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Downton Abbey Ushers in a New Era in Britain

A hearty round of applause goes to Julian Fellowes who knocked one out of the park, yet again.

The second movie spinoff of Downton Abbey hit the theaters a few weeks ago and is being met with mostly favorable reviews.

As of June 17, 2022, “Downton Abbey: A New Era” has grossed $41.6 million in the United States and Canada and $45.5 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $87.1 million

Many passionate Downton followers, including myself, think “Downton Abbey: A New Era” was a better written, more entertaining, offering then the last motion picture.

And as an added bonus, in this second Downton Abbey movie, viewers feast their eyes on a French villa in the south of France. It was Villa Roccabella located about an hour from Saint-Tropez, which features extensive gardens, a heated outdoor pool, yoga deck and a private beach (used in the swimming scene with Tom and Lucy Branson). It was designed in the late 19th century by Hans-Georg Tersling, a Danish architect

I found it remarkable how Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey and the award-winning script writer, weaved its characters so meticulously into a tapestry of compelling subplots, twists and turns all in two hours and five minutes, culminating with Lady Mary Crawley (Michelle Dockery) assuming the titular head of the Downton estate.

The movie takes place in 1928.

Two topics, in particular, are covered in the movie, which reflects accurately what was taking place in Britain on the brink of the Great Depression: the emergence of talkie films and British societies icy intolerance of homosexuality. In an age of massive fact-checking, viewers of this movie can rest assured “Downton Abbey: A New Era” did get its facts correct. The film, according to historians, was meticulously researched to the point that everything represented in it is grounded in factual events, including its people and technology.

Lady Mary’s (Michelle Dockery) voice is used in order for the production company to transition from a silent film to a talkie.

Photo Credit: BEN BLACKALL/FOCUS FEATURES

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In “Downton Abbey: A New Era,” a production company makes a hefty financial offer to use the Downton estate as a location for a new movie, titled The Gambler. After some trepidation, but knowing they have to repair a leaky roof to the Downton estate, Lady Mary Talbot agrees to the generous financial arrangement. The film, as was customary at the time, was intended as a silent film.

Almost halfway through the filming, the producer and director, Jack Barber (played by Hugh Dancy) gets word from studio execs that the film has to be scratched, because silent films are no longer profitable. After some deft maneuvering, clever strategy, and discussion, Lady Mary Talbot and the director decide to flow with the tide and make the film a talkie so they won’t have to cancel production after all.

The phasing out of silent films in favor of talkies was in fact taking place in Britain in 1928.

According to Laraine Porter, Reader in Cinema History at De Montfort University (Leicester), “1928 was significant for British cinema as it saw the implementation of the 1927 Cinematograph (Quota) Act which obliged cinemas to show a proportion of British-made films in the face of Hollywood's almost total domination.”

The British film industry hit an all-time low in 1926 when only 5 % of films screened in British cinemas were British. American films dominated the market. Films that started silent in Britain and ended as talkies was common around this time. They were referred to as “Goat Gland” films.

Since the British film industry was mired in such weak financial standing in 1928, and now were forced to invest vast amounts of money into talking technology, many of the smaller producers (who invested heavily on silent film technology) went bankrupt.

In 1927, the American produced “The Jazz Singer” represented the first motion picture which featured isolated talking scenes and synchronized dialogue, thanks to sound-on-disc technology.

The big breakthrough in Britain came in November, 1928, when the motion picture, "The Terror" reached British cinemas.

Britain’s transition to talking films came a year after the United States studios. Laraine Porter explained to me that “Britain had an established culture of popular theatre, particularly the Aldwych Farces, and a popular literary heritage which offered ready source material for the new talkies.” “These sources,” Porter explained, “had specific domestic appeal to audiences who also wanted to see and hear their favorite music-hall and Variety stars - like Gracie Fields - in film.” 

In addition, Britain had heaps of engineers and technicians from the BBC to draw from who were proficient in helping studios make the transition from silent to talking films.

Laraine Porter contends that there was “a massive urban working-class ready-made audience who supported early British talkies.”

The Terror, a murder mystery set in an English country house represented the first continuous “all-talkie” to premiere in Europe. It was released by Warner Bros, their second all talkie film. The first was “Lights of New York” also released in 1928.

Actor Guy Dexter (Dominic West) invites head butler, Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier),  to come live with him in America.

Photo Credit: BEN BLACKALL/FOCUS FEATURES

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Another hot-button issue which “Downton Abbey: A New Era” nibbles around the edges at is the topic of same-sex relationships in Britain in 1928.

The dashing Thomas Barrow (played by Robert James-Collier), the head butler at the Downtown Estate, who is gay, develops an attraction to one of the actors filming a movie at the Downton estate, Guy Dexter (played wonderfully by Dominic West). Dexter offers Barrow a chance to live with him in America as his personal assistant and social secretary; a role that is described in the film as a “dresser.” The idea that this would mark the beginning of a romantic relationship between the two is gently intimated in the film. When Barrow agrees and turns in his notice to Lady Mary, she shares his happiness and says, “I wish you all the happiness this cruel world can afford.”

The “cruel world’’ which Lady Mary refers to, is, of course, gays being treated as social outcasts in Britain in the 1920s.

Back in the 16^th century, Britain considered homosexuality a criminal act.

The Buggery Act of 1533, passed by Parliament during the reign of Henry VIII targeted homosexuality for persecution. Sex between men was punishable by death in the United Kingdom. The law, strangely, never affected females.

Not until 1861 was the Offences Against the Person Act passed, which eliminated the death penalty for homosexual acts and replaced it with 10-years of imprisonment.

Things didn’t improve for the gay community in 1885. The Criminal Law Amendment Act not only made male homosexual acts illegal, they could also be prosecuted whether or not a witness was present; meaning, private acts were subject to prosecution. Usually, a handwritten letter suggesting intimacy between two men was all the court needed to prosecute. It was this ambiguously written law that Irish poet and playwright, Oscar Wilde, fell victim to in 1895.

It took well into the 20^th century, 1957, in fact, when the Wolfenden Report was issued, which recommended that “homosexual behavior between consenting adults in private should be no longer a criminal offence.”

Despite the recommendations from the Wolfenden Report, Parliament took until 1967 to pass the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 in the United Kingdom, which legalized homosexual acts in England and Wales on the condition they were at least 21 years old and the acts were consensual and in private. Penalties were, however, issued for street offenses.

Amazingly, the law was not changed for Scotland until 1980, or for Northern Ireland until 1982.

Despite the severe penalties gays were subject to at the time Downton Abbey, the movie, supposedly takes place, 1928,’’ Patrick Allitt, Professor of American History at Emory College tells me that ‘’we know from lots of literary evidence that [homosexuality] was widespread, particularly among the Bloomsbury Group intellectuals, such as Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, J. M. Keynes, and others.”

The Bloomsbury Group were a group of influential English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists, bold renegades, who opened the Victorian upper classes eyes to the LGBT point of view, a subject never discussed in Britain at the time, unless behind closed doors. Many point to the works of the Bloomsbury Group which sparked a seismic shift in Britain regarding LGBTQ rights.

