs were the result of Mr. Fogerty having written both of them.  Both of them came out of the same musical vocabulary.” 

At a press conference after the hearing, Fogerty said the importance of the case was that it raised the possibility that if he lost, artists could be forced to change their creative styles lest they be sued for stealing their own ideas. 

The press reported that Fogerty revealed: “I saw the specter of a nightmare looming.  I could see William Shakespeare, John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen saying, ‘John, don’t blow this.’”

The hearing turned into something of an ad hoc performance—an impromptu mini-concert, if you will.  (We’ll see this again in an even more elaborate presentation shortly.)  Musicologists, of course, appeared at the trial as expert witnesses for both the plaintiff and the defendant.  Then Fogerty took the stand with his guitar to make his point.  

Over a day-and-a-half, the defendant played, riffed, and sang from his works like ''Proud Mary'' and ''Fortunate Son'' to show the way the songs developed and told tales from rock history.  The six-member jury, Fogerty’s principal audience for this special performance, was entertained.

Fogerty won the case.  After just two hours of deliberation, the jury found that the two songs weren’t “substantially similar,” the legal standard that would have constituted copyright infringement.  

A later judge summarized the verdict as “tantamount to a finding that similarities between ‘Run Through the Jungle’ and ‘Old Man Down the Road’ were attributable to the uncopyrightable elements of the ‘Swamp Rock’ genre and Fogerty’s style of songwriting.”

(“I have had a lot of trouble with Fantasy Records,” Fogerty told Adam Sweeting of The Guardian newspaper.  Centerfield, the 1985 album that contained “The Old Man Down the Road,” also included the songs “Mr. Greed” and “Zanz Kant Danz.”  

(These songs were universally understood to be attacks on Saul Zaentz [1921-2014], the owner of Fantasy Records, who instituted a $144 million suit for defamation, claiming that Fogerty portrayed him as “a thief, robber, adulterer, and murderer.”  The two sides settled that suit out of court.  Fogarty did also eventually change to title of the second track to “Vanz Kant Danz” to avoid further legal charges.

(Then there was the matter of Fogerty’s court costs.  Following the lawsuit, the singer-songwriter turned around and sued Zaentz and Fantasy to recover his legal fees and his lost income.  Fogerty lost the first trial because the judge interpreted the law as limiting cost recovery to plaintiffs, not defendants; so Fogerty appealed the verdict.  

(The musician lost again, but decided to see the case all the way to the supreme court.  SCOTUS unanimously decided in 1994 that the standard interpretation of the law was wrong and that a victorious defendant should be allowed to recover; the case was returned to the trial court for reconsideration.  

(This time, Fogerty won and was awarded $1.3 million for attorney’s fees—but he didn’t recover anything for his claim of lost income from not being able to write or perform during the long period of the legal actions, which began in 1985.)

“‘Legal humor,’ wrote David Margolick in the New York Times, “may or may not be an oxymoron. But attempts at it can prove costly, as two comedy writers thrust into the generally unfunny world of litigation recently learned.” 

Margolick’s comment was his introduction to the account of an odd sort of suit in the Federal District Court in Manhattan against the television network NBC by comedy writers E. J. Novak and Debra Studer for copyright infringement.  

The writers contended in Novak v. National Broadcasting Co. that they’d written a series of comedy sketches in August 1985 for Video Vault on WOR-TV, an independent station (now WWOR) in Secaucus, New Jersey, and later had submitted videotapes of the performances to NBC’s late-night comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live for the purpose of seeking employment as writer-performers on the show.

Novak and Studer claimed that SNL appropriated the sketches and characters they’d created on the show without permission and without compensating them.  (For some details on the sketches, see my earlier post “What Constitutes Theft in the Arts?” [5 May 2015; http://rickontheater.blogspot.com/2015/05/what-constitutes-theft-in-arts.html].)

The case began in 1985 and after several dismissals and resubmissions of the claims, was finally adjudicated in 1990 with a summary judgment for the defendant (NBC).  Just to be sure the plaintiffs got his point, the judge added that the behavior of Novak and Studer was “not only unseemly and unfunny, but intended to harass” and sent them off with a fine of $3,500 in sanctions ($7,345 today).

From a legal standpoint, this Novak v. NBC would have been a straightforward copyright-infringement case, but what exercised the judge so much was that, while the network retained a mainstream Broadway law firm, the two writers (who were married) went, as they say in the courts, pro se—they represented themselves. 

By now I imagine we all know how the saying goes: The man who represents himself, has a fool for a client.  Well, that was certainly true for E. J. Novak and Debra Studer—at least in the eyes of Judge Robert W. Sweet.  The plaintiffs turned the courtroom into what Sweet called a “playground for comics.” 

After two years of polite exchanges between Novak and Studer and the defense attorneys, in 1989 they wrote the lawyers a note addressed to “Dear Laurel and Hardy” because of their physical appearances.  

