Category Archives: films

Julius Caesar in the U.K.

Posted on November 18, 2022 | 2 comments

In my last blog post (“Marlon, Tony, and Cyd,” https://susanjustwrites.com/2022/10/26/marlon-tony-and-cyd/), I noted Marlon Brando’s performance in the 1953 film version of Shakepeare’s Julius Caesar, a film that had a tremendous impact on a very young version of me.  As I recall, I saw it with classmates at my junior high school, which declared a special day at the movies for some reason.  I always wanted to see it performed live.

Years later, that finally happened.

In May 1972, my husband Marv and I took our long-delayed honeymoon. We’d married one year earlier in LA, but we weren’t able to take off more than a weekend (spent in beautiful Santa Barbara) until we arrived in Ann Arbor in the fall of 1971.  We found life in AA somewhat restricting, and we began to ponder trips outside of Michigan and my hometown of Chicago. 

Our first foray took us to the tropical paradise of Nassau on a bargain charter trip from the U. of M. that we thoroughly relished.  But we hungered for more.  We soon aimed at the fabled cities of London, Paris, Florence, and Rome, and decided to visit them in our upcoming three-week vacation/honeymoon.

We landed in our first city, London, in early May.  We reveled in the British history and literature that leaped out at us:  Touring Charles Dickens’s home; making the essential trip to the Tower of London; viewing the paintings at the National Gallery…. 

We were also theater buffs, and we made sure to get tickets for plays on the London stage.  I remember our first night in London.  Even though we sat in the first row of the theater where Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing appeared, Marv had such vicious jet lag that he fell asleep and missed The Whole Thing. We loved the musical version of Canterbury Tales (which never seemed to be offered in any US city we ever lived in) and we roared at Robert Morley’s antics in his hilarious comedy in the West End. 

But one thing was missing.  We weren’t able to get tickets at any theater offering the plays of William Shakespeare. Whatever may have been playing was sold out or otherwise unavailable.

We racked our brains trying to solve this problem.  Suddenly an idea popped into mine.  We’d briefly shopped in the famed Harrod’s department store, mostly to see the place, and I thought I’d seen an advert for its travel service.  So we made our way back to Harrod’s and, sure enough, we discovered that its travel service offered a bus tour that encompassed an overnight stay in Stratford-upon-Avon and included two tickets to the Shakespeare play being performed on the date we’d arrive.  Voila! 

We immediately signed up for the tour, which also would make brief stops in a few other places:  Oxford, Blenheim Palace, and a town called Leamington Spa.  The only hitch was that we had to cancel the rest of our stay in our Sloane Square hotel and scramble to find another spot when we returned to London.  But Shakespeare was worth it.

Early the next morning we took off on our bus tour.  We discovered that our tour included theater tickets for a performance of Julius Caesar.  Destiny?

Soon we arrived at our first stop:  Oxford and its world-recognized university.  After viewing the university from our bus, we briefly walked around the campus.  I recall strolling around Christ Church College and noting its elegant architecture. 

Whenever I watch “Inspector Morse” on PBS, the crime drama starring John Thaw as Oxford police detective Morse, I’m always reminded of our brief stop at Oxford. The prizewinning series was produced from 1987 to 2000 and occasionally still pops up on PBS-TV channels.  The setting for each episode is invariably Oxford and nearby locations. 

Christ Church College has even more recently loomed into public view. Decades after our visit, Christ Church College has become famous because a number of campus locations were used as settings in the Harry Potter films.

Next we headed for our most desired stop:  Stratford-upon-Avon.  We found ourselves booked at the city’s White Swan Inn.  This historic inn, first used as an inn as far back as 1560, struck us immediately as a classic example of Tudor architecture, with a half-timbered exterior typical of that era.  When we checked in, we discovered that its framework of wooden beams extended into our bedroom, creating a memorable place to lay our heads during our stay in Stratford.

At the hotel’s restaurant, we shared dinner with our fellow tour-mates.  One other American couple shared our last name, and we chatted happily with them and others.  But we hardly noticed the food because we were eagerly anticipating our evening at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, an eight-minute walk away.

Excitedly, we arrived at the theater and took our seats, located not far behind the first row.  The other Alexanders were seated a couple of rows behind us.  The program listed the cast and included only one semi-familiar name.  Corin Redgrave, presumably the son of notable British actor Michael Redgrave (and notable British actress Rachel Kempson) and brother of Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave, would play the part of Octavius Caesar.

The play began!  Marv and I knew the plot well, having seen the 1954 film more than once.  We certainly had no problem watching the violent murder of Julius Caesar by Brutus and the others.  But during that scene, we could hear cries of anguish coming from the other Alexanders.  At intermission, they exited, loudly declaring how unhappy they were.

I was astonished by their reaction to a brilliant performance of one of Shakespeare’s classic plays.  What exactly did they expect?  Much of Shakespeare is loaded with acts of violence and death.  Were they expecting one of the comedies?  If so, I was torn between feeling sorry for them and laughing at their foolishness. They’d probably been excited about seeing Shakespeare in Stratford, and they’d shelled out some of their pricey tourist budget to be there.  But they were apparently not very knowledgeable about the Bard or they’d have had an inkling of what could be on the stage that night.

I lost further respect for our fellow theater-goers when I overheard a woman (with a pronounced British accent) mutter, “Corin Redgrave.  Isn’t she Vanessa’s sister?”  Marv and I were both aware of Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave, two women who’d already played prominent film roles.  So even though we weren’t entirely sure who Corin Redgrave was, we could easily tell from the program that he played a male role, and he would therefore be Vanessa’s brother, not another sister.  We Americans seemed to know a lot more about the British theater than the locals did.

Although we didn’t recognize the names of any of the other actors at the time, I’ve been able to find (on the Royal Shakespeare Company’s website) the names of the members of the cast that night.  I discovered that we saw a number of outstanding British actors who later achieved great fame. They included Patrick Stewart (as Cassius), John Wood (as Brutus), Richard Johnson (as Mark Antony), Margaret Tyzack (as Portia), and Tim Pigott-Smith.  Further, the director that night was the much acclaimed Trevor Nunn.  No wonder we were thrilled to witness this extraordinary performance.

Marv and I stayed till the very end and reveled in the brilliant performances of these talented actors.  We’d happily achieved our goal of seeing Shakespeare in Stratford, performed by members of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and we’d seen a spectacular new version of Julius Caesar to boot.  Back at the White Swan Inn, we celebrated our thanks-to-Harrod’s coup with a romp in our very feathery English bed, Marv first showing off his manly strength by hanging from one of the overhead wooden beams.

By the way, the White Swan Inn has been renovated and still exists as a hostelry in Stratford, now dubbed the White Swan Hotel.

En route back to London, we made two more stops.  First, we visited historic Bleinheim Palace, where we toured the glorious interior.  The palace has been in the Churchill family since the 1770s (its history is fascinating), and Winston Churchill, who was born and often lived there, is buried just outside the palace grounds.  His grave is accessible to anyone. (You don’t need to visit Blenheim Palace first.)  Five years earlier, I briefly witnessed some of Churchill’s state funeral (the last state funeral before Queen Elizabeth II’s in September 2022) on a small black-and-white TV in the basement of Wyeth Hall during my first year as a student at Harvard Law School.  I was doing my laundry in an adjacent room and, when I glanced at the TV, I was suitably impressed by the pageantry on display in London in January 1965.

The tour’s final stop was a charming tea shop in a town called Leamington Spa. As our group gathered for tea, we learned the history of Leamington Spa, a beautiful but largely unknown town not far from our earlier stops.  (On a trip to countryside England with a friend in 2012, my friend and I met someone working in the Somerset area who confided that she was moving to take a new job in…Leamington Spa!  So, forty years after my visit to its tea shop, I surprisingly heard mention of it again.)

Marv and I returned to Stratford-upon-Avon with our daughters in 1995, in the middle of a jam-packed trip to the U.K. and France [please see “Down and Hot in Paris and London,” https://susanjustwrites.com/2014/11/%5D.  We stayed in nearby Cheltenham, visited other towns in the Cotswolds, and toured some sites in Stratford.  But we weren’t able to see a Shakespeare play together (I think the theatre was closed just then). 

So the time Marv and I were able to spend in Stratford in 1972, and our chance to see the Royal Shakespeare Company give a spectacular performance of Julius Caesar, gleam even more as a glittering memory, still burning brightly.

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Posted in Ann Arbor, Michigan, art museums, Charles Dickens, Cheltenham, Cotswolds, daughters, English literature, films, France, Harry Potter, Harvard, law school, literature, London, London theatres, memories, movies, Oxford, PBS, Queen Elizabeth II, Shakespeare, Stratford-upon-Avon, theater, travel

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Marlon, Tony, and Cyd

Posted on October 26, 2022 | 5 comments

Thanks to the cable TV channel Turner Classic Movies (TCM), I frequently watch a wide range of movies produced from the late ‘30s to those in the 21st century.

Some of my favorites are movies from the 1950s.  One highlight is the 1955 film Summertime, featuring Katharine Hepburn as a single woman who finds love while touring Venice on her own. Shot on location in Venice, it’s not your typical romantic movie, surpassing that genre with Hepburn’s brilliant performance and its glorious setting.

Among many other films from the ‘50s, I recently came across the 1955 Hollywood version of the 1950 Broadway blockbuster musical Guys and Dolls.  I’d seen it before but not for decades, and the TCM introduction by host Ben Mankiewicz was intriguing.  He noted that the film’s director, Joe Mankiewicz (Ben’s uncle), induced Marlon Brando to take the role of the leading man (Sky Masterson) despite Brando’s reluctance to assume a role in a musical. 

Joe reportedly told Marlon that he’d never directed a musical before, but, hey, they’d worked well together one year earlier when Joe directed the film version of Julius Caesar, and neither of them had ever done Shakespeare in a film before. As we know, Julius Caesar was a success, and Joe convinced Marlon that they’d also succeed together in a musical.

Although I enthusiastically agree that they both performed at the top of their game in Julius Caesar, their later collaboration in a musical was less than totally successful.

Filled with catchy tunes composed by the great Frank Loesser, the movie is exuberant, probably as far as a movie musical can go.  But one enormous weakness is Marlon’s lack of vocal ability.  His part requires that he sing a host of major songs, but his voice just isn’t up to them.

(By the way, Frank Sinatra was reportedly angling for this role and not happy about being given the secondary part of Nathan Detroit.)

One of the most obvious examples of Marlon’s poor vocal ability is his rendition of “Luck Be a Lady,” a show-stopping musical number on Broadway. 

When I watched Marlon’s pitiful attempt to master it, I was flooded with memories of first hearing this song performed—live—by singer Tony Martin at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas.

I was a kid when my family and I arrived in Las Vegas en route from Chicago to Los Angeles.  We’d left our life in Chicago behind, hoping to find a new life for all of us in LA.  Our move was prompted by my father’s serious illness, which we optimistically believed was cured, and his hope to establish a new life for our family in sunny LA.