According Lucy Delap, Professor of Modern British and Gender History at the University of Cambridge, “1928 was an interesting year as far as same sex relationships were concerned, because of the publication and then prosecution for obscenity of Radclyffe Hall’s “The Well of Loneliness” – a Sapphic novel that caused uproar and became iconic for many lesbian readers – but only covertly read of course, in versions smuggled in from France.”

It was in October, 1928, when Virginia Woolf published “Orlando: A Biography,” which today is considered a feminist classic. The book chronicles the escapades of a poet who changes sex from man to woman and lives for centuries, meeting the key figures of English literary history. The novel was inspired by Woolf’s lesbian lover, the poet Vita Sackville-West. Literary scholars point to this novel as one of the first novels about gender uncertainty.

Not until 1960 were the British reading public able to read an uncensored edition of D.H. Lawrence’s novel, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”

Photo Credit: Philip Jackson/Daily Mail/Rex

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Also in 1928, D.H. Lawrence secretly printed (in Italy) his eleventh novel, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” about an upper-class married woman, Constance or Lady Chatterley, who is racked with internal torment when she neglects her paralyzed husband (from a war injury) and falls into the arms of a gatekeeper, a member of the working-class.

Because Lady Chatterley was filled with explicit sex scenes and four-letter words, it was banned in the United Kingdom after its publishers, Penguin, were brought to trial under the Obscene Publications Act. Not until March, 1960, did Penguin win the rights to publish the novel in its entirety. Book stores reportedly all over England sold all 200,000 copies on the first day of publication.

1928 (November 11) was also the year that Thomas Hardy, considered to be the greatest English writer, died at his home in Dorchester. He was 87.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), a reference book requiring the efforts of 1,300 people for more than 70 years was completed in 1928. The word “Zyxt” was the last word in the final volume of the dictionary.

English poets Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning were consulted about the meaning of words that appeared in their poems. J.R.R. Tolkien, in fact, was an assistant lexicographer for one year, 1919. At least six editors guided the process.

Politically, 1928 ushered in a new era for women’s voting rights.

It too nearly 60 years of campaigning, but on July 6, 1928, all women over 21 years old finally got the right to vote with the passing of the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928. Prior to that, a voting act in 1918 gave the vote to all men over age 21 and all women over age 30, tripling the electorate.

On February 15, 1928, British Liberal Prime Minister from 1908 to 1916, H. H. [Herbert Henry] Asquith, passed away at the age of 75. He resigned as leader of the Liberal Party in October, 1926.

Asquith’s finest achievement was the Parliament Act of 1911,which stripped the Lords of any veto over money bills or public legislation and became a landmark piece of legislation in paving the way for representative democracy in Great Britain.

A major medical breakthrough occurred in Britain in 1928, when Alexander Fleming, a Scottish bacteriologist, working in his laboratory at St Mary's Hospital Paddington, London discovered, by accident, a mold growing on a dish had stopped bacteria from developing. Fleming’s antibacterial effects of penicillin were described as the "single greatest victory ever achieved over disease."

Fleming published his findings in 1929 in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology.

Tragically, 1928 was the year of a major flood in London. The Thames flooded a large swath of central London. The high waters were triggered by a depression in the North Sea which sent a storm surge up the tidal river.

The Houses of Parliament, the Tate Gallery and the Tower of London were all overwhelmed with high waters. The slums on the Westminster side of Lambeth Bridge, suffered the worst of it, where 10 of the 14 victims lost their lives. At one inquest, a man named Alfred Harding identified the bodies of his four daughters - Florence Emily, 18, Lillian Maude, 16, Rosina, six, and Doris Irene, two.

Taken together, the Thames flood left 14 people dead and an estimated 4,000 people homeless across London.

The flood of 1928, together with the disastrous North Sea Flood of 1953, inspired the construction of Thames Barrier in the 1970s.

1928 certainly wasn’t a good time for the working class in general, with high unemployment “especially in old industrial areas of northern England southern Scotland and South Wales. It got worse in the financial crisis of 1929-31,” Professor Patricia Thane, Visiting Professor in History at Birkbeck College, London said.

Politically, Conservatives were in power in the UK from 1924 through 1929, which contributed to the working-class plight of low wages and deteriorating economic conditions. Lucy Delap observed that “a Labour government had been in power as a minority in 1924 (briefly), and were to be voted in again in 1929 – so working-class voters were I think quite aware of the new political landscape and the possibility of change. When the second minority Labour government came in 1929, high hopes were dashed by the economic recession, and the government only lasted until 1931.”

So, the title of the movie: “Downton Abbey: A New Era” might not have been referring to a ‘’new era’’ only as it applies to the Crawley family at the Downton estate. A new era, to be sure, could be witnessed all over Britain in 1928 with social and economic conditions, the political landscape, and most certainly with movies and British literature.

 

--Bill Lucey

[email protected]

June 18, 2022

The Legacy of The Godfather--50-Year Anniversary

 

Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, James Caan, John Cazale

Photo Credit: Everett Collection

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Lost in the sheer madness during the 94^th Academy Awards on March 27, was an epic milestone in motion picture history.

The Godfather, the 1972 American crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola celebrated its 50-year anniversary.

Sean "Diddy" Combs introduced Francis Ford Coppola, Robert De Niro, and Al Pacino in a tribute to the Godfather Trilogy that was (in my opinion) much too brief for such a brilliant masterpiece.

During the 1973 Academy Awards, The Godfather was nominated for 10 awards, coming away with three, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Marlon Brando).

Prior to the tribute, chaos and confusion took place at the Dolby Theatre, right in the heart of Hollywood, when actor Will Smith (who would later that night win an Oscar) approached comedian Chris Rock on stage and delivered a hard slap to his face for his insensitive joke about his wife's bald head. Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith (unbeknownst to Chris Rock) suffers from alopecia, a medical term for hair loss.

Whatever took place after the Will Smith slap, to many it’s just a hazy memory. The slap heard round the world took center stage and devoured the news cycle for days after the awards ceremony. It certainly overshadowed the milestone of the Godfather hitting its 50-year mark.

Despite The Godfather being released 50 years ago, so many of its memorable lines and scenes of the film are still very much with us and pop up in our everyday language. The Internet Movie Database, (IMDb) for example, lists more than three hundred films and television shows that have referenced “The Godfather.”

Imagine, 132 million people had seen the Godfather by January, 1975. The movie earned more than $250 million worldwide, a figure that continues to grow.

There’s a famous story that former New York Governor Mario Cuomo refused to see “The Godfather” for its depiction of Italian-American stereotypes which he found repulsive. Finally, Cuomo broke down and saw it and he considered it a masterpiece.

Singer Vic Damone had initially been cast in The Godfather for the role of Johnny Fontane, but reportedly bowed out. “As an American of Italian descent,” Damone said, “I could not in good conscience continue in that role.” The role of Johnny Fontane was filled by singer Al Martino.

Brendan Hennessey, Associate Professor of Italian in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Binghamton University, says Cuomo’s initial rejection of the film “was probably typical of Italian Americans of a certain age, definitely in New York state. That generation was still very close to the anti-Italian discrimination of their parents and grandparents who worked hard to distance themselves from stereotypes of Italian criminality and racial inferiority that were very common in the early 20th century through the end of WWII.” “More recent controversies,” Hennessey explained, “over serious representations like 'The Sopranos' or silly ones like 'Jersey Shore' and the non-controversy over renaming Columbus Day are all remnants of that era of assimilation.”  Hennessey contends that the current generation of Italian-Americans are not as outraged by these stereotypes as much as their parents and grandparents were.