When the attorneys complained to the judge, Novak countered, “Their inconsistency and lack of consideration, even by attorneys’ standards, transcends the boundaries of law and enters that funny little netherworld we call—the Rudeness Zone.” 

Novak then sent the defense team another note greeting them simply as “Stan” and “Ollie” (for those too young to know, that’s Laurel and Hardy, respectively).  In his turn, Novak complained to the judge, “The sight of Mr. Jones [one of the defense lawyers; he was Oliver Hardy, a short, very stout actor] rolling toward us in anger is a terrifying experience reminiscent of scenes from either ‘The Honeymooners’ or ‘Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.’”  

Margolick (who was the Times’ legal reporter at the time and had a degree from Stanford Law School) reported that Novak alleged in an interview that he and his partner “were victims of pernicious linguistic discrimination.” 

“We could have said, ‘Your Honor, according to habeas corpus writ dictum, this was dilatory and deceitful,’ but I’m not a lawyer,” said Novak. “We used humor where they used legalese.”  He added that the only people who were actually hurt by his language were Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, “because they were compared to these lawyers.” 

However amusing and clever Novak and Studer were, they essentially scuttled their own legal boat when they took their comedic tactics into the courtroom.

By far the most theatrically outrageous court hearing that I’ve read about was Patrick Alley v. Mick Jagger, a 1986 suit for $7 million by a Reggae singer-songwriter who charged that the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger (b. 1943) had stolen Alley’s 1979 song “Just Another Night” (released in 1982) to make Jagger’s 1985 song of the same title.

The charge in this case was simple plagiarism: one artist contending that another had appropriated his work.  What made this suit noteworthy here was the trial itself.  This is the case that gave me the idea that there was performable material in the scenario. 

The presentation of the evidence offered in court was . . . I’d say it was unique.  In addition to the introduction of transcriptions of the lyrics of both songs (by dueling experts, of course), as you would expect, the New York Times reported that the testimony consisted of music, both live and recorded. 

During the weeklong trial, a Juilliard instructor played the piano; Sly Dunbar, a Jamaican studio musician, performed on drums; and Jagger sang from the witness stand bits of his recordings “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Brown Sugar,” and “Miss You.” 

Predictably, taped recordings of the “Just Another Night” by Alley (b. 1951), a minor-key reggae ballad, and Jagger’s identically-titled up-tempo rock song were played in court as well.  Jagger also played homemade and studio work tapes to show the development of the song, and attorneys on both sides sang snippets of the two compositions. 

Jagger signed autographs during breaks in the trial, and on the day before the verdict was rendered, when the jury deliberated for 3½ hours, fans broke through a courtroom door and tried to reach the Stones singer-guitarist. 

The decision rested on whether the songs’ choruses were substantially the same.  Both versions included the phrase “just another night with you”—five words.  The judge explained the law on copyright infringement to the six jurors and told them “The use of the phrase ‘Just another night with you’ is not enough, standing alone, to constitute infringement.”  Coincidental similarities, he also affirmed, weren’t sufficient to prove plagiarism.

After the seven-day trial, the jury found that Jagger’s “Just Another Night” didn’t infringe on Alley’s earlier song with the same title.  Alley appealed the verdict, but I couldn’t find any record of the outcome of that action.  After the verdict, however, Jagger proclaimed, “My reputation is really cleared.”

While the rest of the case was just what you’d expect in a copyright-infringement trial for a piece of music, the proceedings in court have always made me feel that the Jagger trial should be staged as a theatrical performance.  I mean, really: singing lawyers!  (Not to mention reggae and rock ’n’ roll music—add a little dancing and it’s got hit written all over it!)  Can’t you just picture it?

Pearl Tytell, Matriarch of Document Sleuths (1917-2021)

 

On 4 October 2021, the New York Times published the obituary of Pearl Tytell.  She had died at her home in Riverdale, The Bronx, on 26 September at the age of 104.  Mrs. Tytell had a remarkable history, as you shall read. 

Pearl Lily Kessler was born on 29 August 1917 in the Borough of Manhattan, New York City, and grew up in Brooklyn.  Her father was Harry Kessler, a tailor who immigrated from Austria-Hungary, and her mother was Yetta Kessler (née Feigenbaum), who emigrated from Poland when she was 2. 

Pearl Kessler went right to work after school and in 1938, she was working in the bookkeeping office of a company in the now-iconic Flatiron Building, at the convergence of 5th Avenue and Broadway just south of Madison Square.

That’s when she met her future husband, Martin Kenneth Tytell (1913-2008), a typewriter sales- and repairman who came looking for a service contract with the company for which Pearl worked.  He sold her a typewriter—"I asked for a Royal, and he sold me a Remington,” recalled Mrs. Tytell years later.