I was delighted by our departure.  I knew I’d miss my friends in Chicago, who memorably gave me a surprise farewell party featuring a cake emblazoned with “California, Here Comes Sue” (my preferred nickname at the time).  But I was excited about forging a new life on the West Coast, where I fervently hoped that Daddy would be healthy and able to forge a new career.  Sadly, that wasn’t to be.  (I plan to write about that period in my life another time.)

Many of you may be wondering, “Who was Tony Martin?”

Although Tony Martin has faded into our cultural background today, he was a prominent American singer and film actor during most of the 20th century.  Born in San Francisco and raised in Oakland, Tony began his musical career with a local orchestra until he left for Hollywood in the mid-‘30s.  He appeared on radio programs like Burns & Allen, then moved on to films, where he starred in a number of musicals and received equal billing with the Marx Brothers in their final film, The Big Store.  After serving during WWII, he came back to the U.S., recorded memorable songs for Mercury and RCA records (including some million-sellers), and returned to Hollywood to star in film musicals in the ‘40s and ‘50s.  He also began performing in Las Vegas and other venues and continued to perform live till he was over 90.  (The NY Times reported that he performed at Feinstein’s on Park Avenue in NYC at the age of 95.)

Before dying at 98 in 2012, Tony was truly a fixture in Hollywood films, recorded music, TV appearances, and as a headliner in live concert performances for seven decades.  In the public mind, he’s been eclipsed by another Tony—Tony Bennett–who became successful during the ‘50s recording hits like “Because of You” and “Rags to Riches.”  His rendition of 1962’s “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” became his signature song and made him a hero in San Francisco (although it was Tony Martin who was actually born in SF).  Tony Bennett, perpetuating his role as a celebrated singer of pop standards, jazz, and show tunes, has become something of a cultural touchstone.  Despite his recent battle with Alzheimer’s, his popularity endures.  I can’t deny that his prominent place in the American musical landscape has lasted far longer than Tony Martin’s.

Back to my story…. 

Our family was staying at an inexpensive motel on the Las Vegas Strip, but Daddy had grand plans for us.  He succeeded in getting us front-row tickets for Tony Martin’s memorable performance at the Flamingo, a luxury hotel on the Strip.

The Flamingo Hotel itself is noteworthy.  As the 1991 film “Bugsy” (starring Warren Beatty as Bugsy Siegel) and, more recently, the 2021 film “Lansky” (featuring Harvey Keitel as Meyer Lansky) make clear, Ben “Bugsy” Siegel and Meyer Lansky were major figures in organized crime who funded the construction of the Flamingo Hotel in the late forties.  It was finally completed in 1947 around the time Bugsy was shot to death by his fellow mobsters, who believed him guilty of skimming money. 

I knew nothing of this history until many years later.  When I was a kid, all I knew was that I got to see and hear Tony Martin live at the Flamingo.  I absolutely reveled in being part of the audience that night, watching Tony perform.

When Tony sang “Luck Be a Lady,” he lighted up the stage, and the audience responded enthusiastically. I recall being completely enthralled. 

Marlon’s performance in Guys and Dolls wasn’t in the same league.

At the same time that Tony was executing this song far better than Marlon ever could, Tony’s wife, dancer Cyd Charisse, was making her own mark in Hollywood.  Tony and Cyd married in 1948, and their six-decade marriage ended only with Cyd’s death in 2008. 

Cyd was an astounding dancer in a raft of Hollywood films, paired with both Gene Kelly (in Brigadoon, for one) and Fred Astaire.  Her dance number with Astaire in The Band Wagon (to the song “Dancing in the Dark”) has been immortalized in 1994’s That’s Entertainment III.  And if you watch 1957’s Silk Stockings (a musical version of Garbo’s Ninotchka), your eyes are riveted on her fantastic dancing, which outdoes Astaire’s in every way.  (By the way, Cyd’s comments in her autobiography on dancing with Kelly and Astaire are fascinating.)

Was Cyd in the audience that night, sharing her husband’s fabulous performance with the rest of us?  I’ll never know.  But it’s exciting to imagine that she was there, applauding with gusto, just as we did, to pay tribute to Tony’s outstanding rendition of “Luck Be a Lady.”

It goes without saying that Marlon Brando was a brilliant actor, one of the most remarkable actors of his generation.  His performances in films like On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Godfather, and, for that matter, Julius Caesar, will remain in our cultural memory as long as films endure. 

But notably, after playing Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls, Marlon never attempted another singing role.  

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Posted in 1950s, American culture, Broadway musicals, California, Chicago, Daddy, family, family road trips, fathers, films, friends, Hollywood, Los Angeles, LA, memories, movie stars, movies, music, New York City, San Francisco, The New York Times

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Declare Your Independence: Those high heels are killers

Posted on July 1, 2022 | 2 comments

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Following a tradition I began several years ago, I’m once again encouraging women to declare their independence this July 4th and abandon wearing high-heeled shoes. 

I’ve revised this post in light of changes that have taken place during the past year and a couple of new ideas I want to pass along.

My newly revised post follows:

I’ve long maintained that high heels are killers.  I never used that term literally, of course.  I merely viewed high-heeled shoes as distinctly uncomfortable and an outrageous concession to the dictates of fashion that can lead to both pain and permanent damage to a woman’s body. 

A few years ago, however, high heels proved to be actual killers.  The Associated Press reported that two women, ages 18 and 23, were killed in Riverside, California, as they struggled in high heels to get away from a train.  With their car stuck on the tracks, the women attempted to flee as the train approached.  A police spokesman later said, “It appears they were in high heels and [had] a hard time getting away quickly.” 

During the past two years, largely dominated by the global pandemic, many women and men adopted different ways to clothe themselves.  Sweatpants and other comfortable clothing became popular.  [Please see my post, “Two Words,” published July 15, 2020, focusing on pants with elastic waists.]

In particular, many women abandoned the wearing of high heels.  Staying close to home, wearing comfortable clothes, they saw no need to push their feet into high heels.  Venues requiring professional clothes or footwear almost disappeared, and few women chose to seek out venues requiring any sort of fancy clothes or footwear.  

But as the pandemic began to loosen its grip, some women were tempted to return to their previous choice of footwear.  The prospect of a renaissance in high-heeled shoe-wearing was noted in publications like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.   In a story in the Times, one woman “flicked the dust off her…high-heeled lavender pumps” that she’d put away for months and got ready to wear them to a birthday gathering.  According to the Times, some are seeking “the joy of dressing up…itching…to step up their style game in towering heels.”

Okay.  I get it.  “Dressing up” may be your thing after a couple of years relying on sweatpants.  But “towering heels”?  They may look beautiful, they may be alluring….

BUT don’t do it!  Please take my advice and don’t return to wearing the kind of shoes that will hobble you once again..

Like the unfortunate young women in Riverside, I was sucked into wearing high heels when I was a teenager.  It was de rigueur for girls at my high school to seek out the trendy shoe stores on State Street in downtown Chicago and purchase whichever high-heeled offerings our wallets could afford.  On my first visit, I was entranced by the three-inch-heeled numbers that pushed my toes into a too-narrow space and revealed them in what I thought was a highly provocative position.  If feet can have cleavage, those shoes gave me cleavage.

Never mind that my feet were encased in a vise-like grip.  Never mind that I walked unsteadily on the stilts beneath my soles.  And never mind that my whole body was pitched forward in an ungainly manner as I propelled myself around the store.  I liked the way my legs looked in those shoes, and I had just enough baby-sitting money to pay for them.  Now I could stride with pride to the next Sweet Sixteen luncheon on my calendar, wearing footwear like all the other girls’.

That luncheon revealed what an unwise purchase I’d made.  When the event was over, I found myself stranded in a distant location with no ride home, and I started walking to the nearest bus stop.  After a few steps, it was clear that my shoes were killers.  I could barely put one foot in front of the other, and the pain became so great that I removed my shoes and walked in stocking feet the rest of the way.

After that painful lesson, I abandoned three-inch high-heeled shoes and resorted to wearing lower ones.   Sure, I couldn’t flaunt my shapely legs quite as effectively, but I nevertheless managed to secure ample male attention. 

Instead of conforming to the modern-day equivalent of Chinese foot-binding, I successfully and happily fended off the back pain, foot pain, bunions, and corns that my fashion-victim sisters often suffer in spades.

Until the pandemic changed our lives, I observed a trend toward higher and higher heels, and I found it troubling.  I was baffled by women, especially young women, who bought into the mindset that they had to follow the dictates of fashion and the need to look “sexy” by wearing extremely high heels.  

When I’d watch TV, I’d see too many women wearing stilettos that forced them into the ungainly walk I briefly sported so long ago.  I couldn’t help noticing the women on late-night TV shows who were otherwise smartly attired and often very smart (in the other sense of the word), yet wore ridiculously high heels that forced them to greet their hosts with that same ungainly walk.  Some appeared to be almost on the verge of toppling over. 

Sadly, this phenomenon has reappeared. On late-night TV, otherwise enlightened women are once again wearing absurdly high heels.

So…what about the women, like me, who adopted lower-heeled shoes instead?  I think we’ve been much smarter and much less likely to fall on our faces. One very smart woman who’s still a fashion icon: the late Hollywood film star Audrey Hepburn. Audrey dressed smartly, in both senses of the word.

I recently watched her 1963 smash film Charade for the eighth or tenth time. I especially noted how elegant she appeared in her Givenchy wardrobe and her–yes–low heels. Audrey was well known for wearing comfortable low heels in her private life as well as in her films. [Please see my blog post: https://susanjustwrites.com/2013/08/08/audrey-hepburn-and-me/….]

In Charade, paired with Cary Grant, another ultra-classy human being, she’s seen running up and down countless stairs in Paris Metro stations, chased by Cary Grant not only on those stairs but also through the streets of Paris. She couldn’t have possibly done all that frantic running in high heels!

Foot-care professionals have soundly supported my view.   According to the American Podiatric Medical Association, a heel that’s more than 2 or 3 inches makes comfort just about impossible.  Why?  Because a 3-inch heel creates seven times more stress than a 1-inch heel.

A few years ago, the San Francisco Chronicle questioned a podiatrist and foot and ankle surgeon who practiced in Palo Alto (and assisted Nike’s running team).  He explained that after 1.5 inches, the pressure increases on the ball of the foot and can lead to “ball-of-the-foot numbness.”  (Yikes!)  He did not endorse wearing 3-inch heels and pointed out that celebrities wear them for only a short time, not all day.  To ensure a truly comfortable shoe, he added, no one should go above a 1.5-inch heel.  If you insist on wearing higher heels, you should limit how much time you spend in them.

Before the pandemic, some encouraging changes were afoot.  Nordstrom, one of America’s major shoe-sellers, began to promote lower-heeled styles along with higher-heeled numbers.  I was encouraged because Nordstrom is a bellwether in the fashion world, and its choices can influence shoe-seekers.  At the same time, I wondered whether Nordstrom was reflecting what its shoppers had already told the stores’ decision-makers.  The almighty power of the purse—how shoppers were choosing to spend their money–-probably played a big role.

