The “Star Trek” legend and “T.J. Hooker” star hit a pretty rough patch a while back. He was getting older, and his curious way with a line reading left him open … for … mockery.

Instead, he went to work. And, at 80, he’s not close to slowing down. Shatner’s next gig takes him to Broadway and then, later in 2012, across the country.

“Shatner’s World: We Just Live in It” will let the actor share his unique ride through the entertainment realm. Shatner could have rested on his “Star Trek” laurels decades ago and kept lining his wallet with convention appearances. But as those who read his most recent autobiography, “Up Till Now,” can attest, there’s no quit in the actor. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus is lashed to the mast so that he can hear for himself the Siren’s song, which lures men to their deaths on the rocks. I had to be lashed to my chair to watch the 65th Tony awards and, as I feared, despite the ginned up hoopla, Broadway is on the rocks! 

The Broadway Musical is America’s gift to the world. In its Golden Age – the 1940s to the early 1960s – the creation of the Musical was raised to a fine art; from Oklahoma to My Fair Lady, the Musical reached its zenith. But then the Sixties took hold, along with its Progressive agenda, and the downward spiral began. The always prescient Ayn Rand foresaw the enshrining of mediocrity as a means to control the hearts and minds of the public in the person of arts critic Ellsworth Monkton Toohey, who aimed to create a society that would be “an average drawn upon zeroes.” This is Broadway today: the sum total of zeroes. 

Since the onset of the Obama regime, the Great White Way has become the Great White-Guilt Way, with racism redux and the red nail polished talons of the GLAAD-iators bared reflexively at the imagined ignorant and the homophobic. J’accuse! Come to the theatre and pay $195 to feel bad about being an American. When John Kander was asked about the relevance of his latest musical, The Scottsboro Boys, a minstrel-style retelling of the 1931 trial of nine teenaged blacks accused falsely of rape, he snapped, “Of course it’s relevant. America is still a racist country!” He said this despite the fact that America had just voted in a black president. 

Is it a coincidence that when Rocco Landesman, producer and president of the Jujamson Theatre group since 1987, was selected to head up the National Endowment of the Arts in 2009, Broadway joined the nexus of Washington, DC, Hollywood and the Main Street Media in promoting a pro-gay, Anti-American left wing agenda? Since Obama and his crew came to power, the planned assault on the hearts and minds of the theatre-going public has been inescapable. Gone are the lighthearted musicals that were the staples of Broadway; enter the era of pandering to the politics of special interests. A list of the shows that have been produced on Broadway since 2008 says it all: 

 BILLIE ELLIOT: A musical with a Socialist/Gay message. The score is by gay icon Elton John and features a big production number featuring a cross-dressing 12-year-old boy who sings of the joyous freedom of dressing as a girl. The number climaxes with the gay 12-year-old giving a full on the lips kiss to the title character. This show is aimed at kids. Margaret Thatcher is demonized in this show in the persona of a giant, looming marionette clutching at a chorus of striking miners. 

HAIR: The iconic anti-war musical from the Sixties was dredged up again with a cast of squeaky clean “hippies” regurgitating the tired, and incoherent, deconstructionist bilge that connected with an earlier generation in free fall. This musical fulfills the baby boomers’ desire to recreate their glory days. 

YANK: A play about a gay GI love affair in WWII. This was produced at the same time that DC was deciding about gays in the military and the future of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. 

MEMPHIS: A rock musical about racism and rock ‘n’ roll in early 1950s Tennessee. Yet another white-guilt orgy in which an illiterate DJ rises to prominence through the promotion of black music on his radio and TV show despite the furor of the racist southern whites. This show is a barrage of clichés followed by the kitchen sink, with a score that is about as reminiscent of early fifties rock ‘n’ roll as Lawrence Welk was of progressive jazz. This show won the 2010 Tony Award for best original score; however, it was the only original score that was nominated for a Tony Award that year. 

SCOTTSBORO BOYS: A musical about nine African American teenagers who, in 1931, were falsely accused of raping two white girls. This embarrassing attempt to dredge up the past sins of Jim Crowe was presented as a Minstrel Show of all things; the Interlocutor was, of course, a white man. This show opened and closed off-Broadway, was transferred to the Guthrie Theatre in Indianapolis, and then opened on Broadway for the 2011 season. It opened and closed in a blink of an eye, but was nominated for 12 Tony Awards. 