Marlon Brando and Francis Ford Coppola discuss a ‘Godfather’ scene on location in Little Italy.

Photo Credit: Anthony Pescatore/NY Daily News via Getty Images

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So, exactly why is The Godfather considered such a cinematic masterpiece to this very day? 

Former New York Times op-ed columnist and currently writer-at-large for New York Magazine, Frank Rich, tells me “as King Lear exemplifies, classic drama so often involves a family battling over love and power. In The Godfather, Coppola wedded those basics to memorable, original characters, an epic shadow history of America, bravura filmmaking, and pitch-perfect casting that called on the talents of several generations of great American actors, among them stars in-the-making like Pacino.”

John Mosier, Professor of English (Emeritus) at Loyola University, New Orleans, thinks that The Godfather was a compelling Italian immigrant saga; one that chronicles the importance of family and loyalty when all other traditional levers of power in America fails them.

Additionally, “it told a story about two aspects of American life,” Mosier says, “that everyone knew existed, but had never been talked about: Sicilian culture here and criminal activity.  So, it used a typical story device—young idealistic man who’s drawn into a life of violence.  It did so in a way that was neither moralistic nor tragic—the ending was a very fine touch.  He should have stopped, basically.”

For serious film buffs, I compiled a selection of facts about The Godfather, along with a collection of original film reviews from 1972.

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Robert Duvall holds cue cards for Marlon Brando to read 

Source: Paramount Studios

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The Godfather: Facts, Feats, and Historic Firsts

• Mario Puzo was born in 1920 in Hell’s Kitchen (West Side of Midtown Manhattan), the son of Italian born parents.
• His first two novels, “Dark Arena” and “Fortunate Pilgrim” though critically acclaimed, earned him only $6,500. At age 45, he owed $20,000 in gambling debts, so he wrote a ten-page book outline-entitled Mafia, hoping for more commercial appeal. The Godfather was a pulp novel about sex, violence and crime. Eight publishers turned him down.
• The Godfather book was a rousing success, spending 67 weeks on the New York Times' Best Sellers List
• On March 5, 1967, Paramount bought the rights to Mario Puzo’s book, “Mafia,” later renamed “The Godfather.”
• In 1969, according to Robert Evans (head of production at Paramount), "there wasn’t a single Italian director with any credibility to be found.”
• 12 directors turned down the opportunity to direct The Godfather.
• September 27, 1970: Francis Ford Coppola was officially announced as The Godfather director with an anticipated release at Christmas, 1971.
• The final draft of the screenplay ran 158 pages and was dated March 29, 1971.
• Coppola reportedly made The Godfather because he was Italian and desperate for work. He was offered and accepted $125,000 and 6% of the profits.
• Hollywood heavyweights, Anthony Quinn, George C. Scott, Laurence Olivier, and Ernest Borgnine were rumored to be vying for the part of Don Corleone.
• Anne Bancroft was briefly considered for the part of Carmella “Mama’’ Corleone.
• Al Pacino failed his screen test, he forgot his lines.
• Ryan O’Neal, Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson, Frank Langella, Martin Sheen, and David Carrradine, were all considered for the role of Michael Corleone before settling on Al Pacino. For a short time, James Caan was the frontrunner to play Michael Corleone.
• Casting for The Godfather formally began in New York at THE GODFATHER Production Offices on the 28^th floor #1 Gulf and Western Plaza on November 20, 1970.
• Pacino was 31 years old when he finally secured the role of Michael Corleone.
• At 5:30 a.m. on March 23, 1971, filming for The Godfather began.
• The Godfather was shot in 120 New York area locations over 67 days.
• Gianni Russo (who played Carlo Rizzi in the Godfather) claims that he worked in organized crime early in his life, serving as an errand boy and mob associate for Frank Costello.
• Marlon Brando was 47 years old when he was cast in the Godfather. He was viewed in the industry as washed up. Prior to The Godfather, Marlon Brando was in a series of flops and was considered box office poison.
• Brando was paid $50,000, plus $10,000 a week in expenses during his contractual six weeks of shooting, and a percentage after the picture brought in $10 million.
• Coppola was certain he was about to be fired. His insistence over casting Pacino and the rest of his chosen cast member had earned him the hostility of almost all the top executives at Paramount.
• New York crime boss, Frank Colombo assembled tens of thousands of protestors to march through the streets of New York, to protest the making of The Godfather and its distorted depiction of Italian-Americans.  A benefit concert was organized, headlined by Frank Sinatra, and raised roughly $600,000—which he used, according to Al Ruddy (The Godfather producer), for “the sole express purpose of stopping the filming of The Godfather.”
• At the request of the Italian-American Civil Rights League, all references to the Mafia and Cosa Nostra from its screenplay, were eliminated.
• In The Godfather, Coppola sought to express how Americans as a whole must rely on their family for what America fails to provide them, and in the case of the movie that family is Don Corleone.
• Among the most pressing obstacles facing Coppola was financing: the film’s budget, originally set at $2 million, quickly leaped toward $6 million.
• The gruesome scene with the dead horse’s head was a real horse, obtained from a rendering plant in New Jersey, where they located a horse ready for slaughter. The horse’s head was smeared with Karo blood. The horse’s head in blood stemmed from Sicilian folklore: they nailed your favorite dog’s head to your door if you didn’t pay up.
• For Marlon Brando, the production crew created “dental plumpers,” flesh-colored blobs of acrylic that fit into the sides of Brando’s mouth and flush up against his teeth. To hold the appliances in place, a metal band attached to the plumpers was wrapped around the base of his teeth, with the ends wrapped around his molars like a piece of bridgework. On each foot, Brando wore a ten-pound weight to slow his movements, and padding was added around his waist for a belly grown fat from sumptuous eating.
• The name of Tony Soprano’s strip club in the HBO series, The Sopranos. “ Bada-bing” came from a line in The Godfather spoken by James Caan.
• Sonny (James Caan) beating of Carlo Rizzi (Gianni Russo) for harming his sister was filmed on Pleasant Avenue in East Harlem.
• The assassination of Sonny was considered a technical masterpiece; 200 bullet holes were drilled into the car and filled with squibs—tiny explosive rounds that could be remotely detonated—and another hundred were attached to the tollbooth. 
• A suite in the Americana of New York, on Sixth Avenue, served as a substitute for Las Vegas.
• Vegas casino chief Moe Greene (Alex Rocco,) the Jewish gangster, was based on the real-life American gangster, Bugsy Siegel. 
• The Godfather opened nationwide on March 24, 1972.
• The Godfather brought in $465,148 in its first week alone from just the five Manhattan theaters, considered (at the time) the largest one-week total ever for a motion picture.
• By the following week, the movie had racked up $7,397,164 across 322 theaters in the US and Canada. In less than a month after the opening, The Godfather was grossing $1 million a day, the first film ever to break the magical million-dollar mark.
• During the 1973 Academy Awards, The Godfather was nominated for ten awards: Best Picture; Brando as Best Actor; Coppola for Best Director; Coppola and Puzo for Best Adapted Screenplay; Pacino, Caan, Duvall each for Best Supporting Actor; along with nominations for costumes, editing, and sound.
• The Godfather met with so much box office success, a sequel was quickly worked out with a release date of April, 1974.
• Francis Ford Coppola eventually became a five-time Oscar winner and the recipient of the Academy’s 2010 Irving G. Thalberg Award.
• The Johnny Fontane character is thought to be inspired by Frank Sinatra.
• Francis Ford Coppola and James Caan were classmates at Hofstra University.
• Pacino and Caan signed onto the Godfather for $35,000. Robert Duvall made $36,000 in the Godfather

Italian phrases in The Godfather

Caporegime is a Mafia term for a lieutenant, or second in command.

