04 December 2019

“Moron! Vermin! Curate! Cretin! Crritic!!”: John Simon (1925-2019) – Part 3


[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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