The pandemic may have changed the dynamics of shoe-purchasing, at least at the beginning. For the first year, sales of high heels languished, “teetering on the edge of extinction,” according to the Times.  Today, the pandemic may be a somewhat less frightening presence in our lives, and there are undoubtedly women who will decide to resurrect the high heels already in their closets.  They, and others, may be inspired to buy new ones.

I hope these women don’t act in haste.  Beyond the issue of comfort, let’s remember that high heels present a far more serious problem.  As the deaths in Riverside demonstrate, women who wear high heels can be putting their lives at risk.  When they need to flee a dangerous situation, high heels can handicap their ability to escape.

How many needless deaths have resulted from hobbled feet?

Gen Z shoppers can provide a clue to the future. They largely eschew high heels, choosing glamorous sneakers instead–even with dressy prom dresses.

My own current faves: I wear black Sketchers almost everywhere. I occasionally choose my old standby, Reeboks, for serious walking. [In my novel Red Diana, protagonist Karen Clark laces on her Reeboks for a lengthy jaunt, just as I do.] And when warm temperatures dominate, I’m wearing walking sandals, like those sold by Clarks, Teva, and Ecco.

The Fourth of July is fast approaching.  As we celebrate the holiday this year, I once again urge the women of America to declare their independence from high-heeled shoes. 

If you’re currently thinking about returning to painful footwear, think again.  You’d be wiser to reconsider.

I encourage you to bravely gather any high heels you’ve clung to during the pandemic and throw those shoes away.  At the very least, keep them out of sight in the back of your closet.  And don’t even think about buying new ones.  Shod yourself instead in shoes that allow you to walk in comfort—and if need be, to run.

Your wretched appendages, yearning to be free, will be forever grateful.

[Earlier versions of this commentary appeared on Susan Just Writes and the San Francisco Chronicle.]

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Posted in Audrey Hepburn, fashion, fashion industry, films, Fourth of July, high school, high-heeled shoes, high heels, Paris, Red Diana novel, Riverside, California, San Francisco Chronicle, television, The New York Times, walking

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A Christmas story? Not really

Posted on December 21, 2021 | 2 comments

“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents.”

Is this about the supply-chain issues hindering the search for Christmas presents this year?

No.  It’s not.

What is it about?  Well, some of you may recognize the “Christmas presents” quote as the famous first sentence in a famous book.  “Christmas won’t be Christmas…” is the memorable first sentence in the enduring classic, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

The sentence is spoken by Jo, the most prominent of the book’s “little women” and Alcott’s alter ego, a strong young woman who’s determined to create a meaningful life for herself.  Jo, her three sisters, and their mother make up a New England family confronting the Civil War and its impact on their lives, while the girls’ father is a doctor treating Union soldiers somewhere far from home.  Short of funds, the family faces a Christmas with no presents.

This extraordinary book has long been the favorite of generations of readers.  In my case, it was one of only two books that, as a young girl, I read more than once.  I was a voracious reader and usually moved on quickly from one book to another.  Little Women was an exception.  (The other was Black Beauty.)  I reread Little Women because it was so beautifully written and so relatable to me as a young girl who, like Jo, wanted to create a meaningful life for myself.

Little Women has influenced a number of filmmakers, most recently Greta Gerwig, whose 2019 version offered a new take on it.  The “Christmas presents” line is buried nearly halfway through Gerwig’s film.  In every other film and dramatization I’ve seen, Jo speaks that line at the very beginning of the story, just as Alcott wrote it. 

Now I’ll explain how the “Christmas presents” line in Little Women relates to my own life.  Not as a reader or filmgoer, but as a preteen taking classes at the long-gone and now legendary Harand Studios in downtown Chicago.

I’m not sure how I first learned about the Harand Studios (officially called the Harand Studios of the Theatre Arts), but once I did, I promptly asked my parents to let me enroll there. 

I was eleven that fall, turning twelve the following spring, and my father had undergone surgery for colon cancer during the summer.  Happily, he’d recovered and returned to work as a pharmacist at a drug store at Sheridan Road and Lawrence Avenue, about three miles from our apartment on the Far North Side.  He didn’t love this job, but it was a source of needed income for our family of four.  My mother helped, working part-time elsewhere, and her earnings added to our coffers.

I knew it would be something of an extravagance for me to enroll at the Harand Studios (hereafter “Harand”).  Although my mother loved and cared for me, I don’t think she was terribly eager to pay for my lessons at Harand.  But Daddy was a softie, enamored with his two red-haired daughters, and he often indulged me when Mom didn’t.

And so I turned up at Harand one Saturday morning, excited to begin this new chapter in my young life.  Daddy drove me the twelve miles from our apartment to the studio, located on the second floor of a corner building on North Michigan Avenue, not far from the Allerton Hotel.  Michigan Avenue was still a quiet boulevard filled with low-rise, often charming and unique buildings, like the Michigan Square Building encompassing the exquisite Diana Court with its sculpture by the noted Swedish sculptor Carl Milles. 

Riding downtown with Daddy was a special treat.  During that ride, I had him all to myself, and I didn’t have to share him with my older sister.  After he dropped me off, he drove back north about nine miles to the drugstore where he worked, dispensing medicine and advice to customers for the rest of the day.

That first morning, I climbed a flight of stairs to the second floor, arriving at the studio not sure what to expect.  It turned out to be a magical place, filled with rooms that focused on three areas:  drama, music, and dance. 

The studio was the brainchild of two sisters, Sulie and Pearl Harand, who came up with the idea of a children’s arts studio in Chicago.  Sulie had studied opera, at one point coached by Kurt Herbert Adler, who later became the artistic director of the San Francisco Opera.  She won contests in Chicago and played clubs across the Midwest, performing tributes to Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and others.  Turning to musical theatre, she created one-woman shows, traveling throughout the country to perform in them.  And while she continued performing, she and her sister Pearl opened the Harand Studios.  

Pearl, a former member of the Chicago Repertory Theatre, primarily taught drama while Sulie primarily taught voice.

For me, the drama lessons at Harand were the most memorable.  Maybe because my love for drama had begun early.  As a small child, I took the part of Jerry, the animated mouse who’d appeared in a 1945 MGM musical, “Anchors Aweigh,” starring Gene Kelly.  Kelly danced and sang with the animated mouse in “The King Who Wouldn’t Sing or Dance,” inserted in the film as a charming story Kelly tells a group of kids. 

I must have been the very young student of a drama and music teacher who enlisted me to perform Jerry’s role in a recital.  I have only dim memories of this event, but I distinctly remember my own musical number and reveling in the applause as my older partner (playing Kelly’s role) and I took a bow.

My next dramatic role came along when I graduated from kindergarten.  My teacher chose me to play the starring role in our class’s performance of “Sleeping Beauty.”  (Prince Charming was played by my classmate Richard Just.  I wonder where he is now.)  Once again, I loved the audience reaction to my Sleeping Beauty, garbed in a wedding-party dress my cousin Anna hand-sewed for me. (Anna, my mother, and I had chosen the pale blue organza fabric at the long-departed fabric department at Marshall Field’s on State Street.)  But I had to pretend to fall asleep on the hard wooden floor of the auditorium stage, and I recall being mad that I couldn’t lie on a soft sofa instead.  A prima donna at age 6!

I later appeared on that same stage in other productions (we called them “assemblies”).  The most unforgettable took place one February around the time of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. I remember reading a poignant poem about Lincoln as well as portraying someone in his southern Illinois town.

Now, here I was, at age 11, immersed in dramatic pursuits at Harand.  And here was where the “Christmas presents” quote became a lifelong memory.   An abiding memory because Pearl Harand chose me to play Jo in the opening scene from Little Women, and I recited that line in many, many repetitions of that scene. 

At Harand, I also participated with enthusiasm in our music and dancing classes.  Music was usually supervised by Sulie Harand, along with Elaine F, a young and immensely talented pianist and singer.  Elaine was only 15 when she was hired to play at Harand on Saturday mornings and after school.  I vividly remember her piano artistry and how she taught our class some of the original songs she’d written.  (I can still sing much of “My First Big Dance.”)  I was lucky to forge lifelong friendships with both Elaine and her younger sister Natalie, another student at Harand.  To this day, Natalie, a steadfast friend, remembers that she “loved our Saturday mornings there!”

I enjoyed dance lessons as well.  Although my dance memories are pretty foggy, I do remember that we danced in a room with a mirrored wall and a ballet barre.

My best friend, Helene, who lived next door (and remains a friend), got wind of Harand and wanted to get in on the action.  She also recalls attending classes, taking buses to get there, but dropped out after a short time because she was “not talented!”  She and another friend, Renee, were “probably the worst ones” there.

But I was ecstatic about my Saturday mornings at Harand and kept going as long as I could.  When classes ended each week, I would emerge onto Michigan Avenue, sometimes stopping for a warm cookie at the small bakery on the first floor.  I’d catch a bus that would take me to my father’s drugstore, and my Saturday afternoons thus became memorable, too.

The drugstore had an old-fashioned marble-topped lunch counter, where Daddy would make sure I ate a good lunch, sometimes accompanied by a sugary beverage like a cherry “phosphate.”  I’d eat my lunch seated on a stool I could spin to my heart’s content.  Some of you may remember lunch counters like that one. 

They became famous a few years later when civil rights activists in the South protested segregationist policies, beginning in 1960 with a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.  The sit-in movement spread throughout the South, and places like Woolworth’s were ultimately forced to change their policies.

While I waited to go home with Daddy, I would carefully look over the drugstore’s merchandise.  I especially relished spinning the racks of paperback books and deciding which ones to show to Daddy.  Together we chose plays by Shakespeare and other classics, usually priced at the exorbitant sum of 25 cents.  I treasured our choices and saved them for years, until their cheap construction finally led to their literally falling apart.

At the end of Daddy’s workday, we’d climb back into our car, a 1948 Chevy, formerly a boring postwar gray and now a bright emerald green. (Daddy had hired someone to do the paint job.)  Together we’d drive home for dinner with my mother and sister. 

I never went much further with my dramatic pursuits.  That’s a story for another day.  But the “Christmas presents” line from Little Women has stayed with me, decade after decade.

Daddy died about a year after I began those classes at Harand.  The enormity of his loss changed my life and left a huge hole that remains today.

Those glorious Saturdays we spent together during the year before he died? They are enduring and powerful memories in my memory-bank, and they will remain there forever.

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Another love story

Posted on May 26, 2021 | 3 comments

Part II

Watching “Love Story” again, 50 years later, I found it terribly disappointing.

The film was an enormous hit at the box office, earning $130 million—the equivalent of $1 billion today.

It was a box-office phenomenon, a tearjerker that offered its audience a classic love story filled with amorous scenes and, ultimately, tragedy.

But….