NEXT TO NORMAL: A turgid rock musical about a mother with worsening bipolar disorder who talks to her dead son (he committed suicide) while ignoring her husband and daughter. This exercise in angst plays to the Left’s continuous assault on the strength of the family; attacking the idea of family unity has long been an objective of both Communists and Progressives, and this brain numbing rock melodrama served the cause so well it was awarded Pulitzer and Drama Desk Awards. 

THE BOOK OF MORMON: This slick, potty mouth attack on the Mormon Church and Christianity, not to mention ridiculing tribal Africans, is the critics’ favorite this year. It has been hailed as an old fashioned musical; it is no such thing. I do not recall an old fashioned musical that revels in gutter language and a continuous assault on decency. I don’t recall any of the past masters writing lyrics like, “F**CK GOD/ F**CK HIM IN THE ASS/F**CK HIM IN THE C*NT/ F**CK HIM IN EYE” Of course, the real motivation behind this foulmouthed show is to attack and ridicule the Mormon Church because of its refusal to recognize gay marriage. Politically charged organizations like GLAAD are obsessed with attacking the Mormon Church and this is a particularly offensive example of their obsession. And of course, the Mormon boys in this diatribe are closet gays. Set in an AIDS ridden African village, the critics swooned over the “sparkling wit” of The Book of Mormon. Well, if having an AIDS infected villager running around yelling he wants to rape a baby to cure his disease and another complaining that his scrotum has maggots is the height of wit, then the Algonquin Round Table was just a nattering kaffeeklatsch. 

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg that sunk Broadway. I heard of two extremely talented writers who were told by a Broadway producer that, “your work is brilliant, but you won’t get it produced in the present climate’;” the present climate meaning, their work did not conform to current low standards and prevailing politically correct content. As if any more proof of the incursion of Progressivism on Broadway is required, then consider this: on the 23^rd of June, the Broadway musical Sister Act will be hosting a political fundraiser for Barack Obama. The price of admission will be $250 for the Mezzanine, $1,000 for orchestra, and $10,000 for tickets and a photo with Obama. Of course, all these examples could be brushed off as circumstantial; but, as a Southern friend of mine observed, a thousand flies don’t lie! 

I am barely skimming the surface in this article; I would have to write a book to encompass the tendentious, stifling climate of Broadway. A climate in which straight men have to remove their wedding rings when auditioning and writers have to dumb down their work and lean to the left if they want to get produced. As the infamous Ellsworth Toohey opined: “Kill man’s sense of values. Kill his capacity to recognize greatness or to achieve it. Great men can’t be ruled. We don’t want any great men. Don’t deny conception of greatness. Destroy it from within. The great is the rare, the difficult, the exceptional. Set up standards of achievement open to all, to the least, to the most inept – and you stop the impetus to effort in men, great or small. You stop all incentive to improvement, to excellence, to perfection . . . Don’t set out to raze all shrines – you’ll frighten men, Enshrine mediocrity – and the shrines are razed.” 

Ellsworth Toohey has won and the lights have gone out on Broadway.

First, there was the departure of director Sam Raimi and his crew from the lucrative Spider-Man movie franchise. Raimi had helmed three episodes of the block-buster series that has earned an estimated $1 billion worldwide. And despite what many fans felt was a lack-luster third movie, there was never any doubt that Raimi – a Spider-Man fan from way back – perfectly translated to film the heart of the Spider-Man universe, which was always the character of Peter Parker and his relationships with the women in his life, especially Aunt May and long-time love Mary Jane.

Despite his spectacular success, however, Sony studios didn’t trust Raimi to make his movies the way he wanted, and reportedly made life so miserable for him that he walked. Instantly, the studio announced that they would be rebooting the franchise with a new director and crew, sending Peter Parker back to high school and re-casting the story with trendy young actors and promising (sigh) that the new Spidey will be delivered in 3D.

Great.

This lamentable focus on youth and style over story and character is not limited to Spider-Man, of course. Raimi’s first two Spidey films may have been shot in 2D, but the characters were so well written and acted that the story felt 3D. But never mind. Like everything else, the new Spidey must be targeted to teens and tweens, who don’t know from story and couldn’t care less about plot (witness the Twilight abominations).

