The 60s

by The New Yorker Magazine

  After the bombing mission, the men come back to the base. Here are reporter Bill Stout and one of the pilots chatting about it afterward:

  STOUT: Well, Colonel, what was it like?

  COLONEL: Real good mission. The weather was real good. We got good bombs on the target, and we had an excellent road cut by Otter Four. He got his bombs real well on the road.

  STOUT: Was it a road that you were after?

  COLONEL: We had a road and a truck park, and we got our bombs all on the truck park, and Otter Four got his bombs on the truck park plus the road going through it.

  STOUT (concluding sequence): Their exuberance is genuine—partly pride in the job they’ve done, partly relief. It’s been a good day. No one was hit; they all came back.

  Reporter Stout then interviewed the pilots on what they thought of the merits of bombing the North. Said Lieutenant Colonel Gast, an undoubtedly brave man, “I think it’s shortening the war.” Said Lieutenant Colonel Tanguy, an undoubtedly brave man, “I think we’re going to have to apply more pressure.” Said Colonel Hill, “I agree with you.” Said Colonel Stanfield, “I think the North Vietnamese are as much a part of this war as the Vietcong, and to grant them any sort of sanctuary would tend to encourage them more than discourage them.” At no point in the above did reporter Stout or C.B.S. detach himself or itself from these views, or attempt to comment on them, or, more important still, attempt to put them in a more useful perspective, alongside equally weighted interviews with other, non-military people. In fact, from the cheery, earnest way Stout put the whole question of the bombing campaign into the laps of the people who were doing the bombing (otherwise known as the “Ask the Man Who Owns One” theory of reporting), you’d think there wasn’t anyone else around whose opinion on the subject carried quite so much weight—and maybe he’s right. “It is,” as Stout explained things for us (referring to the bombing campaign), “in the opinion of Americans, from the President to the pilots flying North, a critically important part of the Vietnam effort.”

  When, a few moments later, assuming an expression of high seriousness, Stout informed us that we were finally going to take “a look at the effectiveness of that bombing campaign,” it seemed only natural that he first asked an admiral. The admiral hedged a bit at the beginning, but, under Stout’s careful investigative prodding (“Do you think, Admiral, that the cost of what we’re doing is worth the return?”), he informed us, “Yes, I do think that the cost is definitely worth it.” Then Stout asked a general, who sat before a map, wearing lots of medals and looking very splendid. The general happened to be the general who is in charge of the Air Force planes that do the bombing, and the essence of his views, which were couched in a longish speech full of military and business-military-English phrases about “continuing interdiction activities,” was “I think we’ve had a major effect on the lines of communication.” Then he asked General Curtis LeMay—That’s right. Then he asked General Curtis LeMay, who was in civilian dress but very grand—actually, you had to look fairly closely to realize that he was in civilian dress—and who contributed to the general clarification as follows: “I would tell the North Vietnamese that we are going to start hitting their expensive and vital targets…and start out by eliminating Haiphong. There are many ways of doing it….Then I’d start right out with what industry they have, their power plants…the transportation system…warning the people to get away….If they want everything in the country destroyed, tell them we’re going to destroy everything.” Then back to the Navy and another admiral—Admiral Sharp, as it happens, who is in charge of all the Navy in the Pacific—who was a little sulky at first on the subject (“We, as military men, would like to see these restrictions removed, of course, but, as the unified commander, I recognize that in Washington…”), but was able to brighten up at least to the extent of advising us, “Well, I think the bombing is shortening the war, and surely if we stop bombing I think that would automatically prolong the war.”

  By now, you probably think that C.B.S. is another branch of the government, or of the military, or of both. Not a bit of it. After all, there are bound to be two sides to the bombing controversy, aren’t there? If there is a bombing controversy, which C.B.S. seemed just a little reluctant to face up to. Fifty-three minutes after the hour, with five minutes to go (not counting commercials), C.B.S. unleashed the opposition, which consisted of a minute-long extract of testimony by Harrison Salisbury, very tweedy, unmedalled, his face only one among many faces, at a Senate hearing (at which no one on camera seemed to be paying him any attention) on the relative advantages and drawbacks of the bombing (“To my way of thinking, the one cancels out the other…”), and a short, prim little interview with the inevitable Senator Fulbright, who remarked that Secretary McNamara had said that the bombing hadn’t appreciably cut down on the infiltration of men and supplies—an idea that the C.B.S. audience was now hearing, fleetingly, for the first time that evening—and that “I don’t think it’s accomplished its purpose.”