Fifty years later, I found the two leads far less appealing than I remembered.  Ryan O’Neal, who plays highly-privileged Oliver Barrett IV, and Ali MacGraw, who plays Jenny, a super-smart girl from the wrong side of the tracks, encounter each other on the Harvard campus as undergrads.  After some sparring, they quickly fall into each other’s arms.  But I didn’t find either them or their relationship overwhelmingly endearing.

Ali MacGraw’s character, Jenny, strikes me now as borderline obnoxious.  She’s constantly smirking, overly impressed with her brain-power and witty repartee. 

Even Oliver, who falls madly in love with her, calls her “the supreme Radcliffe smart-ass” and a “conceited Radcliffe bitch.”  (As you probably know, Radcliffe was the women’s college affiliated with Harvard before Harvard College itself admitted women.)

Jenny would repeatedly retaliate, ridiculing Oliver by calling him “preppie,” a term used at the time by non-privileged students in an attempt to diminish the puffed-up opinion that privileged prep-school graduates had of themselves.

Jenny may have been Hollywood’s version of a sharp young college woman of her time, but 50 years later, I view her character as unrelatable and hard to take.

I received my own degrees at a rigorous college, a demanding grad school, and a world-renowned law school.  My classmates included some of the smartest women I’ve ever known.  But I don’t recall ever encountering any bright young women who exemplified the kind of “smart-ass” behavior Jenny displays.  If they existed, they clearly stayed out of my world.

The film has other flaws.  In one scene, filmed near a doorway to Langdell Hall (the still-imposing law school building that houses its vast law library), Jenny bicycles to where Oliver is perched and proceeds to make him a peanut butter sandwich while he is so engrossed in his recognizably red Little Brown casebook that he barely notices her presence. This scene is ludicrous.  Law students are traditionally super-focused on their studies.  Well, at least some of them are.  But Oliver’s ignoring a beloved spouse who’s gone out of her way to please him in this way is offensive and totally contrary to the “loving” tone in the rest of the film.  In short, ludicrous.

The movie also became famous for its often quoted line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”  The absurdity of that line struck me back in 1970 and has stayed with me ever since.  I’ve never understood why it garnered so much attention.  Don’t we all say “I’m sorry” when we’ve done something hurtful?  Especially to someone we love?

Interviewed by Ben Mankiewicz in March 2021 (on CBS Sunday Morning), both Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal (still vibrant and still in touch with each other) confessed that they never understood the line either.  “What does it mean?” Mankiewicz asked.  MacGraw’s response:  “I don’t know.” 

One more thing about that famous line:  If you watch the hilarious 1972 screwball comedy “What’s Up, Doc?” you’ll probably get a kick out of a scene at the very end.  Barbra Streisand cleverly mocks the “Love means never…” line while traveling on a plane with her co-star (and “Love Story” lead) Ryan O’Neal.

Another line in the film, this one spoken by Oliver’s father, struck me as remarkable as I listened to it 50 years after the film first appeared.  When his father, played by veteran actor Ray Milland, learns that Oliver has been admitted to Harvard Law School, he tells Oliver that he’ll probably be “the first Barrett on the Supreme Court.”  Just think about this line.  Who could have predicted in 1970 that someone named Barrett would actually be appointed to the Supreme Court in 2020? (My opinion of that appointment?  No comment.)

One more thing about Jenny:  Yes, women used to give up great opportunities in order to marry Mr. Right, and many probably still do. But I was heartily disappointed that Jenny so casually gave up a scholarship to study music in Paris with Nadia Boulanger so she could stay in Cambridge while Oliver finished his law degree.

What’s worse, instead of insisting that she seize that opportunity, Oliver selfishly thought of himself first, begging her not to leave him.  Jenny winds up teaching at a children’s school instead of pursuing her undeniable musical talent.

I like to think that today (at least before the pandemic changed things) a smart young Jenny would tell Oliver, “I’m sorry, darling, but I really don’t want to give up this fabulous opportunity.  Why don’t you meet me in Paris?  Or wait for me here in Cambridge for a year or two?  We can then pick up where we left off.” 

But I’m probably being unfair to most of the young women of that era.  I’m certainly aware that the prevailing culture in 1970 did not encourage that sort of decision.

When I decided to marry Marv in 1971 and leave my job at UCLA to move with him to Ann Arbor, Michigan, I wasn’t giving up anything like Paris and Nadia Boulanger.  For one thing, I had had a perilous experience in LA with a major earthquake and its aftershocks.  [Please see my post, “I Felt the Earth Move under My Feet,” July 17, 2019.]  I was also aware of other negative features of life in LA.

And shortly after Marv asked me to marry him, we set off on an eight-day road trip from LA to San Francisco, via Route 1, along the spectacular California coast.  Spending every minute of those eight days together convinced me that Marv and I were truly meant to be together. (On one memorable occasion, while dining at The French Poodle restaurant in Carmel, Marv insisted that the server let me, not him, taste our wine before accepting it for our dinner. In 1971, this was absolutely stunning.) 

So I decided, on balance, that moving with Marv to Ann Arbor would mean moving to a tranquil, leafy-green, and non-shaky place where I could live with the man I adored.  The man who clearly adored me, too.

I was certain that I would find interesting and meaningful work to do, and I did.  

Both of us hoped to return to California after a few years in Ann Arbor, where Marv was a tenured member of the University of Michigan math faculty.  (He’d been at UCLA in a special one-year program and had to return to Ann Arbor in 1971.) 

But when that didn’t work out, and we jointly decided to leave Ann Arbor, we settled elsewhere—happily–because it meant that we could stay together.

I’ve made many unwise choices during my life.  The list is a long one.  But choosing to marry Marv, leave LA, and live with him for the rest of our gloriously happy married life was not one of them. 

The unwise choices were my own, and loving Marv was never the reason why I made any of them. 

On the contrary, life with Marv was in many ways the magical life I envisioned when we shared dinner for the first time at Le Cellier in Santa Monica in October 1970.

It was, in the end, and forever, another love story.

Postscript:  If Marv were still here, we’d be celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary this month.

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Another love story

Posted on May 24, 2021 | 3 comments

December 2020 marked 50 years since the release of the film “Love Story” in December 1970.  This film played a role in the burgeoning romance between me and the astonishing man who became my husband a few months later.  I’ll call him Marv.

Part I

We waited in a long line outside the theater in chilly Westwood.  The air was nothing like the frigid nighttime air that would have enveloped us in Chicago, or Boston, or Cleveland. But we were in LA, and for LA it was a chilly December night.

We didn’t mind waiting. We were too enthralled with each other, with Westwood, and with the prospect of seeing “Love Story” on the big screen. 

I’d met Marv two months earlier at the Chancellor’s Reception on the UCLA campus. The reception was intended for faculty only, but the director of my legal-services support program at the law school was a member of the faculty, and he circulated his invitation to all of us working in the program.

I’d moved from Chicago in late August and was eager to meet new people in LA. The reception was taking place on a Sunday afternoon in October, and I decided to show up.  I purposely wore my incredibly fetching black sleeveless miniskirt dress with bright red pockets and made my way to the campus under a radiant California sun.

I looked around.  I didn’t know anyone there—I’d been in LA for only six weeks.  I wandered over to the “cookie table” and was pondering which cookies to sample when a woman approached me.  “Are you by yourself because you want to be, or would you like to meet some other people?” she asked.

I immediately responded that I’d like to meet other people, and she led me to a group of four men. She began by introducing her husband, a bearded middle-aged math professor, who was accompanied by three much younger men. As I glanced at the younger men, I instantly recognized one of them–a good-looking guy I’d seen around my apartment building near the campus.

The professor explained that these young men were there because they were new math faculty, and he asked me why I was there. I told him I was working at the law school.  He then asked where I’d gone to law school. When I said Harvard, he turned to the good-looking guy and said, “Marv went to Harvard, too.”

Thus began my bond with Marv.  We had Harvard in common.

I’d noticed Marv around our building but, as it turned out, he’d never noticed me. I’d seen him—alone—diving into the building’s small pool, and I’d seen him walking back and forth along a pathway that connected our apartment building (near the corner of Kelton and Gayley) to the campus.  Sometimes he’d been smoking a pipe as he walked.

I sometimes wondered: How could he help noticing an adorable redhead like me?  But I later decided it was just fine that he never noticed me because that meant he wasn’t noticing any other young women either.

Even later, I figured out why he’d been totally unaware of me.  Whenever he was by himself–in this case, walking to and from campus by himself–he was thinking about math.  Marv was a brilliant mathematician who almost never stopped thinking about math.

When we began talking at the Chancellor’s Reception, Marv discovered what I already knew—we lived in the same apartment building.  He smiled a lot and let me know that he wanted to see me sometime.

Did I give him my phone number?  I must have because a day or two later he called and asked me to go to dinner.

We agreed that I would meet him at his apartment and make our dinner plans there.  So on Saturday night I walked a short distance from my apartment to his apartment on the same floor. 

Marv and I had both searched for a studio apartment in Westwood at the same time. At the end of my search, I decided that I preferred the building on Kelton.  Hoping to rent a relatively inexpensive studio there, I returned and learned that the last studio had just been rented.  It turned out that the renter was Marv. 

So, because someone (namely Marv) had just rented the last available studio in that building, I had to decide whether to rent a one-bedroom I could barely afford.  It was a stretch for me, financially.  But I decided to go ahead and rent it. 

Destiny? 

When he answered his door, Marv welcomed me and handed me a copy of a paperback book, “101 Nights in California.”  We sat together on his sofa, looking through the book’s list of restaurants, along with their menus.  “You pick wherever you want to go,” he said.

My jaw nearly dropped.  It was 1970, and it was almost unimaginable that a man would say that to a brand new date, allowing her to choose the restaurant where they’d dine that night.  I knew immediately that Marv just might be the right man for me.  He was certainly unlike anyone I’d ever dated before.

I’d already dated some pretty good guys.  But when men met me during my years at law school, or later learned that I was a lawyer, only the few who were immensely secure chose to date me.  Others fell by the wayside.

Marv was completely secure and non-threatened by someone like me.  He actually relished having a smart woman in his life.  And that never changed.

That evening, I chose a French restaurant in Santa Monica called Le Cellier.  How was our dinner there?  In short, it was magical.  We not only had a splendid French meal, but we also used our time together to learn a lot about each other.  My hunch that Marv was possibly the perfect man for me was proving to be correct.

We proceeded to have one promising date after another.  Dinner at Mario’s, a small Italian restaurant in Westwood.  A Halloween party at a colleague’s home in Pacific Palisades.  Viewing the startling film “Joe,” starring Peter Boyle.  (We later ran into Boyle when we ate at a health-food restaurant in LA.)

By December we were hovering on the precipice of falling in love.  We’d heard the buzz about “Love Story,” and both of us were eager to see it.  So there we were, waiting in a long line of moviegoers at the Westwood Village Theater that chilly night.

The plot of “Love Story” wasn’t totally unknown to me.  I’d already read Erich Segal’s story shortly before I’d moved to LA from Chicago.  I was casually leafing through a magazine when I came across the story.

