New film version of the Chicago Trial is timely

 

Bill Knight column for 9-24, 25 or 26, 2020

 Hours before Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died last Friday, unleashing Mitch McConnell’s “Lessons in Hypocrisy,” an onslaught of devilish comments by Attorney General Barr and President Trump seemed to conjure demons from another era of repression and disgrace.

Fifty-one years ago this week, the Chicago Conspiracy Trial started, reflecting a time of police brutality and protests, government overreach and socio-political division.

This month, Trump said he approved a forced sale of TikTok on the condition $5 billion be set aside to “educate people” on the “real history of our country.” That followed comments that he was setting up a “national commission” to promote a “pro-American curriculum” in schools, and that criticism of the past – even slavery – wasn’t patriotic.

The previous week, Barr urged federal prosecutors to consider filing sedition charges against protestors, an unusual charge reserved for those at war against the nation or conspiring to overthrow the government.

Conspiring and inciting to riot were the charges stemming from demonstrations during 1968’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, brought against eight anti-war, social-justice and political activists. On trial were Yippies Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden from the Students for a Democratic Society, Rennie Davis and Dave Dellnger from the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, college teachers Lee Weiner and John Froines, and Black Panther leader Bobby Seale. (Repeatedly demanding his own lawyer, Seale was shackled and gagged in the courtroom, and then was excluded by a mistrial declaration but sentenced to four years in prison for contempt.)

Now, the film “The Trial of the Chicago 7” is premiering at select theaters soon, scheduled to start showing on Netflix Oct. 16.

If ever a drama deserved to be described as “ripped from the headlines,” it’s this story, part Kafkaesque thriller, part madcap comedy. In fact, beyond the historical tale and its true-life drama, the timeliness – arguably, timelessness – is the point of the effort by Aaron Sorkin (“The West Wing,” “The Newsroom,” “The Social Network”). Conducted in a contentious environment in a federal district court in Chicago, the trial was a battle between the New Left, in the form of the defendants, and the Right, represented by prosecutors and 74-year-old Judge Julius Hoffman. Outbursts and vulgar language became routine, and confrontations between lawyers, arguments between the judge and defense counsel, plus unpredictable but regular disruptions from onlookers all made the kangaroo court a circus.

Over six months in 1969 and ’70, the trial riveted the country daily. The defense featured Beat writer Allen Ginsberg chanting and reciting poetry, and even asked legendary comic Groucho Marx to testify about satire (and though Groucho said it would be “an honor,” he declined, thinking his last name would bias Judge Hoffman against him.)

Written and directed by Sorkin and produced by Steven Spielberg, the 129-minute movie promises to be as relevant as news about Black Lives Matter and federal agents abducting protestors in Portland. Sorkin penned the script in 2007 but it lay dormant until last year, when it was filmed in Chicago and New Jersey.

Starring Sacha Baron Cohen as Abbie Hoffman, Frank Langella as Judge Hoffman, Eddie Redmayne as Hayden, Mark Rylance as defense attorney William Kuntsler, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen as Seale, the ensemble cast also features Jeremy Strong, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michael Keaton.

The film is the newest of three motion pictures tied to the aftermath of the unrest outside the convention, what the government’s National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence called a “police riot,” with “unrestrained and indiscriminate police violence.”

Further, although five defendants were convicted of intent to incite a riot, and all eight were given contempt sentences by Judge Hoffman, they all were exonerated of conspiracy charges and all the convictions were eventually overturned.

They were vindicated by history.

In 1987, HBO made the 90-minute “Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8,”  a “docudrama,” meaning dramatic recreations (mostly derived from trial transcripts) interspersed with documentary footage and interviews with the actual defendants. Its stellar cast included Peter Boyle, Robert Carradine, Elliott Gould, Michael Lembeck, Robert Loggia, Carl Lumbly, Ron Rifkin and Martin Sheen.

And in 1970, the BBC produced a 150-minute movie that is relatively inferior as well as overlong, but an interesting cast makes it worth finding and watching: Ronny Cox is Rubin, Cliff Gorman is Abbie Hoffman, and Al Freeman Jr. is Seale, with Robert Loggia (here as defense co-counsel Leonard Weinglass instead of Kuntsler in the 1987 film). Because of language and the controversial nature of the show, American viewers didn’t see it until PBS telecast it in 1975.

This year, “the whole world is watching,” as it was said then. And now.

Columbus about history more than statues

 

Bill Knight column for 9-21, 22 or 23

             People aren’t stupid; we learn. Sometimes lessons are fanciful fables; sometimes they’re difficult realizations of our past.