            Strunz is derived from an Italian term, stronzo, the vulgar translation for which is “a piece of shit.”

            Lupara is a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun that is often homemade. It’s a traditional Cosa Nostra weapon in Sicily.

            Pezzonovante means someone who is powerful, a big shot.

Michael calls Apollonia (the young Sicilian woman) “pazzo,” meaning “crazy”.

• Pacino sprained an ankle ligament when he raced out of the Louis Restaurant (after gunning down Mark McCluskey, the corrupt Irish-American police captain and Virgil "The Turk" Sollozzo, the top narcotics man, who became associated with the Tattaglia family) to catch a getaway car in a scene that never made the final cut. Pacino was sidelined for a few days and had to rely on crutches and a cane when shooting resumed along with plenty of painkillers.
• Pacino’s grandparents were genuine Sicilians. He was born in East Harlem but moved to the Bronx at a young age.
• After Marlon Brando passed away (2004), his own annotated script of “The Godfather” fetched $312,800 at a New York auction, which is believed to be the highest amount paid for a film script.
• The baptism scene in The Godfather was filmed at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Mulberry Street, Manhattan. The exteriors of the baptism scene were filmed at Mount Loretto Church in Staten Island. The church burned down in 1973.
• Filming for the shootings during the baptism: (the barbershop, the revolving doors, and the walk up the stairs) was filmed at the St Regis Hotel in Manhattan. Moe Greene’s massage took place in the steam room in the McBurney YMCA, West 23^rd Street, Manhattan.
• On March 15, 1972, five New York theaters screened the world premiere of The Godfather for the public. That night, the film took in a record $57,000. In the first week, the take was $465,000, also a record.
• Paramount pre booked The Godfather in 350 theaters. The film, which costs $6.2 million to make, earned $13.8 million from those bookings alone before the film hit all theaters nationwide.
• In 1972, the average ticket price in the United States was around $1.60. With the high demand over The Godfather, Paramount boosted ticket prices to $3.50, then weekend prices went up to $4.00
• In the film’s initial release, Paramount made $85.7 million. It was the first movie in motion picture history to gross an average of $1 million a day. It was the highest-grossing film of all time, until Jaws surpassed it in 1975. To date, it has grossed nearly $135 million domestically, and an estimated $250 million worldwide.
• NBC paid $10 million to air “The Godfather” over two nights in November of 1974. An estimated 42,400,000 households watched a slightly abridged version of the movie.
• Brando worked on the Godfather for six weeks.
• The Godfather won three Oscars.
• There are 16 hugs, kisses, and squeezes in the Godfather.
• 132 million people had seen the Godfather by January, 1975.
• The Godfather ran for two hours and fifty-six minutes.
• The Godfather film opens in August, 1945

--Bill Lucey

April 7, 2022

[email protected]

Source: “The Annotated Godfather” By Jenny M. Jones; “Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather” by Mark Seal; “The Godfather: A Pictorial History” By Gerald Gardner; “The Godfather Legacy” by Harlan Lebo

 

Original Movie Reviews of The Godfather (1972)

• “Far from surviving …as the Gone with the Wind of gangster movies, my guess is The Godfather will be as quickly forgotten as it deserves to be.”

--William F. Buckley, The New York Post, March 14, 1972

• “The Godfather is as good as the novel—and essentially as immoral and therefore in its new incarnation and availability to the illiterate, far more dangerous…The whole function of this film is to show us that Hitler is a grand sort of family man, gentle with children, daring and ruthless with enemies, implacable in the matter of honor and so loyal to the ties of blood that even a brother-in-law, to a sister’s sorrow, must go (juicily garroted) if he happens to have betrayed a son of the house.”

--Judith Crist, New York Magazine, March 20, 1972

• The Godfather” rediscovers the marvelous possibilities existing in the straightforward narrative movie that refuses to acknowledge it's about anything more than its plot, and whose characters are revealed entirely in terms of events. The Godfather moves so quickly, in such a tightly organized series of interlocking events, that the film, like its characters (who are not the sort to muse very long about their fates), doesn't have time to be introspective—to betray the excitement of the immediately felt emotion or of an explicit action by somehow commenting on it.

--Vincent Canby, The New York Times, March 12, 1972

•  “Coppola has found a style and a visual look for all this material so “The Godfather” becomes something of a rarity: a really good movie squeezed from a bestseller. The decision to shoot everything in period decor (the middle and late 1940s) was crucial; if they’d tried to save money as they originally planned, by bringing everything up-to-date, the movie simply wouldn’t have worked. But it’s uncannily successful as a period piece, filled with sleek, bulging limousines and postwar fedoras. “

--Roger Ebert, January 1, 1972, Chicago Sun-Times

• “It’s an extraordinary achievement: a new classic in a classic American film genre: a richly ironic example of how crude popular fiction maybe be transformed into great popular art; a fresh source of both legend and optimism, reviving the career of Marlon Brando and probably making the career of Marlon Brando and probably making the careers of young actor Al Pacino, young screenwriter director Francis Ford Coppola, and several others. And last but hardly least, it is a product of almost limitless commercial potential.”

--Gary Arnold, The Washington Post, March 22, 1972

• “Director Coppola, whose Hollywood record so far has been undistinguished, tells The Godfather with a kind of brilliant low-keyed virtuosity, with one particularly effective use of symbolism: the underworld dealings are conducted in thickly darkened rooms, usually in murmurous tones, and these scenes are contrasted with the pastoral, open-air semi-freedom of Corleone family life.”

--Kevin Kelly, The Boston Globe, March 23, 1972

• “The Godfather is a baptism in blood, a ripping, tearing blockbuster of a movie, as charged with excitement as a hoodlum using a machine gun, as shocking as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre,”

--Joyce Haber, Los Angeles Times, 1972 

• “This is a curious film. One comes to understand, even to condone, the activities of the Godfather and his clan. And even though it frankly portrays the underworld’s influence in the sacrosanct worlds of Hollywood and Las Vegas, there is the feeling that, with young Michael there, these will be better worlds. Essentially, The Godfather is the projection of a myth, not a fact. But it is myths — not facts — that make a fortune. “

--Arthur Knight, The Hollywood Reporter, March 8, 1972

• “It takes a masterful presentation of a gripping story to hold a man in his seat for 2 hours and 55 minutes with a minimum of squirming. This is what The Godfather does.”

--Emerson Batdorff, The Plain Dealer, March 23, 1972

 

How Newspapers Reacted to Chappaquiddick in 1969

 

Sometimes, it’s impossible to burn bridges.

With Sen. Edward Kennedy having passed away nearly 10 years ago, and the tragedy of Chappaquiddick nearly 50 years old, you’d think the scandal that erupted after that muggy July weekend in 1969 would be but a distant memory by now.