Then, of course there is the disastrous Spider-Man musical currently stinking up Broadway, which features music by U2’s Bono and The Edge. When I first heard about this musical, I though, “Hmmm…I love Spider-Man; I love U2. That sounds like the worst fucking idea I’ve ever heard.”

And sure enough Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, which has been in the works for a decade and is on track to be the most expensive debacle in Broadway history, has been plagued with cost over-runs, script and cast problems, and a frightening number of safety issues which have seriously endangered the crew. The latest mishap involves stunt-man Christopher Tierney. According to MTV’s Splash Page,

“…something went wrong in Tierney’s preparation for a cable stunt that saw the actor plummet an approximate 20 feet to the ground from an onstage bridge. Tienery broke several ribs in the process and is still reportedly in serious condition at New York’s Bellevue Hospital.”

The show’s official opening has been put off countless times due to these and other problems, and is now scheduled to open in February (don’t hold your breath). Reports from those who have seen preview shows indicate that the stunts are magnificent when they work (they often don’t), but that the plot is an incoherent mess. The New York Post’s Michael Riedel reported on one advanced screening:

“Stunned audience members were left scratching their heads over the confusing plot — when they weren’t ducking for cover from falling equipment and dangling actors at the Foxwoods Theatre on West 42nd Street… At various points, overhead stage wires dropped on the audience, scenery appeared on stage missing pieces — and the show’s star was even left swaying helplessly over them midair during what was supposed to be the climatic end to the first act.”

To add insult to injury, the “original” songs composed by Bono and The Edge which I have heard sound like little more than retreads of any number of old U2 songs. I’m sure they got a nice fat check for raiding the U2 catalogue, though the enterprise further degraded the Irish quartet’s musical legacy, already sagging from overuse in political campaigns and movie trailers.

The whole thing makes me sick. So recently I cracked open a soft-bound collection of old Spider-Man comics written by Stan Lee himself and drawn by the great Steve Ditko. And damn, if those stories aren’t solid after all these years – lots of action, lots of heart, and surprisingly sophisticated story arcs. It reminded me of why I fell in love with Spidey in the first place.

One can only hope the executives at Sony and on Broadway will do the same.

In segment after segment Barbra talked about Barbra.  Barbra talked about Obama.  Barbra talked about Barbra.  Barbra talked about Clinton.  And Barbra talked about Barbra.

Larry King dutifully congratulated her on all of her observations.

Here’s one my favorite moments:  When Larry King asked her about the first two years of Barack Obama’s Presidency she laments that President Obama did not use his “executive powers” to unilaterally repeal DADT.  Then, pricelessly, without any sense of self awareness she goes on to praise President Bill Clinton as one of our greatest Presidents.  It would have been at this moment that an actual journalist would have pointed out to Ms. Streisand that President Clinton was the “great” President that instituted the DADT policy that she now wants President Obama to unconstitutionally and unilaterally revoke.  Instead, Mr. King appeared to sit back and admire the beautiful lighting that Ms. Streisand probably supervised prior to the tape rolling.

Earlier in the interview, Ms. Streisand reveals that she is glad that Hilary Clinton did not become the first female President because “they” would have blamed her gender for the economic trouble our country is in. Thanks to Mr. King, we don’t know who “they” are. But I suspect Ms. Streisand meant men, revealing her very low estimation of the reasoning skills of those of us inflicted with both an X and Y chromosome.

She came across as narcissistic, judgmental, sanctimonious, and dismissive of anyone who does not subscribe to her point of view. And, God help me, I loved her.

Maybe it’s because I’m a “theatre-guy.”  Maybe it’s because I spent so many years on Broadway. But no matter how many times Barbra Streisand lets me know that I, as a conservative, represent what’s wrong with this country, I still can’t help having the secret desire to see her return to Broadway as the ultimate Mama Rose in a blockbuster revival of Gypsy. I suspect that some time during my first year working on Broadway I was drugged and dragged into a dark room and implanted with a device that alters the part of my brain that would see Barbra Streisand for what she is:  an egotistical blowhard who has consistently snubbed Broadway – the place that made her a star – for lo these many decades.

