Daily News Gems is my personal blog in which I comment, every now and again, on topics of particular interest to me, namely, newspaper history, baseball, American politics, and a selection of other burning issues of the day. -- Bill Lucey
I finally got around to watching “Maestro” on Netflix, Bradley Cooper’s brilliant and mesmerizing portrayal of American conductor, composer, and pianist, Leonard Bernstein, arguably one of the most celebrated conductors of the 20th century.
I can easily see why Bradley Cooper is being hyped as an odds on favorite to bring home an Oscar.
I was, I’ll admit, a little disappointed in the film. At times, I thought I was watching a documentary of Lenny’s life instead of a dramatic movie.
The film just seemed to pepper viewers with seminal vignettes of his life at breakneck speed; his New York Philharmonic conducting debut (1943), his musical scores of “Our Town”, “West Side Story,” his bisexuality, etc., instead of a natural progression of his life.
I realize it’s a mighty tall order to cover everything of the Maestro’s life, but the film left out his passion for politics, civil rights, holding a fundraising event for the Black Panthers at his Dakota apartment, his protest of the Vietnam war, and in 1989, rejecting a National Medal of Arts Award from the George H.W. Bush administration for its decision to withdraw $10,000 for an AIDS show. In 1962, he hired Sanford Allen as the first full-time Black member of the New York Philharmonic; and in 1967, invited Evangeline Benedetti to become a member of the New York Philharmonic, the orchestra’s first female cellist and second tenured woman.
In 1971, he performed for the first time his composition “MASS” (commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy) in memory of John F. Kennedy.
Cooper’s interpretation of the “Maestro” was absolutely brilliant, capturing all the subtle and not so subtle nuances of his body language, especially his abandon rage when conducting, but I kept waiting for someone to tell Lenny that he needs to take something for his head cold. Cooper’s nasal inflection of Bernstein’s voice got to be a bit annoying at times.
Cooper is highly favored to win an Oscar, but I’m still putting my money on Cillian Murphy for “Oppenheimer.”
Prince Charles and Princess Diana are played by Josh O'Connor and Emma Corrin in the Netflix drama, The Crown.
Photo Credit: Alex Bailey/Netflix
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Nothing but frowns from the Crown.
The Crown, season 4, the gripping historical drama about England’s royal family at long last made its way back to Netflix last month. It’s been greeted by a vast, enthusiastic audience, reportedly over 29 million worldwide in its first week alone, according to figures compiled by British media.
Season 4 deals largely with Queen Elizabeth II’s power struggles and personality clashes (particularly over South Africa sanctions) with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as well as the marriage and explosive marital spats between Prince Charles and his newlywed bride, Diana Spencer. Now in her second season, Queen Elizabeth II is played with such commanding flair by Academy Award winner Olivia Colman.
The reviews, so far, have been overwhelmingly positive, many arguing that season 4 is the best season yet. English actress Emma Corrin’s depiction of young, shy Diana Spencer has especially met with rave views for magnificently capturing the body language, speech rhythms, and the minor nuances of Princess Di.
It’s not clear to many whether the royal family has tuned into the Netflix drama, but reactions seeping into press reports suggests they are taking a rather dim view of The Crown.
Royal historian Hugo Vickers told the Washington Post that Charles is portrayed, wrongly, “as a wimp … and actually a pretty evil, murderous character,’’ while the Queen is much too sullen on the show and Princess Margaret (played by Helena Bonham Carter), a tabloid caricature.
Former New York Times executive editor, Jill Abramson, now a professor of creative writing at Harvard University, says her reaction to season 4 is “that every character in the royal family has become loathsome save poor Diana.” “Even Princess Margaret,” Abramson said, “who was gloriously outrageous and human in previous season, is stiff and unsympathetic. “
British historian Patrick Allitt and professor of American History at Emory University, argues Margaret Thatcher played by Gillian Anderson isn’t really representative of the Margaret Thatcher he remembered.
“My main criticism is that too often Margaret Thatcher,” Allitt explained, “is depicted as emotionally vulnerable and at times even as slightly frail. That's not my memory of her at all--her pushy, bullying, scary manner doesn't come through adequately. Even senior male politicians were often terrified of her, while her command of all the detailed information on every issue was prodigious.”