It grabbed me right away.  It was set, after all, in Cambridge, and its leading characters were students at Harvard.  I’d spent three years there getting my law degree, and I’d finished just a few years earlier.

The story was sappy and had a terribly sad ending.  But I relished the Harvard setting, and I couldn’t wait to see the film based on it.  When Marv learned a little bit about it, he wanted to see it too.

We soon found ourselves inside the theater, every seat filled with excited patrons like us, and began watching Hollywood’s “Love Story,” our eyes glued to the screen.

What did we think of the movie that night?  I truthfully don’t remember, and Marv is no longer here to recall it with me.  So I recently decided to re-watch the film—twice–to reflect on it and what it may have meant to us at the time.

In 1970, enamored with my companion, I most likely loved the film and its countless depictions of student life at Harvard.  Marv had graduated from the college in 1963, and I’d finished at the law school in 1967, so we’d attended Harvard at about the same time as author Segal (Harvard class of ‘58, Ph.D. ‘65). 

The two lead actors, Ryan O’Neal (playing Oliver) and Ali MacGraw (playing Jenny), were also contemporaries of ours who could have been Harvard students at about the same time.  Let’s add Tommy Lee Jones, whose first film role is one of Oliver’s roommates.  He was himself a Harvard grad, class of ‘69.  (Segal reportedly based Oliver on two of his friends:  Harvard roommates Tommy Lee Jones and Al Gore.)  By the way, Tommy’s name in the credits is Tom Lee Jones.

Marv and I certainly relished the scenes set in a variety of Harvard locations, including the hockey arena where Oliver stars on the school’s hockey team and where I had skated (badly) with a date from the business school. In another scene, the two leads ecstatically make snow angels on the snow-covered campus. 

And I loved watching Oliver searching for Jenny in the Music Building, a building located very close to the law school, where I occasionally escaped from my studies by listening to old 78 LP records in a soundproof booth.

Overall, Marv and I probably found most of the film a lightweight take on life as a Harvard student (although darker days followed as the story moved toward its tragic end).  I’m sure we were also moved by the haunting music composed by Francis Lai, an unquestionably brilliant addition to the film that earned its only Oscar (out of seven nominations). 

Seeing “Love Story” together that chilly night must have been wonderful. 

But watching the film again, 50 years later?  I have to be honest:  I found it disappointing.

                                       To be continued

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Hangin’ with Judge Hoffman

Posted on April 20, 2021 | 2 comments

POST #9

This is the ninth post in a series recalling what it was like to clerk for Judge Julius J. Hoffman from 1967 to 1969.

The “Chicago 7” Trial (continued)

More about the Sorkin film

            In Post #8, I praised the Sorkin film as an impressive achievement, noting the many awards and positive reviews by critics that the film has garnered.       I now want to add more of my own comments on the film.  I’ll begin with casting.

Casting

I don’t agree with some of the casting in this film.   I can recall a number of personae–how they looked and acted in 1969-70– and my recollections do not jibe with all of the actors chosen to fill those parts.  Even great acting cannot completely make up for this kind of disparity.

One excellent bit of casting is that of Mark Rylance as William Kunstler.  I encountered Kunstler about three years before he appeared in Hoffman’s courtroom, and I retain vivid memories from that time.  Those memories were later enhanced by my in-person observation of the trial twice and by TV coverage of Kunstler once the trial began. 

I first encountered him at a conference on civil rights held at Yale Law School the first weekend of April 1966.  The conference was sponsored by the Yale law students’ Civil Rights Research Council.   A law-school classmate kindly offered to drive three other students and me from Cambridge to New Haven (he immediately became a great friend).  At Yale, we attended sessions offered by a host of leading lights in the field of civil rights.  One of those was Kunstler, who was already an accomplished civil rights lawyer and co-founder of the Center for Constitutional Rights.  He spoke at a session of the conference, and he also gave the keynote speech at the Saturday night banquet held on the Yale campus.  After this encounter, I remembered him because of his passion for civil rights and his engaging delivery.

In my view, Mark Rylance is a good fit for the role of William Kunstler.  In one scene, he rebuts one of the defendants, who characterizes Judge Hoffman as “nuts,” by calling the judge only “a little hostile.”  In his reading of this line, Rylance incorporates what I think was Kunstler’s generally lawyerlike approach to the case. He was, however, painfully caught in the middle between an irascible judge and defendant-clients who were openly defiant in court.  Lashing out at Judge Hoffman at times earned him a number of contempt citations by the judge.  (Only one of these was upheld by the appellate court.)  Overall, Rylance captures Kunstler’s difficult balancing act very well.

I don’t recall how some of the other individuals looked and acted in 1969, so I can’t comment on the actors’ resemblance to the real people.  Prime examples: Defendants Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, Bobby Seale, John Froines, and Lee Weiner.   But I do recall Abbie Hoffman (hereinafter Abbie, to avoid confusion with the judge) and Jerry Rubin, both from observing them in-person in Chicago and from media coverage before and after the trial.  The most striking lack of resemblance, to me, is the great difference in their height that the film makes apparent.  Sacha Baron Cohen is (as he himself has noted) about half a foot taller than the real Abbie. This difference is jarring.  As for Jerry Rubin, I remember him as close to Abbie’s height and much better looking than the actor who plays him in the film.  Neater, too. The film’s Rubin comes across as a total slob, which I think is inaccurate.

Abbie’s son Andrew, who lives in the Bay Area and was interviewed by a journalist here last fall, noted that his father was a short man with charismatic energy.  “He was a tiny little …monster,” according to Andrew.  The entire interview with Andrew and others who knew the defendants appeared in Berkleyside, an online newsletter, and was republished in jweekly.com (Oct. 30, 2020.

I encountered Abbie myself on January 1, 1970, in the middle of the trial, which ended on February 18, 1970.  I recount that encounter below in Watching the movie “Z.”

The two federal prosecutors, Thomas Foran and Richard Schultz, both appeared in Hoffman’s courtroom a number of times during my clerkship.  Foran was a short and scrappy Daley acolyte whose name is mispronounced in the film.  He pronounced it as “FOR-an,” with emphasis on the first syllable, not “For-AN,” with emphasis on the second.  His preferred pronunciation was well known in Northern District courtrooms.  His portrayal in the film by J.C. MacKenzie is pretty close to what I remember.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt somewhat resembles prosecutor Richard Schultz and portrays him well.  As I remember Schultz, he was a rather ordinary-looking young man of about 30 who was a low-key prosecutor, pretty much as he’s portrayed in the film.  Whether he ever took a stand against this prosecution, as the film suggests, I have no inside knowledge. But he’s been interviewed recently by media outlets in Chicago, and here’s what I’ve gleaned from published interviews. 

Schultz calls the film “a fantasy” that has little resemblance to the actual events.  He remembers that the goal of some of the defendants was, from the outset, to make a mockery of the court proceedings.  He believes they were also planning violence from the beginning, and fist fights actually occurred between them.  According to Schultz, there was “nothing we could have done to stop the violence in the courtroom.”

 He regrets what transpired with Bobby Seale, but he defends Judge Hoffman’s ruling.  According to Schultz, the judge had no choice because of a ruling a short time before by an Illinois court requiring that an unruly defendant be bound and gagged so he could remain in the courtroom for his trial instead of being removed. 

One interesting side note:  Schultz encountered Abbie and Rubin at the Field Museum in Chicago, as shown in a scene in the film.  He remembers that, when they met, they “begged him to watch the movie ‘Z.’”  This is startling new information for me.  Please see below Watching the movie “Z,” my discussion of that movie and how it related to this trial.

I probably remember AG Ramsey Clark from photographs only and can’t comment on Michael Keaton’s portrayal for that reason.  You may not know that Ramsey Clark was the son of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Tom Clark.  During a visit to the Supreme Court during my law school years, I saw Tom Clark read from the bench an opinion he’d written.  In 1967 Tom retired from the Court so his son could assume the role of AG.  He was succeeded by Lyndon Johnson’s superb choice of Thurgood Marshall. 

Ben Shenkman does a good job portraying Leonard Weinglass.  Strangely, I remember Weinglass, who was then 33, as looking older than Shenkman, 52.  Maybe Weinglass looked older than his years.  Or maybe my memory relies on the fact that I was several years’ younger than Weinglass in 1969, and he looked like an older and experienced lawyer to me.

John Doman, the actor portraying AG John Mitchell, bears a slight resemblance to Mitchell, whom I remember from photos and TV coverage.  He successfully captures Mitchell’s arrogance and devotion to Nixon, which led to his own downfall, including a term in federal prison.

Finally, I want to comment on Frank Langella’s portrayal of Judge Hoffman.  One critic has called it the best casting in the entire film.  I totally disagree.  I worked closely with Judge Hoffman for two years, and Langella’s Hoffman is nothing like the real man.  Hoffman was eccentric and generally biased in favor of government prosecutors, but he was not evil. 

Langella may be a good actor, but he read his lines in this film with his own interpretation of the judge in mind.  Maybe that made for better drama.  But it’s not, in my view, close to reality.

In a published interview, Langella called Hoffman “a shit” who had “no redeeming qualities.”  He agreed with what he claims is Sorkin’s view of Hoffman as “either a total pawn of the government, or getting senile, or a combination of both.”  Langella added that there are men like this “who use their position to cover what is venal and dishonest and cruel behavior.”  Again, I totally disagree. 

I had my own issues with Hoffman.  For example, I was angry when he gave my attempt to write an appellate opinion to someone else.  (See Post #6.)  But he did have redeeming qualities.  He was one of the few judges who at that time hired women as their law clerks, and during my tenure he treated me and my co-clerks with respect.  Yes, he could be abrasive toward lawyers who appeared in his courtroom, but he was not venal or dishonest or cruel, like many men in his generation. 

It’s true that he had a bias in favor of government attorneys, both prosecutors and those who represented government agencies, but he was in no way a total pawn of the government.  And I don’t think he was senile or anywhere near it at the time of the trial.  While I worked for him, he ruled in favor of the inmates of the Cook County Jail and against those who ran the county jail.  And when he agreed with the Justice Department’s position in the South Holland school-discrimination case, he was criticized by some for being too much in favor of the government’s position challenging discrimination against minority students.  But his approach led to the right outcome in that case.

So I’m wondering:  Did Langella do any research of his own into Judge Hoffman’s record?  Did he uncover any evidence supporting his description of Hoffman as venal, dishonest, and cruel?  Did he conveniently forget how some of the defendants deliberately provoked this judge, a man who had previously been able to maintain an orderly courtroom?  Can’t these provocations themselves be viewed as “cruel”?

 Although I did not agree overall with the way Hoffman conducted this trial, there were reasons for many of his rulings, especially his reactions to the outrageous behavior of some of the defendants.  Further, he was later reprimanded by the Seventh Circuit for some of these rulings, so he didn’t get away scot-free for what he did.

My own attendance at the trial

            I personally attended the trial twice.  The first time I showed up simply out of curiosity, and when I left, I had no desire to return.  The second time I attended only because a law-school classmate who lived and worked in NYC was visiting Chicago, phoned me, and asked whether I would accompany her to the trial.  I met her at the courthouse, where we got into line and waited for our turn to be seated. 