Barbra Streisand is included in what is known as the Broadway diva Mt. Rushmore.  She, Ethel Merman, and Mary Martin inhabit 3/4 of that sacred monument. The 4th face is bit of a revolving door which changes depending upon the times. Over the past few decades Liza Minnelli, Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone, and recently Kristin Chenowith have all occupied the “Ringo” chair. I can make a strong case for all of these women as icons of the American stage except, curiously, Barbra Streisand.

When Hollywood called four decades ago Ms. Streisand took her last curtain call and never looked back.  Many Broadway stars before her and since have found fame and fortune on the silver screen and yet still come back to Broadway even if for a limited engagement to pay respect to the industry that made them a star. Not to mention the economic benefit it provides the stagehands, the ushers, the restaurant and hotel workers in the theater district. But not Babs.

Even when she famously returned to live performances in her multi-million dollar string of “final” concerts (How many have there been now, 20?) she refused to play the 2,000 seat theatrical cathedrals in New York opting instead for arenas built for boxing matches.

And yet, knowing the disdain she’s shown for my industry, my colleagues and I still look upon her with reverence, respect and admiration. I kid you not, as bitchy as Broadway is, there are a handful of people you’re just not allowed to criticize and Streisand is one of them.

So here I sit, my good conservative brain telling me all the reasons why I should hate Barbra Streisand, after all, she seems to hate me, my friends, and my industry. And yet, I can’t stop hoping that one day she’ll see the light and let me produce her return to Broadway complete with an opening night gala fundraiser for the Tea Party Patriots.

I know.   I need an intervention.

There is only one true Of Thee I Sing, a musical that first appeared on Broadway almost seventy years ago and (in my humble opinion) is one of the most biting political satires ever written. In fact, Of Thee I Sing was the first successful American musical with a consistently satiric tone.  The writers and the cast were unsure of what the public’s reception would be, prompting one of the writers of the book, George S. Kaufman, to quip “Satire is what closes on Saturday night.”

Written at the beginning of the great depression, Of Thee I Sing lampoons a political system too tied up in personalities and silly little issues to fix the country’s economy. The creative team behind the musical was a Broadway All-Star team.  The book was written by George S. Kaufman (You Can’t Take it With You) and Morrie Ryskind. The team’s previous collaboration was Animal Crackers, a Broadway musical written for the Marx Brothers (Ryskind went on to write many of the Marx Brothers movies). Music and lyrics were written by George and Ira Gershwin.  George Gershwin was perhaps America’s greatest composer, writing everything from musicals, to opera, to classical music and ballet.   Ira Gershwin is one of the American musical’s greatest lyricists, who wrote for both stage and screen (including the original A Star is Born).

Of Thee I Sing was the first musical ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama. Unfortunately though the score is an essential part of the play, George Gershwin was was not recognized by the Pulitzer committee.

The play tells the story of presidential candidate John P. Wintergreen,” he’s the man the people choose, loves the Irish and the Jews.” For Vice President the choice is Alexander Throttlebottom, who throughout the play keeps trying to get into meetings and rallies, but gets thrown out because no one knows who he is.

Thanks to political bosses Louis Lippman and Francis X. Gilhooley, newspaper magnate Matthew Arnold Fulton, Senators Carver Jones and Robert E. Lyons – Wintergreen’s chosen platform was the politically safe “love platform.”  The party bosses also decide that Wintergreen should get married, so they hold a beauty pageant to select a bride for him. The winner is the sultry southern belle Diana Deveraux.

Unfortunately the candidate throws a wrench into the plans when he falls in love with the all-American Mary Turner whose major qualification is, well, “some girls can make a pie made up of prunes and quinces, some make an oyster fry others are good at blintzes, some lovely girls have done wonders with turkey stuffings but I have found the one who could really make corn muffins.”

Wintergreen and his Mary win the election but immediately after the inauguration/wedding, Ms. Deveraux shows up to tell her story of winning the contest and being jilted by the new President. Thankfully the Court decides that “corn muffins are more important.”

Of Thee I Sing is merciless in the way it attacks all American institutions, the nine members of the Supreme Court care more about politics than justice, the Senators care more about petty local politics than doing their jobs, and the political operatives don’t give a rat’s ass about what the country needs. They only care about public opinion and maintaining power.

Some things never change.