But like a bad check, it has returned.

Thanks to director John Curran, the motion picture “Chappaquiddick” (written by Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan) and produced by Entertainment Studios, hits theaters nationwide on April 6.

The film explores the mysterious events surrounding the drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne (played by Kate Mara) after Ted Kennedy (Jason Clarke) drove his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Mass., landing upside down in eight feet of water.

According to published reports, Curran avoids indicting or absolving Kennedy in the film. After depicting the facts of the case, the New York born director and screenwriter leaves it up to the audience to draw their own conclusions.

What exactly happened at Chappaquiddick?

The Chappaquiddick incident couldn’t have come at a worse time for Ted Kennedy, who was only 37 at the time. His star was rising in the U.S. Senate and was being heavily favored by most public opinion polls as the candidate most likely to be nominated by the Democratic Party for the 1972 presidential election.

But then, in a blink of an eye, his hopes and dreams were shattered on that fateful July weekend in 1969, just two days before the Apollo 11 Moon Landing.

Ted Kennedy's submerged 1967 Oldsmobile and a picture of Mary Jo Kopechne who drowned in the car. She was 28.

***

On the weekend of July 18-19, 1969, Sen. Kennedy invited six women who had worked for his late brother Robert to attend a reunion at the annual Edgartown Yacht Club Regatta race (a sail boating race) to honor their supervisor, Dave Hackett.

The party or cookout (after the race) took place at a rented cottage on Chappaquiddick Island, accessible by ferry from the town of Edgartown on the nearby larger island, Martha's Vineyard.

The party was attended by six married men (including Sen. Kennedy) and six unmarried women.

Sometime during the evening on July 18, Sen. Kennedy claimed he wanted to head back to the Shiretown Inn in Edgartown.

According to testimony, one of the campaign workers at the reunion, Mary Jo Kopechne, 28, feeling tired, expressed to Mr. Kennedy that she would like to catch a ride with him so that she could catch the ferry, which was closing at midnight.

For reasons never fully explained, Kopechne, left behind her purse and hotel room key at the cottage. She also never informed anyone that she was leaving.

After the young campaign worker hopped into the car with the senator, what exactly took place over the next few hours is a matter of speculation.

Kennedy maintained that they were driving toward the ferry but made the wrong turn on Dike Road (an unlit, dirt road) that led to Dike Bridge. Moments before reaching the bridge, according to his testimony, he slammed on the brakes, before driving off a side of the bridge, landing upside down in eight feet of water of Poucha Pond.

Many question the “wrong road’’ scenario, reasoning that it would be virtually impossible to have turned on Dike Road without immediately being aware of the mistake.

The biggest shroud of mystery centers on why it took the senator nearly 10 hours to report the accident?

He testified that he made seven or eight attempts to dive into the water to rescue Kopechne but had trouble breathing. So, he began walking and running for help, but couldn’t make out any shapes and was only able to stay on the road from the silhouettes of the trees.

But evidence subsequently emerged that Kennedy would have, in fact, come across at least three lit cottages (only 500 feet from the bridge) where he could have asked for help.

Kennedy described that night as a "jumble of emotions-grief, fear, doubt, exhaustion, panic, confusion, and shock.”

According to medical reports, he suffered a concussion.

The fire department dispatched a diver, Capt. John Farrar, to recover the body submerged in the pond. He told reporters, she, [Kopechne] "was in what I call a very conscious position, meaning she’d been alive and functional after the car had entered the water, roof first. Her head was at the floorboards, where the last bit of air would have been. It seems likely she was holding herself into a pocket of air to breathe.”

The diver thought the car Kennedy was driving “must have been going at a pretty good clip to land almost in the middle of the channel.” He also said that had he been called soon after the accident, “there was a good chance the girl could have been saved.”

Kopechne’s body was recovered at 8:45 a.m., the morning after the accident.

Edgartown Police Chief Jim Arena, filed a complaint in Edgartown District Court, charging Kennedy with “leaving the scene of an accident without negligence involved.” The special prosecutor, in his report, stressed that Kennedy had been driving “with extreme caution” at the time of the accident.

More alarm bells were set off when it was learned that an associate medical examiner took less than five minutes to determine Kopechne’s “death by drowning,” while never fully undressing her, and never turning her body over from front to back. He said no autopsy was needed.

The chief medical examiner who was off duty at the time of the drowning, told reporters that there was no conclusive evidence of death by drowning. Contradicting the associate medical examiner, he said, “we don’t know if the girl died of a heart attack, stroke, or from drowning.”

Within hours of Kopechne's death, K. Dun Gifford, a Kennedy aide, flew a chartered plane into Edgartown (the Martha's Vineyard town of which Chappaquiddick is a part), with orders to get her body off the island, beyond the state’s jurisdiction.

When Kennedy finally did arrive at the Shiretown Inn (after swimming or paddling a boat through the 500-foot channel), he reportedly made 12 calls from a pay phone before giving his statement to police.

Cynics question if the senator was really in a state of “exhaustion, panic, confusion, and shock,” how could he have made so many phone calls?

In 1969, Senator Edward M. Kennedy and his wife, Joan, after a court appearance on the Chappaquiddick Island car accident.
Photo Credit: Librado Romero/The New York Times

***

Since it took the senator more than a week to address the tragedy in public, rumors about the accident were running wild, including rumors that Mary Jo Kopechne was pregnant and the car plunging off the bridge was no accident. Others picked up whispers that Joseph Gargan, a Kennedy cousin, was initially willing to take the rap for Ted Kennedy.

There was also the "third girl in the car'' theory advanced, which suggests that Rosemary (“Cricket”) Keough, one of the girls who attended the cookout, was in the car with Kennedy, and Kopechene was sleeping in the backseat. When the car was recovered, Keough's handbag was found in the car.

Deputy Sheriff Christopher "Huck" Look acting as a special officer for a private party the night of the accident, came forth with testimony that between 12:30 a.m. and 12:45 a.m. he noticed a dark car approaching the intersection of Dike Road. The car, according to Look, was driven by a man with a female passenger in the front seat. The car drove onto the private Cemetery Road and stopped. He thought they were lost and approached the car. The driver then put the car in reverse and headed east toward the ocean (not the ferry), along Dike Road. The Deputy Sheriff said he did catch a glimpse of the license plate of the car, which he thought began with an "L" and contained two "7's, which did indeed match Kennedy's license plate number: L78-207.

Look reportedly said he saw "a man driving . . . someone next to him" and possibly (although he wasn't 100 percent sure)"someone else in the back seat."

Look's testimony punched damaging holes in Kennedy's testimony that they were headed for the ferry. It also contradicts the time element, suggesting that Kennedy had been with Kopechene for more than an hour before the car plunged off the bridge.

On the 25th anniversary of Chappaquiddick, the BBC developed a theory that when Kennedy was driving Kopechne, he noticed an off-duty police officer in his patrol car. Alarmed that the officer may question why he’s in the car with a young beautiful woman, Kennedy got out of the car and returned to the party. And it was Kopechne who then took over the wheel of the car before driving off the bridge. For those who subscribe to this theory, this would account for the long gap between the drowning and when Kennedy reported the incident to police.

Whatever conspiracy theory anyone clung to, the end result was that on July 25, 1969, Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident. He received a two-month suspended sentence, and had his license suspended for a year.