            I got no special treatment either time.  Waiting in line the first time, my handbag was searched along with everyone else’s, and a comb was confiscated and held for me until I exited the courtroom.  At the time, I carried an aluminum comb that had a “rat tail,” and it was deemed too sharp for me to bring into the courtroom. I was highly amused that my spindly comb was viewed as a weapon!  (I didn’t bring it along when I returned with my friend.)

            Each time I attended the trial, I felt extremely uncomfortable.  By that time, I was a lawyer with the Appellate and Test Case Division of the Chicago Legal Aid Bureau, representing poor people.  Embarrassed by some of Judge Hoffman’s conduct during the trial (and also troubled by the unruly behavior of some of the defendants), I did not return.  I also cut off my relationship with the judge almost completely.  But I briefly got back in touch with him before moving to California in August 1970.  (I discuss that in Post #10, my final post in this series.)

Hoffman’s conduct during the trial

            It’s irrefutable that Judge Hoffman’s conduct during the trial became a source of widespread criticism, and much of it was warranted.  As I mentioned in Post #8, the problem with Hoffman’s role as the presiding judge of the “Chicago 7” trial was, fundamentally, that he treated it like every other criminal case he’d ever handled.  And the defense attorneys were right.  He did have a record of bias in favor of government prosecutors.

            This led to his downfall.  He refused to see that this case was unique and had to be dealt with on its own terms, not like all of the criminal cases in his past. 

Further, he lacked any flexibility and remained committed to the way he’d always conducted proceedings in his courtroom.  He’d been sitting on the federal bench since 1953, and by 1969 he was unfortunately “fixed in his ways.” 

If he’d had some flexibility, that might have helped the trial proceed more smoothly. But at 74, he was accustomed to running an orderly courtroom with lawyers and defendants who followed the rules.  He did not have an orderly courtroom this time, and he was unable to bend those rules.

The Sorkin film highlights many of Hoffman’s missteps.  The situation involving Bobby Seale is the most notable example.  Hoffman was foolish to refuse to sever Seale from this case as soon as Seale complained that his chosen defense lawyer was unavailable.  The back and forth between the two of them became more and more heated, until Seale’s defiance led Hoffman to have him bound and gagged.  According to prosecutor Richard Schultz, Hoffman was following an Illinois court ruling requiring Hoffman to proceed this way, but the film’s reenactment is a spectacle in which Hoffman looks almost unhinged.  Despite his announcement from the bench that “I tried fairly and impartially to get this defendant to sit on his own,” viewers are appalled by this treatment of Seale, which seems especially unjust and discriminatory because Seale is Black.  When Schultz finally asks the judge to sever Seale from the “Chicago 8” and declare a mistrial in his case, Hoffman proceeds to do just that.  But it’s too late.  The damage has been done.

Hoffman’s increasingly fraught relationship with defense attorneys Kunstler and Weinglass further damaged Hoffman’s claim to be a fair judge. I discuss how the appellate court viewed the judge’s conduct in Post #10.

Some additional comments

  1. The film seems to confuse some locations in Chicago, including two of its large parks.  I was away from the city during the convention, but I believe that events depicted in the film took place separately in Lincoln Park on the North Side and in Grant Park downtown (not in only one park).  Grant Park is the large park located across Michigan Avenue from the Hilton Hotel.  Violence took place there on the night of August 27, and a scene in the film shows a hotel window being broken.  There’s also dialogue by the defendants about “going to the convention,” but the convention was held a considerable distance from Grant Park at the International Amphitheatre.  In the film, the violence that occurs takes place in Grant Park and on Michigan Avenue, not at the convention itself.

2. When the defendants and their lawyers meet to discuss the members of the jury, they openly prefer two specific individuals already chosen to be jurors.  I won’t discuss the film’s depiction of how these two jurors were later replaced by alternates.  But I was struck by the comment by the defense that they especially liked a young juror who seemed to be on their side because she noticeably carried a copy of a book by James Baldwin into the courtroom.

This line struck me because by 1967 I had become an avid reader of books by James Baldwin, and I still have my paperback copies of several of them (sporting a cover price of 50 cents).  When I wrote a seminar paper in 1967 for my law school’s Civil Rights Seminar with Professor Al Sacks, I quoted a couple of passages from The Fire Next Time.  These quotes later appeared in a law review article that published my paper, “A Child of a Different Color:  Race as a Factor in Adoption and Custody Proceedings,” 17 Buffalo Law Review 303 (1968), on pages 331 and 346.

3. The U.S. courthouse shown in the film, with people lining the steps chanting “The whole world is watching,” is nothing like the actual courthouse, which was and is a Mies Van der Rohe black box of a building.  The change is clearly made for dramatic effect, but if a viewer goes in search of that courthouse, she will be disappointed.  Hoffman’s courtroom is also different, chosen by Sorkin to feature his presentation of the actors’ positions in the courtroom.

4. Hoffman repeatedly gets some names, especially Weinglass’s, wrong.  This is typical of many people in their 70s.  A problem with names is quite common among older people (including President Joe Biden).  Because it’s not unusual for someone who’s 74 to forget names, even important ones, I think it was unfair to highlight Hoffman’s occasional lapses and suggest that they indicated senility.  In the case of Weinglass, I suspect that Hoffman had friends or associates with similar names, and those names occurred to him in place of Weinglass’s.

5.  I never followed the courtroom testimony of any of the defendants or any of the witnesses, but I’ve always remembered one fairly inconsequential response by Abbie Hoffman that was reported in the media.  At one point, Abbie was reportedly asked whether he was addicted to any drugs.  Answer:  Yes.  Question:  Which one?  Answer:  Caffeine.  As a caffeine addict myself, I find that answer perfectly apt as well as hilarious.

Watching the movie “Z”

In January of 2017, I wrote a post on this blog titled “Watching the Movie ‘Z’:  A Tale of Two Hoffmans.”  In that post, I noted that in January 1970 I watched the movie “Z”—a film I consider a powerful and enduring classic—under somewhat remarkable circumstances. (By the way, this is the film that Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin “begged” prosecutor Richard Schultz to see.)

An edited version of my 2017 post follows.

“Z” is a 1969 film that was written and directed by Costa-Gavras, a Greek-born filmmaker who lives and works in France.  He based it on a 1966 book that used official documents to describe the 1963 death of a Greek politician, Grigoris Lambrakis.  Lambrakis was a leading pacifist and left-wing member of the Greek parliament.  Shortly after speaking at an antiwar meeting in Thessaloniki, he was struck on the head by a club wielded by two far-right extremists.  He later died of his injuries. After his death, graffiti with the letter “Z” began to appear in Greek cities.  Representing the growing protest against the right-wing government, it stood for the first letter of the Greek word, “Zi,” which means “he lives.”

In a filmed interview in 2009, Costa-Gavras discussed the making of “Z.”  You can watch this interview, as I did, on a DVD of “Z.”  Costa-Gavras focused on the theme of political oppression.  His cast included Yves Montand as Lambrakis and Jean-Louis Trintignant as the prosecutor who slowly realizes what happened and is ultimately driven to seek justice against the wrongdoers.

In the film, a key scene takes place in front of the venue where Lambrakis is scheduled to give his speech.  Supporters have gathered to welcome him, but others in the crowd are demonstrators opposed to him and what he stands for.  The local police are seen clubbing a few of the demonstrators.  But it’s clear that the demonstrators are the bad guys–street toughs paid off by those in power to harm Lambrakis.  One of the demonstrators strikes Lambrakis.  After he gives his speech, he’s struck again, causing his death. 

Before he’s struck, Lambrakis asks, “Why do the ideas we stand for incite such violence?”  Costa-Gavras’s answer:  It’s all about power.  Those in power will do anything to stay in power, and here that included the assassination of a political opponent.  (Post-1963, Greek politics remained chaotic.  A 1967 coup by the military led to its control of the Greek government until the regime finally collapsed and democratic government was essentially restored in 1973.)

I first saw “Z” at the Cinema movie theater in Chicago on New Year’s Day 1970.   The Cinema was an art-film theater located on Chicago Avenue near Michigan Avenue, and I saw a great many “art flicks” there before it was demolished and replaced by a high-rise building.  At the time, I was a young lawyer working in an office that brought test cases on behalf of the poor. The “Chicago 7” trial was underway, ending in mid-February 1970

I read about “Z” in Roger Ebert’s review in the Chicago Sun-Times in late December 1969.  Ebert was a young and thoughtful movie critic, and I was a fan of his reviews.  He called “Z” the best film of 1969, and I was eager to see it.  I’d just said goodbye to a man I’d been dating—he was a bit too boring to abide any longer—and I set out on a cold and gray New Year’s Day to see the movie by myself.  (As luck would have it, I met my never-boring husband when I moved to sunny California a few months later.) 

The film more than lived up to my expectations.  But what was especially striking about being in the audience that day was that, in the crowd waiting to enter the theater, I recognized one of the “Chicago 7” defendants, Abbie Hoffman.  I didn’t agree with everything that Abbie and his cohorts stood for, and I didn’t endorse their misconduct during the trial itself.  But I was opposed to the war in Vietnam, sympathetic to other elements of the protest movement, and horrified later that year by events like the killings at Kent State.  

As I watched “Z,” knowing that Abbie was watching it at the very same time, I couldn’t help thinking of the parallels with Chicago.  Fortunately, our government (unlike the powerful right wing in Greece) didn’t promote assassination. (At least we didn’t think so.)  But there were parallels.  The attitude of local officials, including Mayor Richard J. Daley, toward the protesters who came to Chicago in 1968 led to an overreaction by the Chicago police.  Their violent conduct toward the protesters became obvious to everyone watching TV coverage of the Democratic convention.  As we know, Nixon’s Justice Department went on to indict Abbie and the other defendants on charges brought under a dubious law.

There was, however, one sharp contrast between Chicago and Greece:  the prosecutors.  I’d fallen halfway in love with Jean-Louis Trintignant when he starred in “A Man and a Woman,” a 1967 French film.  Now, in “Z,” he portrayed a fair-minded prosecutor who becomes determined to hold the powerful to account.  And he succeeds in indicting not only the two toughs who committed the murder but also the high-ranking military officers who supported them.  (The real-life prosecutor, Christos Sartzetkis, was twice arrested and imprisoned but was later elected by the Greek parliament to be the country’s president from 1985 to 1990.)

By contrast, the prosecutors representing the Nixon administration in Chicago were, in my view, politically ambitious and not exactly fair-minded.  They were determined to convict the seven defendants, including Abbie. They secured as the trial judge a man whose usual bent was to rule in favor of the prosecutors who appeared before him, and he treated this trial like any other.

No one was killed in Chicago.  And although most of the trial defendants were convicted by the jury, their convictions were later reversed.  But the parallels between what transpired in Chicago and the story told in “Z” remain. 