Martin Tytell asked Pearl Kessler to dinner, but no date was made for that night so Martin came back the next day and offered, “Come work for me and I’ll marry you.” 

“That’s no inducement,” Pearl teased.

Nevertheless, Pearl did go to work for Martin . . . but the marriage didn’t take place until 1943.  In 1938, Martin Tytell started the Tytell Typewriter Company on Fulton Street in the Financial District of downtown Manhattan, where a wall sign declared “psychoanalysis for your typewriter, whether it’s frustrated, inhibited, schizoid or what have you.” 

Before long, the shop became such an important part of the New York office scene, repairing and customizing all brands and models of typewriters and serving the needs, often idiosyncratic, of the city’s typists, that even the post office knew to deliver mail to the shop addressed to “Mr. Typewriter, New York.”

Mr. Tytell described some of the stranger requests he fulfilled:

For a well-known mystery writer, I once designed a keyboard with a variety of crosses and bones, and an astronomer once left my office with a typewriter containing a fantastic array of space symbols, such as ringed planets, comets and stars.  A few years ago, I had a man ask me to build him a typewriter with question marks—nothing but question marks. . . .  I completed the job according to his specifications, but I never did learn what it was all about.

(Could it have been . . . The Riddler?)

The Tytells’ reputation spread beyond New York City and the shop catered to such celebrity typists as writers Dorothy Parker and Richard Condon (The Manchurian Candidate, Prizzi’s Honor); journalists Quentin Reynolds (war correspondent), Margaret Bourke-White (photojournalist), David Brinkley (The Huntley-Brinkley Report, NBC), Harrison Salisbury (New York Times), Andy Rooney (“A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney,” 60 Minutes, CBS), and Charles Kuralt (CBS); Washington, D.C., socialite and political hostess Perle Mesta (“The Hostess with the Mostess”); and political adversaries Dwight D. Eisenhower (34th President of the United States: 1953-61) and Adlai E. Stevenson (Democratic candidate for president, 1952 and 1956). 

But that was just the beginning of the Tytells’ adventure in the world of the written—and typewritten—word.

When World War II began for the United States, typewriters needed by the military became scarce because manufacturers had largely converted to the production of other war materiel.  Martin Tytell, who in 1943 had joined the army, was asked to convert a load of contraband Siamese (now called Thai) typewriters for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the World War II predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to French (preparatory to the D-Day invasion) and other European languages.

(Some sources report that Mr. Tytell enlisted in the Marines, but he himself affirmed that he was in the army during World War II.  See his own account, referenced below, of his work on the Alger Hiss appeal.)

Mr. Tytell’s machines were each able to function in several different languages (because the Thai typewriters had 46 typebars; standard American typewriters have 44).  In all, there were 17 languages, including, in addition to French, Spanish, Czech, Hungarian, Turkish, Danish, and German.  They were airdropped to OSS outposts at various combat fronts, but PFC Tytell never learned where. 

Ultimately, Martin Tytell developed typewriters in dozens of different alphabets appropriate for as many as 145 different languages and dialects such as Serbo-Croatian, Thai, Korean, Coptic, Sanskrit, and classical and modern Greek.

Mr. Tytell even invented a typewriter with a carriage that moved left to right for languages that are read right to left like Farsi (the language of Iran), Arabic, Hebrew, and Yiddish.  He’s credited with the creation of the first cursive font—for First Lady Mamie Eisenhower—and the first Teleprompter. 

He also designed machines that typed musical notes for musicians and composers and with keyboards adapted for amputees (in two models: one for right- and one for left-handed users) and other wounded veterans and machines for people with impaired sight.

After Martin Tytell was released from the army in 1945, he returned to his shop, where Pearl Tytell had been minding the business (mostly as a rental shop while her husband was away).  His work and the special assignments for the military and the OSS, which increased in frequency after the success of the Siamese typewriter conversions, had made him an expert in type faces and their idiosyncrasies and faults.

Then in 1950, the Tytells were introduced to a whole new aspect of the world of typewriters.  It changed both their lives and their son’s as well.

Into Martin Tytell’s shop walked a young man who identified himself as a member of the defense team for Alger Hiss (1904-96).  Hiss was an official of the U.S. State Department and the United Nations who in 1948 had been accused of spying for the Soviet Union in the 1930s.  Less than two months earlier, Hiss had been convicted on two counts of perjury, but was appealing the conviction on the grounds that he’d been the victim of “forgery by typewriter.”

Hiss’s attorney wanted Tytell to prove that his client’s contention was possible by building a typewriter that would mimic the characteristics of Hiss’s Woodstock model so exactly that experts would be fooled.  It took Mr. Tytell two years to assemble the necessary parts and build the machine, but he succeeded.  Nonetheless, Hiss’s appeal was denied and he served three years and eight months imprisonment on a sentence of two five-year terms.