The least sympathetic character is the French Ambassador, even back then (as Al Bundy once said) everyone hated the French.  The Ambassador escalates the Diana Deveraux scandal, bursting into the White House demanding retribution for the affront to France.  It seems that the sultry Deveraux is “the illegitimate daughter of an illegitimate son of an illegitimate nephew of Napoleon.”

France is not happy, so to placate the French, the political operatives decide to have the President impeached. But just as the Senate is going through its roll call, in bursts the First Lady who announces she’s expecting.  Since no expecting President has ever been impeached the impeachment is called off.

And what of Ms Deveraux? Vice-President Throttlebottom reminds us, when the President is not able to fulfill his duty, that obligation is taken over by the Vice-President.

In the end everyone is happy, the President has his Mary (and corn muffins.

Of Thee I Sing is a special play because it really connected with the mood of America during the first part of the depression.  There wasn’t so much a feeling of a mistrust of government institutions, as a  feeling that our government was run by a bunch of well-meaning fools who didn’t quite know what they were doing. Over and above the great music, comedy and biting satire, the element that worked best was a sense of optimism, a feeling that however bad things got eventually things would turn out fine.

That optimism is uniquely American.

Two years after Of Thee I Sing opened the same exact all-star team of producers, writers, actors, etc. wrote a sequel called Let Them Eat Cake, which failed because was it was much darker and more pessimistic than the original.

Of Thee I Sing was revived a few times, a planned movie version starring the Marx Brothers never came together (thank God),  there was even a dreadful TV version starring Carrol O’ Conner, but it was  never brought back at the right time.  This classic of American theater works best during a time when the country is in economic and political distress, at a time when the country looks for entertainment poking fun at what they are going through while understanding that as  as bad as things get,  in the end everything will be just fine.

Sorry Mr. President, nothing personal really but you can write a thousand books, but you could never be in touch with the American people enough to equal the real Of Thee I Sing.

For the final two hours of the show, we will also have live, streaming audio of “The Stage Right Show” with live callers, running commentary, by yours truly and a slew of surprise call-in guests (many of whom are your favorite Big Hollywood contributors).

Join us here at Big Hollywood, sign in to the live-blog chat room, and join the interactive, multi-media, Broadway fun! We liveblog using ScribbleLive.com, so if you haven’t already, head over there and create a profile–don’t forget to upload an avatar!

And, don’t worry, if you come late, the usher will seat you at an appropriate break in the performance.

Their keystone attraction was Broken Blossoms (1919), a then sixty-year-old silent film. The Museum, as it happened, possessed the only “original tinted nitrate print” known to still exist in the world. This precious and brittle jewel would be projected at the Exposition for the last time, before being tucked away into temperature and humidity controlled storage (from then on, future screenings would use copies of the original). For its last hurrah, this ancient print would be accompanied by a full, live orchestra, like in the old days. And to cement the evening as a particularly notable occasion, the movie’s eighty-four-year-old star, Lillian Gish, “would be presented following the screening.”

To average 1978 filmgoers drunk on Star Wars, all this was doubtless of little significance. To others, the announcement carried momentous power. Broken Blossoms had been hailed in its time as a film of startling beauty, a virtual kaleidoscope of color and light and emotional resonance. But in the decades since, the only way to see it had been through degraded 16mm black-and-white dupe prints, with all of the film’s tinted luminance — and thus much of what made it so beautiful — lost. The chance to see the only remaining 35mm print with the original tints intact, accompanied by a full orchestra, and with the film’s sole surviving star in attendance — well, one’s twentieth viewing of Star Wars could wait.

New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was justifiably proud of bringing this rare print to Los Angeles. Their Department of Film was established in 1935, at a time when movies — powerful and popular as they were — were nevertheless seen as disposable. Most of the original silent studios were long gone, their archives sold off or destroyed. Any copies that remained were left moldering in ill-kept warehouses and collections scattered across the globe. Countless thousands of prints were tossed into the trash. Even those films lovingly collected and preserved by fans degenerated with each viewing until most became pale shadows of their former glory.

Iris Barry, a popular writer and movie critic from Great Britain, became the first curator of MoMA’s film department. It was her assertion that film was much more than entertainment, it was Art — the first utterly new art to come along in centuries. As such, it was important to preserve old motion pictures so that they could be “studied and enjoyed as any other one of the arts.” To that end, she embarked on an ambitious goal of saving as many old films as she could before it was too late.