“Z” is still a powerful film (it won numerous awards, including the Oscar and the Golden Globe as the Best Foreign-Language Film of 1970).  And January 1, 1970, endures in my memory as a day that underscored the ugliness of political oppression both in Greece and in my own country.  

Postscript:  Today, the parallels are still with us.  Although the November 2020 election installed a new president in the White House, some who were previously in power, and some who retain a degree of power, remain willing to (in Costa-Gavras’s words) “do anything to stay [or get back] in power.”  The message of “Z” lives.

                                                                        To be continued

(Post #10 will be the final post in this series)

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Posted in 1960s, 1969 movies, California, Cambridge, Mass., criminal defense lawyers, films, Greece, Illinois, law, lawyers, legal assistance to the poor, movies, Nixon administration, Oscar awards, police, respect, the White House, U.S. federal courts, U.S. Supreme Court

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Hangin’ with Judge Hoffman

Posted on March 11, 2021 | 3 comments

POST #7

This is the seventh in a series of posts that recall what it was like to clerk for Judge Julius J. Hoffman from 1967 to 1969.

The “Chicago 7” Trial

            In the spring of 1969, shortly before I was to leave my clerkship, a new case arrived in Hoffman’s chambers.  It resulted from a grand jury’s investigation into the events that had transpired in Chicago the previous summer, just before and during the Democratic National Convention in August 1968.  Eight men, later known as the “Chicago 8,” were accused of violating a new federal law, the Anti-Riot Act, by inciting demonstrations and violent encounters with the police in the streets and parks of Chicago.

            Countless books and articles have been written about this trial, sometimes called the Chicago “conspiracy trial,” and I’ve also seen a number of dramatic presentations on the stage, TV, and film. I don’t question the validity of any of these and won’t comment on them here.

            In 2020, a new film, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” appeared on our screens.  I’ll comment briefly on that film later.

            Because I clerked for Judge Julius J. Hoffman from 1967 to 1969, and because I lived in Chicago during that tumultuous time, I want to state my personal comments on the trial and the events that led up to it. 

            In this post, I’ll state my point of view as someone in a unique situation, working with Judge Hoffman at the very outset of the case, and who–after the trial was over—briefly talked to him about it.

First, some background 

I began my clerkship with Judge Hoffman during the summer of 1967, and I served as his junior clerk until the summer of 1968, when I became his senior clerk for a year.  My two-year clerkship ended during the summer of 1969.  Throughout my clerkship, I was living in my hometown of Chicago.  To help you comprehend the significance of the trial and surrounding events, I want to put them into some sort of context.

My remarks are based on my personal recollections of Chicago during those years.

            First, I was well aware of the rampant corruption in the city.  At the time, I sometimes described the city’s government as a “benevolent dictatorship.” Looking back, I no longer view it as “benevolent,” but it certainly was a dictatorship.

            The city’s government was dominated by one man:  Richard J. Daley, who served as the city’s mayor from 1955 until his death in 1976.  He not only held the executive leadership role, but he also made sure that local ordinances and everything else he wanted were enacted by a complicit city council filled with his acolytes (I recall only one dissenter during those years, an alderman named Leon Despres).  In addition, he decided who would fill local judicial openings.  As a result, the state courts were rank with incompetent judges loyal to Daley and his machine.

            Federal judgeships were somewhat different.  Many if not most of the judges were more or less independent of Daley, at least once they were on the bench.  Even though these judges probably were not totally lacking corrupt motives of their own, most of them (including Democratically-appointed judges who had some connection to Daley in their past) were not necessarily loyal to the Daley regime. 

            Judge Hoffman was a Republican appointed by Dwight Eisenhower and to my knowledge not connected in any way to the Daley machine, although I suspect that many members of the public thought he was. At a luncheon in Chicago in 2001, I was seated next to a prominent news anchor who voiced his assumption that Hoffman was part of the Daley machine.  I immediately corrected him.

Political developments during 1968

            By early 1968, many Democrats had grown restless with the presidency of LBJ.  National politics heated up when a number of men announced that they hoped to replace him.

            The heat became intense on March 31, when LBJ announced in a live TV appearance that he would not run again. (I recall watching him make that stunning announcement.) 

            LBJ reportedly dropped out because Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota had won 42 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary, while LBJ won only 49 percent.  McCarthy was the leading voice advocating an end to the Vietnam War, a position that was becoming increasingly popular.  McCarthy’s primary showing led Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York to enter the race a short time later.   Like McCarthy, he ran on an antiwar platform and advocated a number of other popular positions.

Even before LBJ’s announcement on March 31, I—like so many others– had become disillusioned with him, despite all of his remarkable accomplishments in the domestic realm, because of his increasing and unwavering support of the Vietnam War.  I never considered supporting Republican Richard Nixon, who had run and lost to JFK in 1960 (and later lost his race for governor of California).  I loathed Nixon for a great many reasons.   But for a while, New York’s relatively moderate Republican governor, Nelson Rockefeller, seemed like a possible alternative to LBJ. 

During a visit to New York City to visit friends in early March, I accompanied one of them to a meeting of the NYC bar association, where Rockefeller was the main speaker.  As he finished his speech and left for the exit, I ran after him.  Just outside the building, I approached him and stuck out my hand to shake his.  “Please run for president,” I urged him as we shook hands.  He smiled and said, “Well, aren’t you dear?” before descending the steps to his waiting car. 

I often wondered how things might have turned out if Rockefeller had taken the advice I offered him on those steps before Nixon’s grip on his party became too strong to overcome.  A short time later, LBJ dropped out of the running, and the Democratic race was wide open.  Rockefeller no long held any real appeal for me.  Now, with LBJ out of the picture, I would decide who, among the Democratic candidates who remained in the race, I’d support.

The Democratic National Convention, which would choose the ultimate nominee, was scheduled to be held in Chicago in late August of 1968.

My life in Chicago

I tried to keep up with political developments that spring and summer, but truthfully, I was primarily focused on the things that dominated my everyday life.  First, there were my responsibilities as Hoffman’s law clerk.  Then there was travel, like my trip to NYC in early March.  I also spent time with old friends I’d known for years along with some new ones.  And then there was my attempt to meet potential suitors.  (I was focused on my career but not to the exclusion of marriage and kids.)

In April, Chicago was rocked by the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis.  Fires and looting broke out in parts of the city.  I recall visiting the apartment of someone I was dating at the time.  Together we stood at the windows of his high-rise apartment in Sandburg Village viewing the widespread fires we could see below.  I was immensely saddened by King’s death and the terrible destruction that followed.  But my own everyday life didn’t really change.

Was I aware of the efforts by antiwar activists who were gearing up for the DNC in August?  Just barely.  I often watched local TV news and read the daily Chicago Sun-Times, so I was vaguely aware that there was a Yippie movement headed by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.  Didn’t they publicize a stunt where they brought a pig to Chicago, announcing that it was a candidate for president?  Because that struck me as pretty ridiculous, it was hard to take them seriously.  

I probably had read something about Tom Hayden and the SDS, but I honestly knew very little about them.  I was also vaguely aware of the Black Panthers, led in Chicago by Fred Hampton, but their agenda didn’t have any noticeable impact on my everyday life.

I did follow the campaigns of the leading Democratic hopefuls.  Eugene McCarthy was my early favorite, but by early June I was considering shifting my allegiance to RFK.  I was therefore horrified, along with the rest of the country, when he was assassinated in the Ambassador Hotel in LA that June.  I had lived very near the Ambassador when I briefly lived in LA at the age of 12, where my family’s first home was a rented apartment on Normandie just off Wilshire Boulevard, a location very close to the Ambassador, and I had strolled near there.  That memory made RFK’s assassination even more real to me than it might otherwise have. 

After he died, I returned to supporting Eugene McCarthy, but I ultimately resolved (with reservations) to support LBJ’s vice president, former Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey, as the most electable of the Democratic candidates for president.  Humphrey had a long and admirable record as a liberal Democrat who had supported civil rights legislation and other liberal causes for many years.  But although he earned the support of liberal senators like Fred Harris of Oklahoma and Walter Mondale of Minnesota, he faced vehement opposition because of his adherence to LBJ’s Vietnam policies.  He spoke out against Senator McCarthy and Senator George McGovern’s call for an immediate end to the bombings in Vietnam, an early withdrawal of troops, and setting talks for a coalition government with the Viet Cong. 

Humphrey didn’t enter any of the primary elections held in 13 states, but he won the party nomination at its chaotic convention in Chicago in August.  He lost the November election by less than one percent of the popular vote, but he carried only 13 states. 

The Democratic convention and the events surrounding it led to the trial of the “Chicago 7.”

My vacation that summer

I planned to take my summer vacation during the convention for a simple reason: A close friend who lived in NYC asked me to join her on a road trip that would leave Chicago just as the convention was beginning. I was living paycheck-to-paycheck (my salary was $6,000 for the year), so I jumped at the chance to get an essentially free ride to NYC. 

My friend was coming to Chicago for a wedding, and we would leave on our road trip to NYC on Sunday, August 25, just as the convention was about to begin.  I planned to see friends in NYC and Boston, and then travel from Boston to Cape Cod with another close friend.  Because I was busy making my vacation plans, I was largely insulated from news about the convention.

In Hoffman’s chambers, things at this point seemed routine.  I was largely preoccupied with ruling on the case of The Inmates of Cook County Jail, which I’ve discussed in Post # 4.  As I mentioned in that post, I left my semi-radical opinion on Hoffman’s desk on Friday afternoon the 23rd for him to read while I was away.  (I was later amazed on my return to Chicago to learn that he’d read this opinion from the bench during my vacation.)

I was living that summer at 1360 Lake Shore Drive (where the rent on my studio apartment was a whopping $140 a month).  My mother lived a few miles farther north at Lake Shore Drive and Aldine.  Leaving my mother’s apartment the Saturday night before I was to take off on my vacation, I rode on a bus that drove through Lincoln Park (the largest park on the North Side of the city) en route to my apartment.  I was startled to see masses of people gathering in the park shortly before the convention was to begin.  During the work week, I’d been similarly shocked to see U.S. Army jeeps driving up and down city streets in downtown Chicago when I walked to work in the Federal Building on Dearborn Street. 

Both unprecedented sights made me wonder exactly what might happen in the city during the convention.  But these somewhat shocking events weren’t front and center in my mind.  I remember feeling kind of glad to be leaving town and avoiding what promised to be ominous events happening in Chicago while I was away.

Did I follow the news during my road-trip vacation?  Not really.  So I was pretty much unaware of what was happening at the convention.  But once I arrived in NYC, I stayed with a friend in Greenwich Village and, on the night that became notorious, I watched the convention with her and her husband on their living-room TV.  Needless to say, I was shocked by what I saw.  And terribly embarrassed by the behavior of Chicago’s Mayor Daley, revealed for all to see on TV.  I remember watching Senator Abe Ribicoff speaking at the podium, nominating George McGovern for president, and defying Daley, whose henchman booed the U.S. senator from Connecticut.  Daley was caught on camera mouthing expletives about Ribicoff that TV wouldn’t or couldn’t describe.