(Mr. Tytell recounted this entire episode in exacting detail to Harry Kursh, a freelance journalist, in “The $7,500 Typewriter I Built For Alger Hiss” for True magazine in August 1952.  It’s posted on The Alger Hiss Story website at http://algerhiss.com/history/the-hiss-case-the-1940s/the-typewriter/forgery-by-typewriter/forging-a-typewriter/ as “Building a Typewriter.”)

Along the way, Martin Tytell became even more expert in typewriter mechanics and type identification and Pearl Tytell became a self-taught authority on typewriter ribbon, paper, and handwriting.  In 1951, Pearl opened the Tytell Questioned Document Laboratory within Tytell Typewriter.

After Martin and Pearl Tytell hung out their second shingle, they were consulted by police departments, the FBI, the DEA, and the Department of State, as well as city, state, and federal courts.  Other clients were large corporations such as CBS, General Electric, Eastern Airlines, Reynolds Aluminum, and Shell Oil, looking into the provenance of counterfeit documents, forged checks, altered forms, or anonymous letters to the CEO.

They were hired by many prestigious law firms to testify in trials and hearings all over the globe as expert witnesses.  (That’s usually Pearl Tytell’s assignment; Pamela Tytell [b. 1949], Pearl and Martin’s daughter, said that her “father wasn’t good on the stand.”)  Their son, Peter Van Tytell (1945-2020), even testified before the International Court of Justice at The Hague.

In a field dominated by men, Pearl Tytell was a rarity.  In The Atlantic, Ian Frazier, a writer and humorist who now writes for the New Yorker, described her as

handsome and petite, with unwavering blue eyes and long silver-blonde hair, which she wears in a braid wrapped carefully on the top of her head.  For clothes she favors suits in subdued colors or pleated skirts in dark plaid, and neat white blouses with a cameo brooch at the throat.  She looks like someone you would believe on the witness stand.

Just to be even-handed, here’s Martin’s self-description: “I have always been on the tall, round and broad-shouldered side.”  Ian Frazier took over:

He was wearing a clean white lab coat over a light-blue shirt and a dark-blue bow tie.  His head was almost bald on top and fringed with white professor-style side hairs that matched the white of his small moustache.  His blue eyes were slitted and wary and humorous, and all his features had a sharpness produced by a lifetime of focusing concentration down to pica size.

Pica is a type size that measures 10 characters to an inch.  Its alternative is elite type, which takes 12 characters to make an inch.  Typewriters come in one gauge or the other (though when the IBM Selectric was introduced, they could be switched to type in either size so type elements for both pica and elite could be used in the same machine).

Pamela Tytell declared, “Clients often hired my father, but she did all the work.”  Pearl Tytell trained her son, Peter, who became a highly regarded document examiner in his own right. 

Even after she retired in 2001, Pearl Tytell consulted with her son on his cases.  According to his sister, Peter would bring his mother his work: “Every other Sunday,” said Pamela, “he’d show her the cases, and she’d give her opinion.”  After Mrs. Tytell’s comments, he’d say, “Boy, some of the things she said, I didn’t think of.”

In testimony to her effectiveness, the prosecutor in one case said, “She was an exceptional witness.  She dominated the courtroom.  I remember the jury being enthralled by her testimony.”  In a case in which a company had forged documents over which someone had sued, the plaintiff’s lawyer acknowledged that the Tytells’ evidence “was testimony the jury thought very convincing.”

Indeed, many of the cases in which the Tytells presented evidence and expert testimony, the matter never went before a court.  A report from the Tytell Questioned Document Laboratory would be enough to bring the guilty party to the settlement table.  The New York Times reported, for example, in a 1975 suit that was settled in 1980:

When the Tytells found Western Electric had altered documents in order to disprove charges of job discrimination against women and minorities, for example, the company settled out of court, and picked up the lab’s $7,500 tab.  “None of their evidence was actually ever admitted into the courtroom,” a spokesman for Western Electric noted.  “We conceeded [sic] that we had altered the documents.”

Mrs. Tytell attended New York University in the 1960s and earned a Bachelor of Science degree and then a Master of Arts degree, both in accounting.  (At least one source states that it was Pearl Kessler—that is, Mrs. Tytell before she was married—who went to NYU.  This could make sense if her degrees were in accounting since her job in 1938 had been in the accounting department of the company.)

In any case, however, this was not the end of Pearl Tytell’s education.  She took courses in paper-making and graphology (the study of handwriting); she even lectured at NYU and was a faculty member at the New York Institute of Criminology.  The Tytell Questioned Document Laboratory eventually branched out into documents generated by computers and word processors, fax machines, photocopiers, and laser printers.

As always, though, the division of labor, remained the same: Martin Tytell was the expert on typewriters and typewritten documents and Pearl Tytell was the authority on paper, ink, watermarks, and, above all, handwriting.