To jumpstart the MoMA archive, Barry traveled to Hollywood and begged for cooperation from studios and filmmakers in preserving their own heritage. To her delight, most people proved only too happy to help. Silent-era stars, directors, and production wizards were still in town, and many kept old prints of their work squirreled away in garages and storage sheds.

There were setbacks, of course. Early nitrate prints easily decomposed in poor conditions, rotting away like unembalmed bodies, and many times MoMA’s archivists would open a prized film can only to find a rust-like powder caked within. But by the end of Barry’s stint at MoMA in 1951, she had saved thousands of titles, and her department was using new triacetate stock to make copies tough enough to survive into our modern era of computers and digitization.

For most of the movies that made up America’s early cinematic heritage, however, it was too late. Over 80% of all films from the silent era, some of them quite famous and revered in their day, have now vanished forever. We owe it to Iris Barry and the good people at MoMA that Broken Blossoms did not become one of those grim casualties.

Even so, celluloid is more durable than flesh, and by 1978 that fragile print of Broken Blossoms had outlasted almost all of its creators. The picture’s pioneering cinematographer, Billy Bitzer, was felled by a heart attack way back in 1944. Thomas Burke, author of the short story on which the film was based, followed Bitzer into Hades a year later. The movie’s legendary director, D. W. Griffith, succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage in 1948. One of the three stars, actor Richard Barthelmess, died in 1963. Another, Academy Award-winner Donald Crisp, lasted to the ripe old age of 91 in 1974. And between these last two came the death of Hendrik Sartov in 1970, the man whose experiments with diffusion glass popularized glamorous, soft-focus photography in Hollywood fare via Broken Blossoms.

Only the third star of the film, actress Lillian Gish, was left to represent the original filmmakers at the historic 1978 occasion.

On the day of the screening, almost 1400 people showed up. The issue of Variety for May 3, 1978 reports that the aged film only snapped a single time, necessitating a quick-splice repair job, and that at the end Lillian Gish received a standing ovation. “I am deeply moved by your applause,” she said to the assembly. “just as I was deeply moved by this film. It’s as if it had nothing to do with me. This film really had everything to do with a man named D. W. Griffith.” As usual, Gish was the essence of graciousness when thanking her long-dead mentor, a man for whose reputation and legacy she proselytized via books, interviews, and events such as this.

I wonder what that audience was thinking as it viewed that film in the dark, the print covered in scratches and the grime of decades, the actors engaged in a forgotten language of pantomime as frustrating to modern eyes as Shakespeare’s English is to modern ears. Actor James Mason aptly describes the typical silent movie effect in his narration for the epic 1980 documentary series Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film: “Jerky, flickering, a little absurd. Moving at the wrong speed, with that tinkling piano.”

Audiences of the distant past, though, saw the best silent movies as the height of entertainment and emotional engagement. Our great-grandparents experienced Broken Blossoms in opulent movie palaces glittering with gold fixtures and crystal chandeliers, and manned by armies of fresh-faced, well-trained ushers. In the best cases, a full orchestra was on hand to play along with the action, giving these pictures a splendorous sonic accompaniment rivaling today’s THX-certified digital systems. It was a major event and spectacle, the equivalent of getting dressed up today and attending the latest Andrew Lloyd Weber musical at a tony Broadway theater.

For most of us today, on the other hand, silent movies are too often chores to be slogged through, distant and old and more than a bit weird. And then there’s the distorting lens of political correctness to consider. A February 2, 2009 piece in The New Yorker by Anthony Lane announced a MoMA screening of Broken Blossoms this way:

D. W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms, which screens at MoMA on Jan. 29, is ninety years old, and in some respects the film is looking its age. . . As for the printed titles, you don’t know whether to snicker at the late-Victorian moralizing or wince at the racial nomenclature. Yet there is something in the tenderness of the telling, and the grace of the compositions, that stills the urge to jeer.

Snicker? Wince? Jeer? Back in 1919, Broken Blossoms was hailed by critics writing for another big-city publication, The New York Tribune, as

The most beautiful motion picture we have ever seen or ever expect to see. . . For the last two years we have seen at least one picture a day, yet with Broken Blossoms we sat on the edge of our seat, one hand grasping the arm, the other crushing a wet handkerchief, and trembled and grew hysterical over what we saw before us.