Columbus statues aren’t symbols of humanity’s progress, one man’s courage or Italians’ gifts. However, they represent ignorance and greed more than racism and hate.

In Peoria, the Park District this week may decide the fate of a local Columbus statue, days before the anniversary of Columbus’ second voyage to the Western hemisphere, on Sept. 25, 1493. The statue could be removed, changed to represent someone else, remain with explanatory signage, or left alone.

We must learn from the past – actual, factual history. Monuments don’t help, mostly showing what we claim to value or what we choose to remember (or forget).

As far as history, too many textbooks stress comforting myths, not facts. Maybe publishers and schools want to avoid rocking the boat, or accept familiar propaganda, no matter how false.

Illinois native James Loewen, author of 1995’s “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” wrote, “We must pay attention to what the textbooks are telling us and what they are not telling us.”

Changes in Europe set up Columbus’ voyage and Europeans’ centuries-long domination of the world. Columbus’ first trip was funded by Spain’s Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, who that year led the “reconquest” of Spain, launched the Spanish Inquisition, and expelled Muslims and Jews who didn’t convert to Christianity.

Significant Columbus-era details omitted from most textbooks, said Loewen, a 78-year-old scholar from Decatur who taught at the University of Vermont and Catholic University of America, were increasing military might, technology (like the printing press), the rise of prestige tied to wealth and power, Christianity’s aggressive proselytizing, and the zeal for controlling islands, from Sardinia and Malta to the Canary Islands and Ireland.

History can be exhilarating or complicated, surprising or shameful. But if everyday Americans accept incomplete or inferior histories, we miss out on teaching moments associated with facts that can be uncomfortable, even disgraceful.

We lose reality.

“Historians do not know all the answers,” said Loewen, “hence history is not just a process of memorizing.”

Reflecting on our country’s background, we’re torn between extremes: A unified march taming the wilderness, establishing liberty and developing a great nation, or a dark land-grab sloshing through blood of innocents and fouling the world.

Columbus’ purpose was neither seeking a new route to the Far East, nor adventure. It was conquest, unlike Vikings who settled in North America or the seafaring Africans, Phoenicians and Egyptians who probably made the trek hundreds of years before.

Describing the indigenous people he confronted in the West Indies, Columbus wrote, “They should be good and intelligent servants, for I see that they say very quickly everything that is said to them; and I believe they would become Christians very easily, for it seemed to me that they had no religion… Everything they have they give for anything given to them.

“I could conquer the whole of them with 50 men and govern them as I please.”

He initially kidnapped dozens of Indians to take to Spain (fewer than 10 survived the trip), and on his second voyage– with more than 1,000 armed men, cavalry and attack dogs on 17 ships – he demanded food, gold, cotton and even sex. He started punishing natives severely for breaking his laws; they resisted, fought and were defeated.

The slave trade stepped up in 1495, when 500 Indians were sent to Europe. Hundreds died en route, but Columbus wrote, “Although they die now, they will not always die. The Negroes and Canary Islanders died at first.”

Loewen said, “Because the Indians died, Indian slavery then led to the massive slave trade the other way across the Atlantic, from Africa.”

An island once home to millions of people, according to Kirkpatrick Sale’s “The Conquest of Paradise, “ the population was decimated: to 12,000 by 1516, to 200 by 1542, and exterminated by 1555, according to Benjamin Keen in “The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia.”

Bartolome de las Casas, who was there and wrote “History of the Indies” (published after his 1566 death), described the “brutality” of the Spaniards, who he called “utterly ruthless and cruel.”

Back in downstate Illinois, Peoria’s Columbus statue was erected in 1902 not to recognize ethnic pride or an individual’s heroism, but to promote a neighborhood. Still, some assume Italian Americans revere Columbus.

Commenting on Chicago’s Columbus statue, Gabriel Piemonte of the Italian-American Heritage Society said, “Italian Americans condemn the honoring of Columbus, the murderer, mutilator and enslaver. This symbol is dead.”

Loewen said, “Our textbooks are not about teaching history. Their enterprise is Building Character. They therefore treat Columbus as an origin story. He was good and so are we.

“When textbooks paint simplistic portraits of a pious, heroic Columbus,” he added. “they provide feel-good history.”

Torchy Blane was scorching newspaperwoman

 

Bill Knight column for 9-17, 18 or 19, 2020

 When news came that actress Diana Rigg died Sept. 10, her role as journalist/feminist Sonya Winter in “The Assassination Bureau” came to mind (not her turn in HBO’s “Game of Thrones” or even the ’60s ABC series “The Avengers”).

“The Assassination Bureau” came out in 1969, the year SDX/ the Society of Professional Journalists finally let women join – a year before the National Press Club admitted women.