“I find myself talking to the typewriters sometimes,” proclaimed Mr. Typewriter.  “You get so you feel you’re dealing with something that’s alive.”  And his wife once said, “Handwriting talks to me.  So do typewriters, ink and paper.”  One gets the feeling they were the yin and yang of document authentication.

One of Pearl Tytell’s most frequent quests was the unmasking of the anonymous-letter writer, the poison penman.  “We get one case a week of poison-pen letters,” she reported.  “They can destroy a career, a reputation, a marriage or a whole life.”

One such incident involved a string of unsigned letters received by the patients of a doctor and the parochial school at which he volunteered.  In the days before abortion was legal, the letters accused the doctor of performing illegal terminations.

The Tytells had determined from experience that among anonymous letter-writers, many are often middle-aged men and women.  Because of one recurring phrase in the letters calling the doctor’s wife “a dirty housewife,” Mrs. Tytell surmised that this letter-writer was a woman related to him.  It turned out to be the doctor’s sister.

Typecast as a typewriter repairman, Mr. Tytell played his part and visited the sister’s office.  He obtained a sample of her typing and proved her involvement.

The Tytells continued to be on call for high-profile or newsworthy cases, however.  In 1963, a little more than ten years after the Hiss appeal, Pearl Tytell disproved the claim by Eugenia Smith (1899-1997) of Chicago that she was actually the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolayevna (1901-18), the youngest daughter of Nicholas II, the last Tsar of All the Russias, and his wife, Tsarina Alexandra.

Mrs. Tytell was working for Life magazine this time, and she compared Smith’s Russian handwriting to examples known to have been written by Anastasia Romanova.  The document examiner found clear differences between the way Smith wrote the Cyrillic letter е and the way the Grand Duchess had written it.  Mrs. Tytell also found other discrepancies, such as confusing the Russian word привить (privit' – ‘inoculate’) for привѣтъ (privet – ‘greetings’).

[The handwriting in question, reproduced in a Life article, “The Case of a New Anastasia” (18 October 1963, pp. 110, 111), is Old Russian, in use until 1918.  The letter ѣ (yat – in the phrase “I embrace you’: цѣлую тебя – tseluyu tebya), which has a sound like a e (yeh) in the modern Russian alphabet, no longer exists in Russian; the sign ъ (at the end of ‘greetings’)—it’s not a letter but indicates how the previous letter is pronounced—is the “hard sign” (твёрдый знак – tvyordii znak) and is used only rarely in modern Russian (though it’s still part of the alphabet).]

Mrs. Tytell reported to Life: “In gross appearance alone, the two sets of documents are markedly different.  When examined letter by letter, the differences are even sharper.”

(Another, more famous Anastasia imposter was Anna Anderson [1896-1984], on whose story the 1956 Twentieth Century Fox film starring Ingrid Bergman and Yul Brynner was based.  Anderson was ultimately unmasked, however, by DNA tests once all the Romanov bodies were found and identified in 2007.)

Pearl Tytell was also instrumental in the 1982 federal trial of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon (1920-2012), leader of the Unification Church (the “Moonies”), for tax evasion.  She once again used handwriting analysis, in addition to her knowledge of watermarks and paper-making, to provide expert testimony.

Moon was convicted of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government and filing false tax returns and served nearly a year in prison. 

(Interestingly, I read Pearl Tytell’s obituary because I wondered if she’d been involved in any of the recent famous instances like the phony Hitler diaries or the George W. Bush letter that scuttled Dan Rather’s career at CBS and the survival of 60 Minutes II.  She hadn’t, but her son, Peter, had. 

(The 2004 60 Minutes case involved typed memoranda from the files of President Bush’s former Texas Air National Guard commander that purported to show that Bush [43rd President of the United States: 2001 to 2009] had received special treatment while serving in the early 1970s.  His National Guard service was the reason Bush, unlike his Democratic opponent for the presidency that election year, Senator John Kerry, didn’t serve in Vietnam.

(After the 60 Minutes segment aired on 8 September 2004, the memoranda’s authenticity was questioned and CBS hired Peter Tytell to examine them.  He determined that the documents couldn’t have been typed on the Olympia manual machines used by the Texas Air National Guard at the time and, furthermore, that they’d been written on a computer word processor, technology not even generally available in the early ’70s.

(A 60 Minutes producer and three network executives were fired over the incident—not for complicity in the hoax, but because they’d been careless about vetting the evidence for a segment that made the sitting President of the United States look bad when it aired.  They were so anxious to get the segment on the air before Election Day, 2 November, that they let forged documents, false evidence, be presented as factual.

(60 Minutes II, a Wednesday night edition of the long-lived Sunday television magazine program, which had been launched in January 1999, was cancelled a year after the Bush segment was broadcast.  Dan Rather [b. 1931], who, in addition to his correspondent’s position at the newsmagazine, was the anchor of the CBS Evening News, left the anchor’s chair in 2005 and the network fired him the following year.)