Patrick Allitt’s assessment over the portrayal of Margaret Thatcher is well taken. As talented an actress as Gillian Anderson is, her frail depiction of the British PM made it appear she was walking around a nursing home with other old, feeble patients compared to the combative “Iron Lady’’ everyone remembers in the 1980s.
Even Tina Brown, journalist, magazine editor, and author of the “Diana Chronicles,” chimed in to say, “Mrs. Thatcher was a much defter and more charming political player than as written here but Gillian Andersen in the part is so brilliant, I don’t care.”
Unquestionably, Charles, Prince of Wales, the heir apparent to the British throne as the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth II (played splendidly by English actor, Josh O’Connor), is painted as a stuffy aristocrat, preoccupied with gardening, polo, horseback riding and his insatiable love for the opera. And most damaging of all, he’s still madly in love with his true soulmate, Camilla Parker Bowles (played in The Crown by Emerald Fennell).
Prince Charles first laid eyes on Camilla Shand when she was 23 at a polo match at Windsor Great Park in 1970 and reportedly fell head over heels in love with her. Camilla married Andrew Parker Bowles, a British Army officer, in 1973. It was a stormy marriage, which ended in divorce in 1995.
The lack of true love Charles feels toward Diana is revealed as early as his engagement when asked if he is in love; the prince weakly smiles and answers ‘’whatever in love means.”
Such an icy answer was an ominous portent of what kind of marriage awaited the couple. Diana would later say that the “whatever in love’’ response was ghastly “and absolutely traumatized me.”
Charles first met Diana Spencer when she was 16 years old, while dating her older sister, Sarah. According to press reports, Lady Sarah reintroduced Charles and Diana at a 1977 pheasant hunt at Althorp, the stately home and estate held by the aristocratic Spencer family for more than 500 years, in Northamptonshire England, approximately 75 miles northwest of London.
Diana was born in Norfolk, England on July 1, 1961, the third of the Lord and Lady Althorp’s four children. Her father, the Viscount Althorp, who became an earl in 1975 was a remote descendant of the Stuart kings; and a direct descendant of King Charles II (1630-1685).
In addition, Diana’s family, the Spencer’s are related to Sir Winston Churchill and at least eight U.S. presidents, including George Washington, John Adams, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
As widely chronicled in books and news articles, Diana, a shy reserved child growing up was emotionally fractured when her parents divorced when she was only eight years old. In a bitter contentious divorce, Diana’s mother ran off with the heir to a wallpaper fortune.
Arguably, one of the most unsettling parts of season 4 centers on Princess Diana’s battles with bulimia, an eating disorder second only to opioid overdose as the deadliest mental illness. About 26% of people with eating disorders, studies reveal, attempt suicide.
There are a number of scenes of Diana gorging herself with food, only to be painfully hunched over a bathroom toilet disgorging herself of the food she just ate.
In the book, “Diana: Her True Story--in Her Own Words'' by royal biographer Andrew Morton, Diana said the ‘’bulimia started the week after we got engaged.” She remembers Charles putting his hand on her waistline and saying, “Oh, a bit chubby here, aren’t we?” The offhanded remark triggered her eating disorder.
Sometimes, it takes a prominent news maker like Princess Diana to bring public attention to an illness or disease. Lynn Slawsky, Executive Director of the National Association of Anorexia and Associated Disorders (ANAD) thinks Diana’s eating disorder as portrayed in The Crown, helps immeasurably in building public awareness and to start a conversation, which according to Slawsky, “helps reduce stigma, which is often a deterrent to getting help.”
ANAD is a leading provider of free, peer support for anyone in eating disorder recovery.
Slawsky did express her disappointment that the website listed at the beginning of episodes 3, 6, and 10 of The Crown (season 4) had very little to do with eating disorders. “I had to dig around for a few minutes before finding information about it under self-harm and suicide,” Slawsky said. “Given the trigger warning was for eating disorder behavior,” Slawsky explained, “the resources provided should have been for help with eating disorders. People who are distressed and triggered may not have the patience to dig through the wannatalkaboutit website.”