Considering how marginalized women journalists were in real life, Hollywood’s “reel-life” newswomen have sometimes been as memorable as Rigg’s character. The best-known might be Rosalind Russell’s Hildy Johnson in “His Girl Friday,” but cinema’s most enjoyable newspaperwoman is the oft-overlooked Torchy Blane.

Torchy was played by Glenda Farrell, an Oklahoma-born child actress who landed on Broadway and then Hollywood by her early 20s. Her career spanned almost 60 years, including more than 120 films and television shows, plus numerous plays and radio programs, and a 1963 Emmy for her performance in TV’s “Ben Casey” drama.

Within a few years of signing with Warner Brothers, Farrell starred in gangster movies “Little Caesar” and “I Was A Fugitive from a Chain Gang,” was featured as a no-nonsense reporter in 1933’s “Mystery of the Wax Museum” and the next year as the reporter Gerry in “Hi Nellie!” (where a boss calls her “the best newspaperman in skirts”). After working in 20 movies in less than three years, Farrell was picked by director Frank MacDonald for the lead in Warners’ series of Torchy Blane adventures based on novelist Frederick Nebel’s “MacBride and Kennedy” stories.

MacBride became Steve McBride (Barton MacLane), a police detective, and Kennedy became Theresa “Torchy” Blane, a wisecracking, fast-thinking reporter. They’re in love and in cahoots for crime-solving and headline-grabbing, starting with “Smart Blonde” where the “sassy, saucy” newswoman was established.

Films’ other female reporters never quite measured up to Torchy, although some were impressive: Claudette Colbert (“Arise, My Love”), Bette Davis (“Front Page Woman”), Katharine Hepburn (“Woman of The Year”), Julia Roberts (“I Love Trouble”), Barbara Stanwyck (“Meet John Doe”), Winona Ryder and Jean Arthur (who both starred in versions of Frank Capra’s comedy “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town”), and Margot Kidder (“Superman” – whose co-creator Jerry Siegel said the inspiration for his Lois Lane character was Farrell’s Torchy as a “working girl whose priority was grabbing scoops”).

The Torchy series became a popular second title on double features due to Farrell’s fun-loving portrayal and her respect for newswomen.

            “They were caricatures of newspaperwomen as I knew them,” Farrell said in a Time magazine interview (also in 1969). “Before I undertook to do the first Torchy, I determined to create a real human being, not an exaggerated comedy type.

“I met those [newspaperwomen] who visited Hollywood and watched them work on visits to New York,” she continued. “They were generally young, intelligent, refined and attractive. By making Torchy true to life, I tried to create a character practically unique in movies.”

Farrell starred in seven of the studio’s nine Torchy films and became close to fellow Warners actress Joan Blondell, and in the 1930s, they were teamed in a series of five farces and appeared together in nine other films. In 1939, Farrell left Warners when her contract expired, citing a pay dispute, typecasting and a desire to return to the stage. She came back to movies in 1941, starring in “Johnny Eager,” and through the decades was in numerous films, including 1942’s Oscar-nominated “Talk of the Town” and dozens of TV shows, from the TV remake of “The Bells of St. Mary’s” and “The Fugitive” to “Wagon Train” and “Rawhide.”

In 1960, she received a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

            Here are the Torchy Blane pictures, available as a 5-disc DVD collection or online:

“Smart Blonde” (1937). An investigation into the murder of a nightclub investor has Torchy helping McBride, whose sidekick cop Gahagan (Tom Kennedy) is introduced.

“Fly Away Baby” (1937). Involved in a murder case and an around-the-world stunt, Torchy ends up in Nazi Germany (in a script written by real-life reporter Dorothy Kilgallen).

“The Adventurous Blonde” (1937). Torchy is embroiled in a newsroom prank, then murder.

“Blondes at Work” (1938). Torchy is jailed for contempt of court but gets engaged to McBride.

“Torchy Blane In Panama” (1938). Lola Lane substitutes for Farrell and Paul Kelly for MacLane in this less exciting entry.

“Torchy Gets Her Man” (1938). Torchy probes a counterfeiting; Farrell makes a speech of almost 400 words in some 40 seconds.

“Torchy Blane in Chinatown” (1939). Murders, jewel smugglers and blackmail make headlines.

“Torchy Runs for Mayor” (1939). Blane exposes a corrupt city government and wins public acclaim.

“Torchy Plays with Dynamite” (1939). Jane Wyman assumes the role, as Torchy arranges her imprisonment to contact a criminal’s girlfriend. Allen Jenkins takes over as McBride.