Typewriters were already things of the past by the 1980s.  Proclaimed Peter Tytell, “The new generation doesn’t know what a typewriter is.”  Martin Tytell, Mr. Typewriter, retired in 2000; Pearl followed in 2001.  Son Peter closed the shop in 2001 and converted the space into an office for the document examination service his parents had started half a century before.

The Tytell Typewriter Company, opened in 1938, was no more.  And now, with the death of Peter Tytell last year, so is the Tytell Questioned Document Laboratory.  It’s not just the end of an era . . . it’s the end of a world—the world of platens and typebars and carriages and inked ribbons and white out and eraser shields and carbon paper.

In the end, what makes Pearl Tytell interesting to me, above the fact that she was one of the few women in the heavily male-dominated field of document authentication and even attained prominence in it, is that, although Mrs. Tytell learned about typewriters from working with her husband in his shop, she deliberately set out to learn about paper-making and handwriting and watermarks and other aspects of document-creation and authenticity in order to make herself an expert in verification.  She essentially invented herself. 

[When I was in the army and training at the U.S. Army Intelligence School at Fort Holabird in Baltimore, we had to take a typing course.  (This was years before the advent of word processors.)  Military Intelligence Special Agents, after all, had to type our reports, the results of all our investigations and activities. 

[Our typing teacher was a pretty ancient lady—I’m sorry to say I don’t remember her name after 50 years.  She’d been “Miss Typewriter” of 1921 (no joke!).  She often instructed us, in all seriousness, that “the typewriter is the agent’s weapon”!

[I didn’t really believe her.  I carried a snub-nosed .38 on the job.  It fit in the holster better.]

Two Reports On New York Theater Activities (Post-Pandemic)

 

[At the end of last month, two television news programs aired reports on different aspects of the performing arts in New York City in the (hopefully) waning days of the COVID pandemic.  If you’ve been following the news from this city, Broadway theater has just started to return—not without setbacks—and other performance venues have been following in its wake.

[First up is a report from PBS NewsHour, known for its in-depth coverage of issues and current events, looking at the financial implications of the 18-month shutdown on the artists and artisans whose work is off stage.  That’s followed by a report from WCBS on its CBS2 News At 5 newscast on a performance art troupe that’s been using the public spaces of New York City as its stage for two decades.] 

“THE SHOW MUST GO ON:
BROADWAY HOPES REOPENING BOOM WILL PAY OFF DEBTS WORSENED BY PANDEMIC”
by Jeffrey Brown and Anne Azzi Davenport 

[The following report was aired on PBS NewsHour on 29 September 2021.  The transcript and the video of the segment is posted at https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-show-must-go-on-broadway-hopes-reopening-boom-will-pay-off-debts-worsened-by-pandemic.]

There’s no business like show business, but for 18 months during the pandemic, Broadway theaters had virtually no business at all. Jeffrey Brown recently visited the theater district’s artisans who are making sure Broadway puts its best face forward and comes back to life. It’s part of our arts and culture series, CANVAS.

Amna Nawaz: Well, as the saying goes, there’s no business like show business.

But for 18 months during the pandemic, there was basically no business in Broadway theaters.

Jeffrey Brown recently visited the theater districts artisans, who are playing a key role in Broadway’s return.

It’s all part of our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Jeffrey Brown: The green suit, worn by Lin-Manuel Miranda in the musical “Hamilton.” Miranda told the costume designer it should be — quote — “the color of money.”

Crystals and mirrors on Elsa’s ice dress from Disney’s “Frozen.” From “Phantom of the Opera,” what else? The mask. They are defining images of contemporary Broadway. But even live in the theater, you don’t get to see them like this.

Brian Blythe, The Costume Industry Coalition: What I think is so great about this is that when you’re sitting in the fifth row or the 10th row or in the balcony, you’re never this close  . . .

Jeffrey Brown: Yes, that’s for sure.

Brian Blythe: . . . to the costumes, to the point where you can see the amount of craftsmanship, the workmanship and the details that go into each one of these.

Jeffrey Brown: Brian Blythe helped put together this exhibition called Showstoppers!. He’s a founder of The Costume Industry Coalition, a group of more than 50 small businesses that make these amazing garments, like this dress from “Wicked.”

Can I touch it?

Brian Blythe: I will let you touch it, yes.

(LAUGHTER)

Jeffrey Brown: Why do you do all of this underneath in such exquisite detail?

Brian Blythe: Because they’re living in this fantasy world. You know, they’re in Emerald City. And when an actor puts this on, they become the character. That’s how they realize their character, is through their costume.

Jeffrey Brown: But starting in March of 2020, no characters, no costumes, no shows. Now, gradually, tentatively, the spectacle is coming back.