At the same time, TV news coverage highlighted what was happening elsewhere in Chicago.  The convention was held at the International Amphitheater, a considerable distance from the center of the city.  But a multitude of antiwar protesters had gathered in the very large downtown park, Grant Park, located adjacent to Michigan Avenue.  These protestors created havoc as they began to move onto Michigan Avenue.  The resulting chaos, and the violent reaction to the protestors by the Chicago police department, seen across the world on TV, was later described as a “police riot.”

In NYC, I put that chaotic vision aside and went on to meet another friend in Boston.  We traveled together to Cape Cod, where we heard that Humphrey had chosen Maine Senator Edmund Muskie as his VP.  Muskie seemed like a good choice, and despite the turmoil in the Democratic Party, I was hopeful that the Humphrey-Muskie ticket could defeat Tricky Dick.

Flying back to Chicago to resume my life there, I discovered that things had largely settled down.  What had happened during the convention didn’t loom large in my mind as I began to pay close attention to the much more compelling 1968 election campaign.  The outcome would steer our country down Humphrey’s path or down a very different one.

In November, I was plunged into gloom by the dispiriting Nixon victory.  I remember watching election-night news coverage in agony as Tricky Dick’s votes added up.  I saw his victory unfold on my tiny black-and-white TV, seated on my sofa next to a date who’d asked me to accompany him earlier that evening to a performance of “Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris” at The Happy Medium.  Maybe because I associated the guy with that terrible night, I was OK when he gradually faded from my life.  I honestly didn’t care if I never saw him again.

Nixon’s victory changed everything. 

To be continued….

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Posted in 1960s, Boston, Chicago, films, New York City, Walter Mondale

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Hangin’ with Judge Hoffman

Posted on November 13, 2020 | 3 comments

This month I’m beginning something new.

I’m beginning a series of posts that will focus on my personal recollections of working as a law clerk for a federal judge–a judge who became notorious shortly after I left my clerkship.

Judge Julius J. Hoffman was a U.S. district court judge in Chicago who became notorious when he presided over the “Chicago 7” trial that began in the fall of 1969.

As Hoffman’s law clerk from 1967 to 1969, I observed him closely throughout my two-year tenure with him. This two-year period included, in its final months, the road that led to the “Chicago 7” trial.

This trial is now the subject of a new film written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” Because the film has inspired new interest in Judge Hoffman, this seemed to be an appropriate time to publish my recollections.

As Judge Hoffman’s law clerk during the two years before the trial began, I could foresee much of what would happen in his courtroom.  I later sat in on the trial, as a spectator, on two very cringe-worthy occasions.

This is the first post in a series that will examine what it was like to clerk for a judge like Hoffman. I’ll begin at the beginning: my first encounter with Judge Hoffman and how I came to work for him.

I’ll go on to describe a wide range of issues that arose during my tenure. These will include my observations during the frenetic time just before and during the “Chicago 7” trial. I’ll conclude with my final communications with the judge, just before I left Chicago in 1970.

Post #1

          In the fall of 1969, Judge Julius J. Hoffman moved from relative obscurity into the spotlight of national attention.  Although he had earned a reputation within the Chicago legal community as an irascible judge with a strong conservative bent, he was otherwise a little-known figure.  The public knew him only as one of Chicago’s U.S. district judges, and as such, he was generally respected.  Even lawyers who had appeared before him were compelled to admit that, despite his personal shortcomings, he could sometimes be an excellent judge.

          All that changed in the fall of 1969.  Assigned to be the presiding judge in what became known as the “Chicago 7” trial, Hoffman was suddenly the focus of journalists and lawyers from every corner of the United States, even the world.  Suddenly his courtroom demeanor was under a microscope, probed for rationality and fairness.  And just as suddenly, he became a national villain, even a national joke.

My first encounter with the judge

          In his custom-made elevator shoes and his black robe (double-stitched for longer wear), Judge Julius J. Hoffman would stride imperiously into his courtroom.  He would seat himself behind his imposing judicial bench, his tiny figure almost lost in the high-ceilinged courtroom he occupied on the 23rd floor of the federal courthouse in Chicago’s Loop.

“The motion will be dee-nied!”

                I can still hear the judge spouting those five words, the five words he must have said a thousand times during the two years I worked for him.  He always seemed to be denying motions rather than granting them.  But that was just one feature of this eccentric and soon-to-be-notorious judge.

          Julius Hoffman was a diminutive, bald-headed man with a prickly ego that was easily punctured.  But when I met with him over the Christmas holidays in 1966, he struck me as a charming and altogether reasonable person to clerk for.  I was in my last year of law school, and Hoffman was one of only three U.S. district judges in Chicago who had agreed, in that benighted era, to interview me, a woman, for the job of law clerk.

          For a number of reasons, Hoffman became my first choice of the three, and when he offered me the job, I decided to take it.  Although I had done almost no research into what kind of judge Hoffman was, I was thrilled with the simple prospect of being any federal judge’s law clerk.

          My failure to research Hoffman’s reputation later came back to haunt me.  I soon discovered that I was working for an irascible, difficult man who had unusual proclivities and a bizarre personality that often played itself out on the bench.  So although I loved my job as a federal judge’s law clerk, and I learned a great deal from my experience working in the federal courts, I was sometimes sorry I had so quickly settled on Hoffman as the federal judge to clerk for.

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Posted in 1960s, American culture, American history, Chicago, films, gender roles and stereotypes, Illinois, law, law school, lawyers, movies, sexist attitudes, U.S. federal courts, women

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Two Words

Posted on July 15, 2020 | 1 comment

Do you remember this scene in the 1967 film “The Graduate”?

New college graduate Benjamin encounters a friend of his father’s at a party.  The friend pulls him aside and says, “I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.  Plastics.”

That advice may have helped college grads in ‘67, but the world we face today is very different.

In light of the raging global pandemic, and the stress it’s placed on all of us, I now have two words for you.  Elastic waists.

Many of us have recently begun wearing clothes with elastic waists.

On June 26, The Wall Street Journal noted:  “The Covid 15 Have Made Our Clothes Too Tight.”  Reporter Suzanne Kapner clearly outlined the problem.  “People spent the spring sheltering at home in sweatpants, perfecting banana-bread recipes and indulging in pandemic-induced stress-eating.”  And while most of us have escaped Covid-19, we haven’t escaped the “Covid 15”—the weight-gain pushing Americans into “roomier wardrobes.”

Hence the widespread adoption of elastic waists.

Many shoppers have jumped on the scale, been horrified, and concluded that they needed to buy new clothes to fit their new shapes.  One woman, unable to zip up her pants, got on her scale.  “Holy moly,” she told Kapner, “I gained 11 pounds in three weeks.”

Kapner cited more evidence:  First, Google-searches for “elastic waist” have spiked. Further, body-measuring apps have reported a jump in people choosing looser fits to accommodate their new profiles.  As the CEO of one such app observed, people are “sizing up” because they’ve gained weight.  Less active and more confined, they’re “eating more, either out of stress or boredom.”

In light of this phenomenon, some retailers are increasing orders of clothes in bigger sizes.  They’re also painfully aware of something else:  the rise in returns because of size-changes.  Returns have probably doubled in the past three months, according to a software company that processes returns for over 200 brands. And when customers order a clothing item (in their former size), and it needs to be exchanged for a larger size, those retailers who offer free shipping and free returns find that all of these additional returns are eating into their profits.

This move into larger sizes and elastic waists doesn’t surprise me.  I long ago adopted wearing pants with elastic waists.  Not all of my pants, to be sure.  But many of them.

It probably started when I was pregnant with my first child.  As my abdominal area began to expand, I searched my closet and came across some skirts and pants with elastic waistbands.  I discovered that I could wear these throughout my pregnancy, adding extra elastic as needed.  I bought some maternity clothes as well, but the pants with those stretchy elastic waistbands allowed me to avoid buying a lot of new items.

Over the years, I’ve continued to wear elastic-waist pants, enjoying the comfort they afford.  (Yes, I also wear pants and jeans with stitched-down waistbands that fit me.)

I can understand why there’s a new emphasis on buying elastic waists in lieu of bigger sizes.  A bigger size might be OK for right now, but you probably hope to return to your former size sometime.  Elastic waists are exactly what they claim to be:  elastic.  That means they can expand, but they can also contract.

Both women and men can benefit from wearing elastic waists, at least until they’ve shed the additional pounds they’ve recently acquired.

Many women have traditionally turned to elastic waists because they don’t have the typical “hourglass” shape women are expected to sport.  They have what’s been called an “apple” shape, with a somewhat larger waist measurement than most women have.  In the past, they might have purchased clothes with a tight waistband and then had a tailor make the waistband bigger.

But right now, tailoring clothes is almost impossible. Who’s leaving the safety of home simply to find a tailor to alter a waistband?  The pandemic has put such tailoring out of reach for most of us.  And if an elastic waist makes it unnecessary, it’s saving you the trouble and expense of seeking out a tailor.

Men with expanding waists have also benefited from elastic waists.  The popularity of sweatpants and other casual wear with elastic waists for men are proof of that.

I recognize the role stress is playing in our lives right now, and it’s pretty obvious that we can attribute some weight-gain to the increased level of stress.  So, to avoid buying more and more elastic waists and/or bigger sizes, we need to reduce stress as much as we can.

The advice we’ve all heard for a long time still holds, and it probably applies now more than ever.  At the risk of sounding preachy, I’m adding a few new tips to the tried-and-true list.  (Feel free to skip it if you think you’ve heard it all before.)

  • Be more physically active. Please remember:  You don’t need to go to a gym or even do vigorous workouts at home.  Simply taking a fairly fast-paced stroll in your neighborhood is good enough.
  • Avoid fixating on TV news, especially the bad stuff.
  • Watch distracting TV programing instead (this includes reliably funny films like “Some Like It Hot” and “What’s Up, Doc?” if you can find them).
  • Play music that makes you happy.
  • Connect with friends and family by phone, email, or text (or by writing actual letters).
  • Give meditation a try, just in case it may help you.
  • Try to follow a diet focused on fresh fruit, veggies, high-fiber carbs, and lean protein.
  • Curl up with a good book. (Forgive me for plugging my three novels,* but each one is a fast read and can take you to a different time and place, a definitely helpful distraction.)

Although I admit that I’m still wearing the elastic waists I already own, I’ve so far been able to avoid the “Covid 15” that might require buying new ones.  What’s helped me?

First, briskly walking in my neighborhood for 30 minutes every day.  Second, resisting the lure of chocolate as much I can.  Instead, I’ve been relying on heaps of fruits, veggies, popcorn, pretzels, and sugarless gum.  (My chief indulgences are peanut butter and fig bars.)  It’s as simple as that.

Maybe you can avoid it, too.  Good luck!

 

*A Quicker Blood, Jealous Mistress, and Red Diana are all available as paperbacks and e-books on Amazon.com.

 

 

 

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