Photo Credit: Creative Expansions Inc
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The Crown, unquestionably, depicts Princess Diana in a sympathetic light, saddled in a loveless marriage, while surrounded by a cold, unsympathetic Queen and royal family. Many argue Prince Charles was unfairly cut to shreds, making him appear more villainous than princely.
Keith Wrightson, an early modern’ England historian at Yale University, tells me that he always felt sorry for Charles.
“He had no life. He had to endure the demands of his ghastly father, Prince Phillip, and an awful scheming uncle, Mountbatten (aka “Dickie,” a British royal officer and an uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh). Charles was forced to conform to expectation,” Wrightson observed.
Wrightson, a British born historian, attended Cambridge University at the same time as Prince Charles during the rebellious 1960s, “I saw him twice in three years,” Wrightson said. “On the second occasion I was standing quite near him and his bodyguard and noticed that he was really well shaved; perfectly smooth cheeks and jaw. It seemed symbolic of his situation, surrounded as he was by youths with long hair, trying to grow moustaches and sideburns.”
Wrightson remembers the young Charles as shy, embarrassed to be noticed, who usually slipped into lectures slightly late and left slightly early. Charles tutors told Wrightson that the young prince was fascinated with leftish political theory of the time, and tried to think about how that could be reconciled with his own privileged position and role. But his interest was stopped in its tracks by his father, Prince Phillip, who harshly disapproved and prohibited Charles from reading such inflammatory material.
In sizing up the highly publicized ruptured relationship between Charles and Diana, Wrightson says, “people feel sorry for Diana. I felt sorry for him. It seems he always loved Camilla; so, I hope they have found something personal to compensate - apart from the obvious compensations of wealth, estates, leisure, and lack of any material insecurity. But what kind of life has it been? Hard for me to imagine.”
For those who think Charles is being unfairly demonized in The Crown, author Tina Brown cautions readers that British screenwriter and playwright, Peter Morgan, the creator and showrunner of The Crown, has a predilection for rearranging the furniture.
“[Peter] Morgan,” Brown said, ‘is very clever about shifting empathy around the characters and who knows what he will make the audience feel about Diana in the next season.”
Among other stage, film, and television productions, Peter Morgan was the playwright for “The Audience.” “Frost/Nixon” and screenwriter for the motion picture, “The Queen” (2006), a biographical drama that chronicled the death of Diana, Princess of Wales on August 31, 1997.
Warren Hoge, former London bureau chief for The New York Times, and currently vice president and director of external relations at the International Peace Institute (IPI) is also a keen admirer of Peter Morgan and his blockbuster Netflix drama. Whether we should accept the Crown as fact or pure fiction is one area where Hoge might have some reservations. “I generally have little problem with artistic license being taken to further a good historical story,” Hoge said, “but depicting nearly contemporaneous events presents fresh challenges to the practice, much like how Oliver Stone seriously misrepresented events and characters and inserted conspiracy theories in his JFK.”
Oliver Dowden, the British government’s culture secretary, recently requested that Netflix add a disclaimer to the new season, to underscore that The Crown is fiction and not historically accurate. Netflix flatly refused, saying, “we have always presented ‘The Crown’ as a drama — and we have every confidence our members understand it’s a work of fiction that’s broadly based on historical events.”
Despite Prince Charles absorbing some punishing blows in Season 4 of The Crown, Hoge thinks that “public judgment of him and even of Camilla will weather chapter five and six, and who knows, maybe he’ll be King by then.”
As The Crown season 4 wrapped up: Charles and Diana’s marriage had become largely irreconcilable. After 1986, Charles resumed his romantic relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, while Diana lunged into romantic flings with cavalry officer James Hewitt and her bodyguard, Barry Mannakee.
Fans of The Crown will have to wait until 2022 before season 5 hits Netflix again to see how the show’s creator, Peter Morgan, unravels this Greek tragedy before our eyes.
It was originally thought that season 5 of The Crown would be its last. Morgan, however, had a change of heart and announced back in July that there would, indeed, be a sixth season, which would be its last.
In a press release, Morgan stated: “As we started to discuss the story lines for Series 5, it soon became clear that in order to do justice to the richness and complexity of the story we should go back to the original plan and do six seasons” “To be clear,” Morgan stressed, “Series 6 will not bring us any closer to present day — it will simply enable us to cover the same period in greater detail.”