The musical “Six” was supposed to open the same day Broadway shut down in 2020 [12 March]. The six, by the way, are the wives killed by Henry VIII. Now they have come to life onstage. And opening night recently was sold out.

[Historically, King Henry VIII (1491-1547; reigned: 1509-47) only “killed” two of his queens: Anne Boleyn (c. 1501-36) and Catherine Howard (1523-42), numbers 2 and 5, both beheaded for adultery and treason.  He divorced two, Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536), whose marriage was actually annulled, and Anne of Cleves (1515-57), numbers 1 and 4; one died in childbirth, Jane Seymour (1508-37), number 3; and one survived the king, Catherine Parr (1512-48), number 6.

[A mnemonic for remembering the fates of the six wives is: “Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived.”]

Gianna Van Rouendal, Theatergoer: This is my first Broadway show back, which is very exciting. And I think it will be so inspiring.

Jack Nix, Theatergoer: We are just thrilled for Broadway, and we cannot wait to see “Six.” And we will be back to see a bunch of shows.

Jeffrey Brown: “Six” is one of 15 Broadway shows reopening throughout September. Twenty more are set to open before the end of the year, with patrons masked and required to have proof of vaccination or negative test results to enter theaters.

Charlotte St. Martin is president of The Broadway League, a trade group representing theater owners.

Charlotte St. Martin, President, The Broadway League: We said from day one we will not open unless we feel we can keep the audience, the cast and crew safe.

They might be a little bit sensitive about the Delta variant, but we’re trying to spread the message that we’re safe, we’re secure, and all of the magic they loved about Broadway is still there.

Jeffrey Brown: Magic and money. Broadway is a business with a large behind-the-scenes ecosystem fed by ticket sales, with every production employing scores of workers crucial to making the show go on. And then there’s its wider impact on the city.

Charlotte St. Martin: We’re responsible for 97,000 jobs in this city, and 80 percent of the tourists that are coming here for pleasure give Broadway as their number one, two or three reason for coming to the city. So we need to be open not just for us, but to bring New York back.

Brian Blythe: We lost over $26.6 million in gross revenue in 2020. And we have incurred an immense amount of debt during the pandemic.

Jeffrey Brown: Showstoppers!, occupying an out-of-business sporting goods store on 42nd Street, was conceived as a fund-raiser, with ticket sales benefiting costume workers.

According to Blythe, they face a collective debt of $3.5 million. In an industry where nothing but the best will do, some of the people who make these costumes took part in the exhibition.

Camilla Chuvarsky is a theatrical milliner[;] she makes hats.

Camilla Chuvarsky, Lynne Mackey Studio: I think there’s a bit of a false perception with costumes that they’re not as well-made as everyday garments.

And, in fact, the opposite is true. They have to hold up through eight shows a week and still look beautiful the entire time, because, when you’re going to Broadway, more than regional theater, what you’re paying for is the production value.

Jeffrey Brown: The pandemic, she says, forced some to leave the industry or retire early, revealing just how fragile some of the costuming trades are.

Camilla Chuvarsky: There are a lot of techniques and skills that really are passed down through training on the job and that a lot of people don’t know and would honestly be lost. If some of these shops closed, there’s knowledge that would just vanish, because it is so particular to the industry.

Jeffrey Brown: Another behind-the-scenes art form, fabric painter.

Hochi Asiatico has worked on Broadway for 25 years, painting everything from the most detailed patterns to a character’s sweat. [Asiatico is the subject of a New York Times article I posted on 29 May 2021, “‘Broadway’s Dirty Secret: How to Turn Costumes From Riches to Rags’” by Erik Piepenburg.]

A painter for a Broadway show, most people probably don’t know there is such a thing.

Hochi Asiatico, Owner, Hochi Asiatico Studio: No, people don’t know.

And they just get the feeling of something. And I think they get into the character. But, really, the painting is very important for the development of the character.

Jeffrey Brown: Asiatico hand-painted these robes, set in the early 19th century, for the play “Golden Child.”

Hochi Asiatico: So, we had to research the colors that were available at the time and the style of the time. Also, we wanted them to look a little bit embroidered. So we have to consider the distance on stage, how the lighting works.

Jeffrey Brown: The people we met are now back at work making costumes for productions.

But will the audience return? With tourism still down in New York City . . .

Oprah Winfrey, Producer/Philanthropist: This is Broadway.

Jeffrey Brown: . . . Broadway League has a new $1.5 million ad campaign narrated by Oprah.

Oprah Winfrey: This is the return of something truly spectacular.

Jeffrey Brown: Strategically targeting those within a car drive.

And, as we saw recently, those who are coming are glad to be back, even amid continuing uncertainty.

Audrianne Speidel, Theatergoer: I’m loving the fact that the shows are back and being able to come and see as many shows as possible. So, yes.

Woman: And please let Broadway open, please.

Audrianne Speidel: Right.