  After a commercial, Stout reappeared briefly, referred in passing to the matter of civilians’ having been killed by bombing (“Civilians always are killed in war”), and then attempted to truthify—a word I just made up and now present to C.B.S. for the duration—the previous fifty-eight minutes of propaganda by admitting, without much conviction, that the bombing had only “partly” succeeded. Well, swell. One points out that C.B.S., along with N.B.C., is the major source of news and opinion for most of the people in this country. One points out that, at a rough guess, nine million people watched Vietnam Perspective that evening. One points out that we elect our government—so we say—on the basis of what we know and are given to know. One points out that one deserves a damned lot better.

  KENNETH TYNAN

  APRIL 23, 1960 (BYE BYE BIRDIE)

  THE FIRST HALF of Bye Bye Birdie, at the Martin Beck, contains a dream ballet wherein a jealous young woman vengefully imagines her fiancé being put to death by a variety of means, including the firing squad, the guillotine, the sword, and the axe. It is a phrenetic and repetitive piece of horseplay, and I wish it could be done away with. Moreover, the girl’s jealousy, which not only inspires the ballet but sets in motion the events of the second act, is brought about by a device of singular fragility—the arrival, out of left field, of a billowing blonde who ogles the fiancé, gets herself a job as his assistant, and exits immediately afterward, never to be seen again. To add to the list of complaints, I am not exactly wild about the title of the show, which derives its alliteration from the fact that the plot has to do with a rock-’n’-roll singer named Conrad Birdie and his departure from civilian life to undergo military training. Furthermore, I didn’t like the picture on the cover of the program, and the theatre struck me as being overheated. And that about does it; as far as derogation is concerned, I have shot my bolt. Everything else about Bye Bye Birdie seemed to me completely enchanting, and filled with a kind of affectionate freshness that we have seldom encountered since Mr. Rodgers collaborated with Mr. Hart on Babes in Arms. In saying this, I don’t think I have been unduly swayed by the boisterous enthusiasm of the first-night audience. Nobody knows better than I that ecstatic applause early in the evening is infectious and self-perpetuating. Those who start it feel in honor bound to sustain it, and the rest join in out of a mystical desire to be brushed by the wings of success. In the present case, at least half the clamor was justified, and that is saying a great deal.

  What impressed me most about the production was the unanimity of its teamwork, and I hope I won’t be charged with invidiousness if I begin by praising the actors. The hero, Birdie’s bedevilled manager, is played by Dick Van Dyke with the casual, lantern-jawed grace of Astaire, and there are hints of Gene Kelly in the dance he shares with a glum little girl (Sharon Lerit) who, alone among the members of Birdie’s fan club in Sweet Apple, Ohio, cannot bring herself to crack a welcoming smile when her idol visits the town. Mr. Van Dyke’s lanky vagueness contrasts splendidly with the p
urposeful compactness of Chita Rivera, as his secretary and fiancée. Miss Rivera, who looks like a cross between Marlene Dietrich and a Latin-American soubrette, performs smartly throughout, but her high point is a number called “Spanish Rose,” in which she parodies Hispanophilia in all its aspects, from cante hondo to “La Cucaracha.” Her worst enemy is Mr. Van Dyke’s self-pitying mother. The latter role is played by the incomparable Kay Medford, traipsing about in a mink coat at all hours of the day and night and uttering every syllable in a tone of reproachful resignation that is expressly intended to make her son squirm with guilt. (At one point, stung by a filial rebuff, Miss Medford sinks to her knees, mink and all, and carefully inserts her head in a gas oven. The practiced ease with which she carries out the maneuver is indelibly funny.) Then, there is Susan Watson, as an eager adolescent who has been chosen to receive Birdie’s last kiss before the Army swallows him up. “How lovely to be a woman!” she sings, pulling on her Argyle socks and zipping up her jeans, and such is Miss Watson’s charm that we readily overlook the subsequent lapse whereby she identifies Ingrid Bergman’s ex-husband as Benito Mussolini. Her bashful boy friend is engagingly played by Michael J. Pollard, who, disillusioned by her defection to Birdie, hesitantly swaggers into a bar and demands “a double rocks on the Scotch.” Nor have I anything but admiration for Paul Lynde, as Miss Watson’s father—an edgy, enfeebled male, capable at times of startling his family with fits of pettish exasperation but totally incapable of repressing a broad, meaningless grin when he finds himself facing a television camera. (Among other things, he worries about his age. “I’m not an old man,” he snarls at his daughter. “I was eighteen in World War Two.”) A nimble horde of ruddy-cheeked juniors is on hand to sing Birdie’s praises, and Dick Gautier plays the god of their idolatry with resplendent sideburns, a surly mien, a built-in slouch, and a wardrobe full of leopard-skin dressing gowns and gold lamé tights.