This was hardly an isolated reaction. Audiences of the time describe being swept away by the cinematography, the music, the tragic Romeo and Juliet cast of the tale, the poetry of the title cards. Even a decade later, movie magazines were still calling it the “highest example of screen realism” the pictures had yet seen.

The disconnect between this view of the film and the one expressed in that 2009 issue of The New Yorker is enormous. Have we really changed so much? Are the overwhelmingly positive and heartfelt emotional reactions elicited by Broken Blossoms in 1919 impossible for us to ever experience or understand today? Is our only recourse to declare it racist/sexist/dated (“painfully dated,” according to Roger Ebert) and join critics in their “snickers,” “winces,” and “jeers”?

To find answers to these questions, we must hop into Big Hollywood’s Hot Tub Time Machine and journey with Lillian Gish way back to the year 1919, when the father of filmmaking was pushing this nascent craft as far as it would go, lifting “flickers” out of the crowded doldrums of cheap Saturday afternoon entertainment and into the realm of true art.

Next week in For Conservative Movie Lovers, the genesis of Broken Blossoms.

FURTHER READING and VIEWING

Iris Barry 1895-1969. Some solid biographical information about this unsung hero of early film criticism and preservation.

Iris Barry at the British Film Institute website. A look at not only Barry, but the genesis of film criticism in England.

The setting is a conference room of a law firm.  Henry Brown (David Alan Grier) and his white partner Jack Lawson (James Spader) are interviewing a prospective client (Richard Thomas).  The client, a wealthy white man, is standing trial for the rape of a black woman.

Two expert attorneys interviewing a prospective client is the perfect device for Mamet to not only inform the audience of the facts at hand and the idiosyncratic personalities of the characters we will spend the next hour and a half of our lives with, but it also serves as a perfect showcase for the playwright’s legendary use of dialogue, timing, over-lapping speech patterns and no-holds-barred language.  For a Mamet addict, this is heroin.

It is a chance to watch a conversation that anyone outside that room was never meant to hear.  And the language the characters use reflect the comfortable and brazen style reminiscent of Glengarry Glen Ross and Speed-the-Plow, the unique vernacular often referred to as “Mamet-Speak.”

Also present but silent in the play’s opening scene is Susan (Kerry Washington), an associate at the firm.  She stays on a platform that stretches the length of the stage, upstage of the action.  She is always seen, observing but remaining silent.  We notice her, but we don’t focus on her.  Her mere presence (as well as the fact that she is a beautiful black woman and the plot centers on the rape of a young black woman) is a clear indication that she will play a pivotal role in the scenes that follow, and she does.

Yes, “Race” is about a rape trial.  And yes, race plays a factor in the case.  And yes, the race of the characters on stage serves as texture, tension and explosive material for the plot’s development.  But, the real over-riding subject of this play is Political Correctness and the destruction of our society because of it.

Guilt or innocence is rarely discussed by the attorneys in the context of the facts of the case or the strategy in defending their client.  They cynically attempt to navigate the politically volatile waters they find themselves in.  A major piece of evidence in the case is a twenty-year-old postcard written by the accused man which contains inflammatory language about black women.  This is held up as more critical to proving his guilt as a rapist than any physical evidence at the scene of the crime.  It is taken as a given that a rich white man who appears to hold a prejudice against black women will be assumed to be guilty of this heinous crime.  Thus, political correctness replaces jurisprudence and the constitutional presumption of innocence. 

Welcome to the Politically Correct world we inhabit.

And this is the world Mamet wants to expose.  Ever since his landmark play “Oleanna” which was written in the wake of the Clarence Thomas hearings, the playwright has been at his best when he shows us the roaches that live behind America’s proverbial refrigerator but only scatter when he shines his flashlight on them.