Jeffrey Brown: For now, at least, it is.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown in New York.

[Jeffrey Brown is the chief correspondent for arts, culture, and society at PBS NewsHour.  Anne Azzi Davenport is the Senior Coordinating Producer of “Canvas.”

[Showstopper! Spectacular Costumes from Stage and Screen, the costume exhibit from the Costume Industry Coalition, closed on 26 September; it had been housed at the former Modell's Sporting Goods store at 234 W. 42nd Street, between 7th and 8th Avenues in Times Square.] 

*  *  *  *
 
“‘IMPROV EVERYWHERE’ REMINDS NEW YORKERS TO CELEBRATE SHARED SPACES”
by  Steve Overmyer

[This “Snapshot New York” was broadcast on 30 September 2021 on WCBS, Channel 2 in New York City.  Improv Everywhere, formed in 2001 by Charlie Todd (b. 1978), is a performance art group based in New York City.  Its slogan is “We Cause Scenes.”  (The video for this report is posted at https://newyork.cbslocal.com/video/6052800-snapshot-ny-improv-everywhere-reminds-new-yorkers-to-celebrate-shared-spaces/.)

[In their own words: “Improv Everywhere is a New York City-based comedy collective that stages unexpected performances in public places.  Created in August of 2001 by Charlie Todd, Improv Everywhere aims to surprise and delight random strangers through positive pranks.  We joined YouTube in April of 2006, making us one of the first comedy channels on the platform.

[“We have staged hundreds of projects involving tens of thousands of undercover performers.  Highlights include making time stop at Grand Central Terminal, giving Best Buy 100 extra employees, and letting random strangers conduct a world class orchestra in the middle of Manhattan.

[“Improv Everywhere produces television series (recently, Pixar In Real Life for Disney+) and has produced commercials for brands like Target, ESPN, and Hallmark.”]

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — For more than 20 years, Improv Everywhere has been turning New York City into a playground for positive pranks.

Most of the moments came before the pandemic, but their messages remains the same. That’s the focus of this week’s Snapshot New York with Steve Overmyer.

“I’ve always looked at the city like a playground,” said Charlie Todd. “That’s been our motto, always, that we cause scenes. But we’re causing a scene that’s funny, that catches people off guard in a positive way and a way that makes them laugh and smile.”

For more than 20 years, Improv Everywhere has been creating moments that allow everyone to join in. They’re called missions.

“Giving people this fun, unexpected moment of joy that maybe they carry with them the rest of the day. Maybe it makes their day 5% better,” said Todd. “Our best projects are the ones that invite people in rather than us just forcing ourselves on people. We like to lure people in and invite them into our world.”

On any random day, you might see an impromptu dance party with a few people from Improv Everywhere. But it becomes infectious.

“Does there come a time when you’re not sure who’s in the troop [sic: ‘troupe’] and who’s just a random person that’s walking by?” asked Overmyer.

“Yeah absolutely. Those are the greatest moments,” said Todd.

As New Yorkers, we have an unwritten, social contract to keep our heads down, don’t talk to anyone and, no matter what happens, don’t react.

That’s impossible when Charlie Todd is around – even on a depressing morning commute at the 53rd Street subway station.

“There are these two giant escalators in that station with a staircase next to it, but nobody takes the staircase because it’s like you’re going up four stories,” Todd explained.

That day he added a flair of color by simply asking everyone to lend a hand.

“Over the course of about an hour, my friend Rob gave out 2,000 high-fives to commuters,” he said.

Their brand of performance art has stretched across all five boroughs. It all started with a harmless prank that’s become an annual tradition: “The No Pants Subway Ride.”

“I love it when something happens in the city where strangers have a connection,” Todd said.

Improv Everywhere reminds us while we are all leading millions of different lives, our unique connection to our outside spaces gives us a chance at a shared experience.

It’s a reminder that playing like a child can be liberating. All we need is someone to give us the OK.

“We try to provide unique opportunities for people,” said Todd. “If they say yes and if they want to come into our world, they can have a once in a lifetime experience.”

“Creating moments of joy and bringing people together is important. We create this joyous, euphoric moment for no reason, just to celebrate life and be funny and have a good time,” he added.

To date, Improv Everywhere videos have 470 million views on YouTube. They’ve completed two missions during the pandemic as a way to remind us to celebrate our shared space.

[Steve Overmyer joined WCBS in February 2011 as a sports anchor and reporter.  He hosts Sports Update every weekend on CBS 2 and its partner station on Long Island, WLNY 10/55.  Previously, Overmyer anchored and reported for the cable network SportsNet in New York (SNY).  

[Overmyer was the field reporter for Jets Post Game Live and studio host for 1st and Goal with football reporter Mike Tannenbaum.  During his time at SNY, he was utilized in a number of capacities from anchoring the nightly highlight show to talk show hosting duties to field reporter for all New York teams.]