The Massachusetts senator resumed his senatorial duties at the end of July, 1969.

Case closed.

Though the circumstances surrounding the drowning was never prosecuted, the younger brother of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy was never able to carry the torch of the Kennedy legacy that would propel him into the White House.

Ted Kennedy did go on to have a remarkable career in the United States Senate as the “Liberal Lion,” rising to senior Democratic Party member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee; the Immigration Subcommittee; and the Armed Services Committee. In 2006, Time Magazine named him as one of America’s top 10 senators.

Still, Chappaquiddick forever hung over him like a dark, ominous cloud.

The Chappaquiddick scandal ultimately derailed his attempt to unseat Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination in 1980. After losing 24 primaries to Carter (he won 10) Kennedy dropped out of the race, never to throw his hat into the ring again.

To get a sense of the newspaper coverage Ted Kennedy received in the weeks and months after Chappaquiddick, I gathered some snippets of columns in 1969 from a variety of newspapers.

Press Reacts to Chappaquiddick

"For the third time in less than six years, sudden death has touched the Kennedy family and thereby altered everyone's picture of the American political future."
-David S. Broder, The Washington Post, July 27, 1969

"One need only to look at what the handsome Massachusetts senator has been, or might be, accused of to realize that once all the legal questions are cared for the important accusations against Kennedy will probably be the kind that never get tried in any place but the court of public opinion."
--Carl Rowan, Chicago Sun-Times, September 7, 1969

"Every passing day for the last seven weeks Edward Kennedy has been faced with a dilemma more cruel and oppressive than it was the day before. For it has become increasingly likely that for him to survive in public life and be allowed merely to serve what he regards as the continuing causes of his dead brothers-let alone achieve the Presidency--there can be no escaping a candid and complete account of his behavior before and after the accident on Chappaquiddick Island in which Mary Jo Kopechne drowned."

--Joseph Lelyveld, New York Times, September 7, 1969

 "Instead of a more complete explanation that might wipe away those doubts, Kennedy has chosen silence--amid hope by some of his supporters that time will erase memories of the tragedy. Therein lies Kennedy's political trap. His refusal to talk will receive nationwide exposure at the inevitable first confrontation between Kennedy and the press. That can only multiply suspicions that there was something to hide on Martha's Vineyard."
--Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, Los Angeles Times, August 1, 1969

"If the political consequences of Edward Kennedy's personal difficulties prove as disastrous for him as seems indicated, the likelihood of his being the Democratic nominee for President in 1972 is greatly diminished and perhaps destroyed. This could have extraordinary consequences for American politics."
--Tom Wicker, The New York Times, July 27, 1969

"The power of genuine tragedy, as defined by Aristotle and understood by every later generation, lies in its demonstration that even the mighty and powerful among us are, because they are mortal and have flaws, liable to suffer judgements that no human standard of justice would impose."
--David S. Broder, The Washington Post, July 31, 1969.

The real test is not really here in a courtroom in Edgartown or in the Supreme Judicial Court in Boston. What is at stake here is the public man's credibility--whether the public really believes that Sen. Kennedy has leveled with them in this case."
--Robert Healy, The Boston Globe, September 3, 1969

"The other Bostonian, Ralph Waldo Emerson, would have been intrigued by the Kennedy triumphs and the Kennedy tragedies. In his essay on the duality of life, he argued that every human excess causes a defect, and every defect an excess; every good an evil; for everything you have missed, a gain, and everything you have gained, a loss."
--James Reston, The New York Times, August 15, 1969

"Whatever the answers, one can reasonably conclude that Kennedy-by his own words-showed that in this episode, at age 37, he could not command himself in a critical situation. It was bad luck for him, perhaps, to have been in a dazed condition and to have to rely on sycophants like Markham and Gargan for counsel during those horrible hours. Too bad there wasn't a hard-nosed guy around to coldly tell Teddy the score. It is also clear that the power of the Kennedy name and wealth provided a treatment by the law which ordinary citizens don't enjoy. Big names cow small-town cops."
--Nick Thimmesch, Newsday, August 1, 1969

"What he now faces is a very long struggle. His assets are his name, his talents and his wealth. His liabilities are Chappaquiddick. He will now have to make it more or less on his own. Chappaquiddick having apparently broken the natural line of succession. If, over the next four or five or ten years, he is able to show by his achievements a sobriety of purpose, a strategic manliness, a sense of destiny and resolution, then he will transcend the affair” [of July 18 ].
--William F. Buckley Jr., Los Angeles Times, September 22, 1969

"Kennedy will come back with the passage of time. Someday he will be effective again in the Senate debates that he will have to pass up in the immediate future. Until then, however, there are painful reminders that one of the voices which carried some authority in the Senate won't be effective."
--Reg Murphy, the Atlanta Constitution, July 31, 1969

"Like all strong men whom an unkind fate forces to traverse the valley of the shadow, the senator himself further seems to have gained in strength and self-knowledge. If the present chapter ends as seems most likely, he will thus appear in the next chapter as a major leader of very special promise. And if one may look ahead, a major leader is likely to be badly needed in 1976."
--Joseph Alsop, Los Angeles Times, November 4, 1969

***

 Chappaquiddick Facts

"Chappaquiddick" is an Indian word that means “separate island."

The automobile Ted Kennedy was driving the night of the accident was a 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88. License Plate Number: L78 207 .

Mary Jo Kopechne’s blood-alcohol level at the time of death was determined to be .09 percent.

Edgartown Police Chief Jim Arena took a written statement from Kennedy after the accident. He never administered a test as to determine whether he had been drinking.

Ed Hanify, Kennedy's lawyer, made arrangements to have the senator's car destroyed by a compactor. Mary Jo's clothing that she had worn that night—including a blouse that had bloodstains on the back—was burned.

Senator Ted Kennedy's televised address (July 25th) to the nation in 1969 was delivered in the library of his father's house. The speech was written chiefly by Ted Sorenson, President John F. Kennedy’s principle speechwriter.

In addition to Mary Jo Kopechne's, the other women at the party on the night of the accident were: Susan Tannenbaum, Esther Newberg, and Rosemary Keough. Two others, Maryellen and Nance Lyons, arrived the next day. They were known as "Boiler Room Girls," for working the phone room (boiler room) for delegate counts during Bobby Kennedy's 1968 ill-fated presidential run.

Also present at the party were Kennedy's cousin, Joseph Gargan, and Paul F. Markham, previously, a U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, Attorney Charles Tretter, Raymond La Rosa, and John Crimmins (Kennedy's part-time driver).

The people who gathered at the Kennedy compound (Hyannis Port, Mass.) after the tragedy were: Ethel Kennedy, Harvard Prof. Arthur Schlesinger, Stephen Smith (business and campaign manager to Kennedy), former Sec. of Defense, Robert McNamara, Theodore Sorensen, Burke Marshall (Kennedy family lawyer), and Richard Goodwin (speech writer to the Kennedy's).

Kopechne remained in the car until her body was recovered by a Fire Department diver at 8:45 the next morning.

When Kennedy reported the accident to the Edgartown police, it was 9:45 a.m. -- some nine or 10 hours after he left Kopechne in his car.

Ted Kennedy's wife, Joan Bennett Kennedy, suffered her third miscarriage a month after the incident at Chappaquiddick.

