425 Years Ago Today

It was on July 31, 1588, that The Spanish Armada was first sighted off the coast of England.

The map, created shortly after Britain’s defeat of The Spanish Armada, traces the path of the doomed Spanish fleet.

One Hundred Years Ago Today

Leo Frank at his trial.

The trial of Leo Frank began on July 28, 1913, in Atlanta. The trial went on into August.

Frank’s trial was one of the most disgraceful episodes in the annals of American jurisprudence.

In the year after Frank’s conviction and murder, one-half of Georgia’s citizens of Jewish faith left the state permanently.

11 April 1943: USS Minneapolis Leaves Pearl Harbor

USS Minneapolis departing Pearl Harbor on April 11, 1943.

A heavy cruiser, USS Minneapolis escaped damage at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, because the ship was at sea for gunnery practice.

USS Minneapolis was a participant in many of the greatest naval battles of The Pacific Theater: the Battle Of The Coral Sea; the Battle Of Midway; the Battle Of Tassafaronga; the Battle Of The Philippine Sea; and the Battle Of Surigao Strait.

It was at the Battle Of Tassafaronga that USS Minneapolis suffered grievous damage—in fact, the ship was almost lost. Exceptional damage control (always an American naval specialty) and exceptional seamanship allowed the ship to limp to Pearl Harbor for months of repairs.

The photograph captures the moment USS Minneapolis, after five months in port during which much of the ship was rebuilt, sailed from Pearl Harbor to resume active service.

Pforzheim 1945

The church tower, burned out, still stands, surrounded by total destruction.

Germany 1940: Pforzheim

Early in the war, Pforzheim still displayed its centuries-old charm and beauty.

Nine weeks before the war ended, Pforzheim suffered the most devastating air raid of the entire war on the European front.

On February 23, 1945, 379 aircraft of the RAF attacked the town. In a 22-minute raid, 83 per cent of the town was destroyed and one-third of the civilian population was killed.

To this day, Pforzheim retains its place in history as the victim of the most efficient air raid ever.

After the war, no attempt was made to rebuild Pforzheim in its pre-war form. Even the post-war street grids were drawn from scratch.

America 1940: Pie Town, New Mexico

People of Pie Town, New Mexico, in 1940.

Skipping

Ten years ago this month, The Guthrie presented a new stage adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Pride And Prejudice”.

I never saw that production—my middle brother and I were traveling in Europe most of that summer—and my parents never bothered to see the 2003 production.

A week ago, The Guthrie opened yet another production of “Pride And Prejudice”, in a different adaptation. I am puzzled that The Guthrie has returned to the material after so brief an interlude. “Pride And Prejudice” has never cried out for a stage presentation—and “Pride And Prejudice” certainly does not warrant two expensive productions by the same company a decade apart.

Critical notices for the current production of “Pride And Prejudice” have now appeared. Reading between the lines, as one must do in the Twin Cities (since negative reviews are banned here), I think it is obvious the reviewers do not consider the production a success.

People who have seen the production have not been impressed, either. They say the production is unstylish, unsubtle if not ham-handed, and unworthy of a great theater. “More Neil Simon than Jane Austen” is how a colleague described the production.

I think we shall have to take a pass.

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I have never understood the appeal of Ernest Thompson’s “On Golden Pond”.

The play is not well-constructed, the play is not well-written, the play’s message is maudlin. The author covers well-trodden ground without freshness and without insight (and without much skill). Is there a more over-exposed sentimental commercial comedy?

Bloomington Civic Theatre recently opened a new production of “On Golden Pond”, and I think we shall have to strike “On Golden Pond” from our list, too. We cannot summon enthusiasm for the venture.

In 1979, my parents caught one of the first performances of “On Golden Pond” on Broadway, only days after opening night.

“On Golden Pond” had received mostly pans from the New York critics, and to this day my parents are clueless why they chose to see “On Golden Pond” instead of something else.

I should add that my parents LOVED the original production of “On Golden Pond”. My parents insist that Frances Sternhagen and Tom Aldredge were overwhelming as Ethel and Norman, and that the two actors gave the performances of their lives.

Apparently early performances of “On Golden Pond” on Broadway were played with a very hard edge. There was a lot of “bite” in the production, and an undercurrent of nastiness, and a brittle toughness to the characters that audiences found off-putting.