Mr. Spader and Mr. Grier are a stunning tandem.  Not since Ron Silver and Joe Mantegna delivered Mamet’s dialogue in mesmerizing cadences in the original Speed-the-Plow have two actors so expertly conveyed his style and message.   Hearing Mr. Spader’s terrific stage voice articulating the unmistakable Mamet style in an intimate, live setting is truly a treat, and I drank up every word.  And in a break-out performance, Mr. Grier proves that he is a force to be reckoned with on the Broadway stage.  He has already shown audiences his comedic and musical abilities, but now he commands attention as a dramatic leading man.  Unfortunately for the audience we have to wait too long for the two of them to be alone on stage for a lengthy and pivotal scene.  We want more of the two of them and, unfortunately, less of Ms. Washington.

Ms. Washington is most often paired with Mr. Spader for the bulk of her scenes and the match-up just isn’t fair.  Mr. Spader possesses a mesmerizing and powerful voice that fills the Barrymore (seemingly unassisted by electronic amplification).  Ms. Washington does not possess such a voice.  And when her character must express intensity or anger she resorts to a painfully strained vocal style which distracts from the actual text and just sounds shrill.

The crime is that the Ms. Washington’s performance has led some critics to lazily assume that her character is weak, thus buying into the latest trend of accusing Mr. Mamet of hating women (gee, I don’t know why he seems to want to rail against political correctness so much).  But, the fact is Ms. Washington’s character is actually one of the strongest female roles written for a young, black actress in a very long time.

Mr. Thomas serves his character and the play admirably in a role that is essential to the plot, but not really important to the message.  Thus his efforts are respected, but not what you leave the theatre humming.

Mr. Mamet also deserves praise for his no-nonsense directing style.  He allows the audience to see the action without distraction we too often get from directors trying to remind you that they are there.  The staging is straight-forward and simple and does what it is supposed to do; serve the text and the actors, nothing more.

The set is handsomely executed with what I believe to be either a planned bit of symbolism, or a remarkable accident.  Stretching across the entire stage, upstage of the action is an enormous set of bookcases filled to the brim with law books of all sorts.  They loom over the play at all times.  Every scene has them as its backdrop.  You can’t escape looking at them.  And yet, in this play presented as a legal drama, set in a law office, with lawyers debating about the guilt or innocence of their client, not one of the law books is ever touched.

In Mamet’s view of American law, the actual law is not merely as important as the new, unforgiving rules of political correctness.  Go, David, Go!

Luckily, the press office for this soon-to-be classic has assembled a slick little YouTube video highlighting all of the big moments of the show.  Believe it or not, this video is meant to inspire you to buy a ticket.

Great, terrific, perfect…  um…  a couple things.

First of all, Does Shepard Fairey know you’ve stolen his logo for your set design?  (I guess it’s ok since he stole it from someone else.)

Also, did I really just see an opening number framing America under Bush in 2008 as “Chaos”?  Chaos??  Are you sure that isn’t meant as clever foreshadowing?

And how about those lyrics for “Chaos”:

Round and round
Upside-down
Inside-out
There’s no doubt.
We’re in Chaos!
Here come the hounds of Hell, Chaos!
As far as I can tell, Chaos!

From the show’s web site:

In no way does HOPE show Obama as a saint, but it grants us a view behind the scenes of his cometlike rise and also tells from the personal ups and downs of a man who has worked his way up from a social worker in Chicago to the most powerful man in the world, simply by using his power of persuasion.

In a stirring and modern musical production, HOPE shows the amazing history of the development of a new societal movement to a new generation.

The HOPE production team and its performers do not take up any political stance. We do not express a political opinion in our own name. The presentation of the public opinions and feelings in the musical follows the general interpretation of the current events like they prevail in the media and the society.

As easy as it would be to slam them on this, I actually pity their lack of self awareness.  Remember: this is the same nation who convinced themselves that the Third Reich was just a natural response to the Treaty of Versailles and not an atrocious attempt at world domination fueled by hateful paranoia…  If they can rationalize that, they can pretend their play is not political hagiography.

I also noticed an interesting bit of casting.  The roles of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin are played by the same woman (only major characters in the piece double-cast in this fashion).  Is this a subtle bit of subtext from the director?  Maybe the message is, “All those white women who stood in the way of Obama being President look alike to me.”

So, it appears that producers in Germany think there is a market for hip-hop hagiography.  Maybe there is, for now.  But, as President Obama’s policies continue to drag down the world’s economy and send mixed messages to our international partners regarding the Islamic terrorist threat, the next big Obama musical might be a lot less “Jesus Christ Superstar” and a lot more “Wicked.”