The Kopechnes family reportedly received a financial settlement of $140,923 through a Kennedy insurer.

***

Additional Reading on Chappaquiddick

Chappaquiddick FBI Files

Excerpts from the Testimony of Senator Kennedy at Inquest into Kopechne Death (New York Times).

What Happened at Chappaquiddick By Vivian Cadden, McCall's. August 1974

The End of Camelot, Vanity Fair Magazine, September, 1993 

Chappaquiddick's unanswered questions By Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, July 21, 1994

NOTE: I’d like to express my heartfelt thanks and gratitude to the kind folks at ProQuest for allowing me to access the Los Angeles Times Historic Archives. Thanks too to Rick Mastroianni, Research and Library Director, at the Newseum, for providing me with some historic pdfs from 1969.

--Bill Lucey
April 2, 2018

[email protected]

 

 

The Washington Post Soars to New Heights in 'The Post'

 

“The Post,” Steven Spielberg’s political thriller of a film, centering on the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, initially by the New York Times, then the Washington Post, appears to be a smash hit.

Over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, the film generated $18.6 million from North American theaters, coming in second behind “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.” “The Post” is additionally being met with enthusiastic reviews from a number of film critics.

Among other accolades, at the 75th Golden Globe Awards, the film received six nominations: Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Director, Best Actress – Drama for Streep, Best Actor – Drama for Hanks, Best Screenplay and Best Original Score.

Much like he did with “Lincoln” (in nabbing Daniel Day-Lewis to play President Abraham Lincoln), Spielberg went to the top of the mountain in search of star-studded talent, this time convincing Tom Hanks to play the tough as nails executive editor of the Washington Post, Ben Bradlee, and Meryl Streep to unveil her interpretation of Katharine “Kay” Graham, publisher of the Post.

How believable were they in their roles?

Author and journalist, Sally Quinn, the third wife of Ben Bradlee, who writes a blog about religion  , responding though an email, wrote that she enjoyed “The Post” immensely and thought Hanks did an incredible job portraying her former husband, so much so that she cried while watching the film.

Author and Washington based journalist, Jim Mann, who worked briefly on the Watergate scandal while at the Washington Post, thought Streep's “rendition of Graham was close to perfect.”

Even actor Michael Stuhlbarg's depiction of Abe Rosenthal, the irascible managing editor of the New York Times, met with rousing approval from a family member.

Andrew Rosenthal, former Editorial Page editor of the New York Times, (now a regular Op-Ed columnist ), thought Stuhlbarg was magnificent, but admitted his disappointment that a larger scene in the movie involving his dad, was left on the cutting room floor.

With a hefty $50 million budget to work with, Spielberg didn’t spare any expense, going to great lengths to make sure select scenes and the general landscape presented in the film was a true reflection of the early 1970s.

The newsrooms of both the Washington Post and New York Times, for example, depicting predominantly white men in white shirts, clacking away at their typewriters, using their rotary dial phones, while flipping a lighter, and firing up a cigarette, was convincingly presented.

Even the film’s exterior panoramas of the New York Times former building at 229 West 43rd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue near Times Square in Manhattan (from 1913 through 2007), looked like it was the real deal. Through the magic of Hollywood, however, Spielberg’s production company used The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen building in mid-Manhattan (20 West 44th Street, New York) as the Times’ former headquarters. The Times signature 300-foot-long array of globe lights, that was prominently featured outside its old building, were the original fixtures kept by the Times.

Incredibly, it’s been almost 50 years since the Pentagon Papers were published, and what an uproar it caused at the time, pitting the Government against press freedoms provided by the First Amendment.

Many of the press liberties that are taken for granted today, came as the result of hard fought, gutsy battles, of two newspapers and their indomitable editors.

When Neil Sheehan’s first batch of revelations from the Pentagon Papers splashed across the front page of the New York Times on June 13, 1971, newspapers were put on a collision course with the Richard Nixon administration.

After the third instalment of the Times expose, the U.S. Department of Justice secured, through the U.S. District Court, a restraining order on the Times’ from publishing classified material (on the grounds the material would cause “immediate and irreparable harm” to U.S. national defense interests”), essentially shutting down the paper from publishing the Pentagon documents.

Bradlee thundered that the ruling represented, "a black mark on the history of democracy.”

Five days later, the Post, undaunted, despite the temporary restraining order imposed on the Times, decided to charge ahead and publish their own analysis of the Pentagon Papers, which unlike the Times, did not reprint classified documents, but paraphrased or quoted select sentences from the study. In particular, the Post articles highlighted the deep divisions between the State and Defense Departments with its policy in Vietnam. The Post analysis also cast President Johnson in an unfavorable light, documenting the lengths to which he went to escalate the war.

As enlightening as the publication of the Pentagon Papers proved to be, things, nonetheless, looked mighty bleak for the Times and Post and the freedoms once taken for granted under the First Amendment.

15 stormy days would ensue before the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision, a favorable ruling (6-3) for the press, ruling that prior restraint was unconstitutional and further asserting, that “only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.”

Ben Bradlee and Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham celebrated the 1971 ruling allowing publication of the Pentagon Papers. Photo Credit: Associated Press

 

As brilliant as the Times and the Post’s reporting was, it’s worth emphasizing that such an expose wasn’t possible, but for a brave, courageous Pentagon analysist (superhawk turned superdove), Daniel Ellsberg, stepping forward and going public with 4,000 pages, and 2.5 million words of critical Pentagon history, releasing copies first to the Times, then to the Post.

It was Ellsberg’s hope that the release of this Pentagon study, officially titled, “History of the United States Decision-Making Process on Vietnam Policy" commissioned in 1967 by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, would convince President Nixon to change his Vietnam policy.

Among other troubling revelations, the Pentagon Papers showed that the Truman Administration provided military aid to France in its colonial war against the communist-led Viet Minh, directly involving the United States in Vietnam; and that President Lyndon B. Johnson ramped up the war against North Vietnam, while planning to wage a covert war in 1964, a full year before the U.S. involvement was publicly revealed. The Pentagon study additionally documented disturbing cases of deception by the Johnson administration, by, for example, withholding vital information from Congress and the public, critical information, which raised serious questions about the effectiveness of the U.S. government’s course of action in Southeast Asia.

Knowing his treasonous actions would more than likely land him in jail, Ellsberg wasn’t surprised when he was charged under the Espionage Act of 1917, along with other charges of theft and conspiracy, which carried a total maximum sentence of 115 years.

The charges against the former RAND Corp. employee, however, were dismissed on May 11, 1973. on grounds of "improper Government conduct shielded so long from public view," as ruled by United States District Court Judge William Matthew Byrne Jr.

Another highly invasive abuse of power directed at Mr. Ellsberg happened on September 3, 1971, shortly after the Pentagon Papers went public, when H.R. Haldeman, Nixon's top advisor, ordered the break in of Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. The burglars photographed files, but found nothing damaging on the former Pentagon analyst. The Nixon administration rationalized such action on the peculiar grounds that Ellsberg threatened national security.

After seeing the film, I now understand why Mr. Spielberg made the Washington Post the center of this film, and not the New York Times.

The Pentagon Papers clearly raised Ben Bradlee and the Washington Post’s stature to new heights, demonstrating their fearless resolve not to be bullied by the White House in withholding the truth from its readers.