Over the course of that first Broadway run, sentimentality seeped into the production—and one unintended consequence was that the play at last found an audience and was able to enjoy a respectable run. However, the onset of sentimentality basically ruined whatever drama was hidden in the material—and “On Golden Pond” has generally been played as sentimental slop ever since.

This unfortunate practice probably has been reinforced by the weepy and unwatchable film version: audiences now expect a stage presentation to be as gooey as the film.

I am not confident there is anything salvageable in “On Golden Pond”. In any case, as we are not in a frame of mind to sit through the thing, we will not be in a position to find out whether BCT can reveal hitherto unrevealed depths in the play.

1948: Gertrud And Paul Hindemith

Gertrud and Paul Hindemith at their home in New Haven in May 1948.

The Hindemiths had purchased a house in New Haven in 1945, five years after arriving in the U.S. and five years after settling into New Haven, where Hindemith had joined the faculty at Yale.

The Hindemiths acquired U.S. citizenships in 1946.

The Hindemiths were to retain their American citizenships until the ends of their lives.

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In Spring 1946, Hindemith wrote a letter to friends back in Germany, describing what he had encountered in America:

Although the country was not unknown to us, the adjustment to completely different surroundings, new working and living conditions, was a not inconsiderable problem. At any rate, the hospitality of the country and the overriding principle of mutual politeness reigning here made adaptation easy. The absence of any enviousness, nosiness and block-warden mentality was particularly welcome after the bad experiences in the old home country.

Personally, we never had the slightest difficulties. We were neither placed in concentration camps nor ever made to feel that we were, after all, enemy aliens. During the difficult wartime period, too, the generally friendly and considerate character of all segments of the population we contacted was shown in the best light. The only restriction in freedom was in the limitation of freedom of movement: if one wanted to travel, one needed a permit from the state capital. It was granted without exception, however.

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One of Hindemith’s composition students at Yale was George Roy Hill, who envisioned a career as a composer until he settled on a much different career path: filmmaking.

Hill was born and reared in Minneapolis. Hill’s family at one time owned a morning newspaper, the Minneapolis Tribune, which in 1982 merged with an evening newspaper, the Minneapolis Star, to become the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Had he lived to see it, Hindemith, who possessed a wonderful sense of humor, no doubt would have been amused by the fact that one of his students went on to direct the ribald “Slap Shot”, surely the funniest sports film ever made—and probably the finest.

1947: Pierre And Madame Monteux

Pierre and Madame Monteux (and Fifi) in April 1947, during a stop on the San Francisco Symphony’s 1947 transcontinental tour.

During the tour, the San Francisco Symphony played 56 concerts in 53 cities in 57 days.

1946: Josef Krips

The greatly-undervalued Josef Krips in Vienna in July 1946.

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Conductor Calls Off His American Debut

New York, New York July 18, 1950 (AP)—Orchestra conductor Josef Krips called off his American debut today and flew back to Europe to escape being deported. The 48-year-old chief conductor of the Vienna State Opera left after immigration authorities gave him a choice of going voluntarily or being deported without a hearing. He was to have conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra tonight.

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Conductor’s Rebuff: New York Detention For Josef Krips

London, July 21, 1950 (Reuters)—“I shall not conduct in America again until I have had an apology,” declared Josef Krips, the Austrian conductor, when he arrived in London yesterday. He had been ordered out of America after a three-day detention on Ellis Island. Krips was to have made his American debut conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. “Although I had a visa and a passport in order, they told me I could not stay,” he said. “They gave no reason.” He said that New York immigration officials asked him if he were a Communist and whether he had been a Nazi.

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Following Krips’s 1950 expulsion from America, numerous newspapers and magazines—The New Republic and Musical America leading the charge—published stinging editorials, sharply rebuking immigration officials for treating Krips in so shabby a manner.

Ironically, it had been American officials that had installed Krips at the helm of the Wiener Staatsoper as soon as the war was over, Krips being one of the few conductors in Central Europe in 1945 entirely untainted by the Period Of National Socialism.

Krips, unable to secure work in The Reich owing to Krips’s Jewish antecedents (Krips himself was Roman Catholic), had spent the war years working in a factory in Belgrade.