Prior to the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the Washington Star had a higher circulation than the Post. Kay Graham’s paper was no longer a local paper, they were now a prominent national paper.

Though the Times would win a Pulitzer Prize for the Pentagon Papers in 1972, only a year later, the Post would scoop its chief rival and win a Pulitzer for the Watergate scandal, a triumphant moment for the Post in which Bradlee roared, ''Eat your heart out, Abe Rosenthal, eat your heart out!"

The Post's decision to publish the Pentagon Papers, permanently changed "the ethos of the paper and crystallized for editors and reporters everywhere how independent and determined and confident of its purpose the new Washington Post had become,’’ Bradlee would wrote in his memoirs.

Bradlee also wrote that the Post had become, “a paper that stands up to charges of treason, a paper that holds firm in the face of charges from the president, the Supreme Court, the Attorney General, never mind an assistant attorney general. A paper that holds its head high, committed unshakably to principle.”

Katharine Graham, the heroic publisher, who ultimately gave the green light to publish the papers (“OK...let's go, let's publish”), writes in a book she wrote about the Pentagon Papers, that when national editor Ben Bagdikian came back to Washington with a suitcase full of Pentagon documents from Boston (given to him by Ellsberg) and called the executive editor to ask whether they should publish, Bradlee purportedly responded, "If we don't publish, there's going to be a new executive editor at the Washington Post."

That quote, Graham readily admits, might be apocryphal, but she said it certainly sounded like something Ben would say.

--Bill Lucey

[email protected]

January 18, 2018

 

Further Resources

• Pentagon Papers (National Archives)
• Time Magazine, June 28, 1971: The Pentagon Papers: The Secret War

 

'Darkest Hour' Was Gary Oldman's Finest Hour

 

Put the Oscar on ice for Gary Oldman.

I spent a cold Christmas afternoon, taking in “Darkest Hour,” English film director Joe Wright’s brilliant depiction of Winston Churchill during the early stages of World War II, specifically, May, 1940, when a menacing Nazi Germany loomed large and all seemed lost.

It was hard to believe the mesmerizing performance unveiled by Mr. Oldman was really the same actor who portrayed Sid Vicious in “Sid and Nancy” and the corrupt cop, Jack Grimaldi, in “Romeo is Bleeding.”

But through creative makeup enhancements and prosthetics, viewers found themselves lost in who was really behind the mask. For all they knew, they were transported back in time, when Britain was indeed on the brink of capitulation, led by a new wobbly Prime Minister, who had failed miserably during the ill-fated Gallipoli Campaign (the Allied powers botched attempt to control the sea route from Europe to Russia during World War I) and for supporting Edward VIII during the Abdication Crisis.

Unlike a number of productions about Churchill during this tumultuous period in Britain’s history, the movie doesn’t attempt to be a complete history of World War II, (from vanquished to victor), but instead, focuses on the intense days of May and June, 1940, during Churchill’s finest hours.

Before deciding how to defend England at the time of its greatest peril, Winston Churchill must confront enemies in his own backyard first, namely, deposed British PM Neville Chamberlain (forced to resign for being too weak on national security) and Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax, both of whom are trying to box Churchill into a corner to seek a peace treaty with Germany (with Italy serving as an intermediary) before it’s too late.

Initially, even a jittery King George VI (a k a Bertie) offers heeded suggestions to No. 10 Downing Street that a peace treaty might be the Island’s most viable option.

Just as a bewildered, grief stricken, Churchill gives his reluctant ascent to the War Cabinet to consider peace talks with the Nazi dictator, the “Miracle of Dunkirk” fell from the heavens.

“Operation Dynamo,” as it was called, involved the use of civilian boats —rescuing more than 300,000 British troops from the beaches and harbor of Dunkirk, in the north of France, between May 26 and June 4, 1940.

It was a major game changer for Churchill; the wind now at his back and the people of Britain solidly behind him to prosecute the war against the wrath of Nazism, punctuated, of course, by his thunderous speech to the House of Commons of the Parliament on June 4, 1940 , with the highly celebrated words, ``we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…” 

As captivating as it was, one particular scene of “Darkest Hour” however, caught me off guard.

That was when Churchill, perplexed as he was, whether to retreat or surrender, decides to ride the London Underground (the Tube) in order to canvass public opinion about what his next course of action should be.

The proud citizens of London, give the PM the answer he was desperately looking for: A resounding call to arms; Britain will never surrender, they’ll fight to the death.

The first thing I did when I got home was to email some British historians, to check if “The Tube” scene matched with reality, since I never heard of it before.

It wasn’t long before answers flew back into the inbox of my gmail account.

Patrick Allitt, Professor of History at Emory University, responded that he thought “the Tube scene is pure invention, and highly uncharacteristic of the real Churchill, who was an unashamed elitist, and would never have bothered to consult ordinary citizens.”

Allitt did think the strongest part of the film was its depiction of just how desperate Britain's situation was by May 1940, and “how reasonable the position of Chamberlain and Halifax must have seemed at the time.”

British historian and journalist, Andrew Roberts, informed me that not only did Churchill never ride the Tube, but that King George VI never visited him at No. 10 Downing Street (as portrayed in the film) to tell him he had a change of heart, and wanted him to defend the Island against Nazi tyranny.

Rosemary Haskell, Professor of English at Elon University, believes the fictitious Tube scene was a "crib from Shakespeare's play Henry V, where the King goes in disguise among his soldiers before the Battle of Agincourt, to find out what the common people are feeling about him." "Nothing I have ever read about Churchill," Haskell says, "mentions any such action, and it really doesn't fit in with what we know of Churchill's personality and character. "

Haskell additionally contends “the director [Joe Wright] and script writer [Anthony McCarten] were trying to find a way to explain how and why Churchill got his cabinet (and Parliament) to agree to continue the fight and to evacuate the troops from Dunkirk.  I thought it was a pretty clumsy device---a kind of get out of jail free card for the viewer.  (It would have been too difficult, apparently, to dramatize the subtleties of what actually happened.) “

Meanwhile, British historian and professor of History at the University of Exeter, Richard Overy, replied that he hasn't seen the film, but was one of two consultants brought in to discuss the script and brief the actors. "The version we saw, Overy informed me, “was full of errors and inventions (including the story of Churchill in the Underground), but I could see that the producers were indifferent to our criticisms. I've had many experiences where fact has had to bow to fiction."

A number of historians did tell me in light of “Darkest Hour” taking some dramatic liberties in its portrayal of Britain and Churchill during the May crisis, one book came highly recommended, “Five Days in London, May, 1940” by John Lukacks , which provides an excellent historical account of the uneasy days, from May 24 to May 28, 1940, as the members of the British War Cabinet debated whether to negotiate with Hitler or to thrust themselves into a long, bloody war with Germany.

Though “Darkest Hour,’’ did bend the truth, here and there, as so many historical dramas tend to do, I think the thrust of the movie was spot on. Churchill found himself backed up against the wall during those anxious days of May, and the future of Britain’s liberty and independence was very much in doubt, before the tide turned in her favor.

Of all the films I’ve seen English actor, Gary Oldman in, “Darkest Hour,” arguably, was his “Finest Hour!”

-Bill Lucey

[email protected]

January 3, 2018