  The book, by Michael Stewart, is shiny with metropolitan, upper-bohemian wit, and its references to Ruby Keeler and Margo suggest to me that Mr. Stewart, like several other authors in the musical-comedy dodge, is enthralled by the early history of talking pictures. My favorite line, which has nothing to do with Hollywood, is delivered by Mr. Lynde. “Who’s the head of the F.B.I.?” he asks. “Is it Pat Nixon yet?” This may be as good a time as any to remind ourselves of the fact that Bye Bye Birdie is what the trade calls an original; apart from The Music Man, it is the only musical play on Broadway that is not based on something else. Charles Strouse wrote the tunes, and Lee Adams the lyrics; by my count, the score includes eight memorable numbers, chief among them a gentle tribute, entitled “One Boy,” to the pleasure of going steady, and an ironic full-throated hymn dedicated to the greater glory of Ed Sullivan. The molding hand, however, and the supervising intelligence unquestionably belong to Gower Champion, who directed the show and took care of the choreography. I attribute to him the filmed prologue, in which shots of Birdie brandishing his pelvis are alternated with glimpses of Khrushchev, Eisenhower, and Frank Sinatra, all looking extremely dubious; to him, too, I ascribe the beguiling first-act routine wherein dozens of teen-agers—each occupying a section of what resembles a Gargantuan jungle gym—exchange telephone calls in polyphonous song; nor have I yet mentioned the extraordinary ballet, featuring Miss Rivera and a group of lecherous Shriners, that takes place at, away from, and under (mostly under) a long conference table. I congratulate Mr. Champion, and I urge you to see and hear what he and his colleagues have wrought.

  NOVEMBER 9, 1968

  ORSON WELLES, WHO hasn’t touched the theatre with a barge pole of late (though he flung a harpoon at it in 1955, playing Ahab in his own production of Moby Dick), once said to me, “London is the actor’s city, Paris is the playwright’s city, and New York is the director’s city.” At the time—some seven years ago—that was just about true, but Welles, never a man to be caught with a dated generalization, has since revised his opinions. He now believes that New York is David Merrick’s city and that Paris is no longer of any theatrical interest whatever but that “London is still the great place for actors.” The old whaler is right again. To be more precise, in stage performers under thirty and over fifty (most of the best of the rest are busy paying for the country house, the Bentley, and the unostentatious yacht by working in movies and television) London leads Europe and probably the Western world. The town is full of flexible, classless actors, predominantly young, who are equally at home in Elizabethan blank verse and in the blank prose of authors like Harold Pinter. It is much less full of playwrights. In this category, nearly everyone of mature years—Terence Rattigan and Christopher Fry are salient examples—has been driven out to pasture in the cinema, and the theatrical field is occupied by an amorphous group of younger talents, numbering not more than a dozen. As for directors, Britain has only a handful who are of international stature. Even so, it wouldn’t be difficult to make a persuasive case for London as a directorial stronghold, since the top-ranking few—men like Peter Hall, Peter Brook, and John Dexter—wield a tremendous amount of power. Quite as much as the playwrights and the actors, they are the molders of taste, because the plays of their choice get not only the best staging but the most distinguished casts.

  What follows is a hindsight survey of the London theatre as it revealed itself in 1967. The first thing to be said is that its private sector has changed hardly at all in the past decade. Thrillers, farces, and musicals have still been hopefully crowding the playbills, eked out with safe classical revivals and the odd adventurous novelty. But the scene as a whole has been transformed—and the theatre of commerce has been dwarfed—by the advent of two state-subsidized titans: the Royal Shakespeare Company, which branched out from its Stratford headquarters in 1960 to take over the Aldwych Theatre in London, and the National Theatre, which set up shop at the Old Vic in 1963. Faced with these enormous competitors, the West End producers—who never planned ahead, naïvely supposing that their middle-class, middle-aged, undiscriminating audience would be perpetually self-renewing—are hanging on to the ropes. Some of them are even demanding that their box-office gambles be safeguarded against loss by government aid. Implicit in this proposal is a self-incriminating admission: that the commercial theatre has ceased, for the most part, to be commercial.

  It used to be, at least, somewhere to go for a laugh. Great comics don’t readily fit into repertory companies, where their anarchic gusto tends to burst the seams of any production in which they appear; it’s hard, for example, to imagine Phil Silvers as the porter in Macbeth. (Great tragedians are much easier to accommodate. Most of the longest parts in the classical repertoire belong either to tragedy or to its house-trained, bourgeois cousin high comedy. There is room in Congreve for the genius of an Olivier but not for that of a Silvers.) The commercial stage has traditionally been the spawning ground and the stamping ground of comic talent. Latterly, however, the guffaws have been less than deafening. Brian Rix, a hardworking actor-manager who made a fortune for many years out of the kind of formula farce in which meanings, takes, and beds are invariably double, moved into the Garrick Theatre over a year ago and advertised his new home as “The Theatre of Laughter.” Thus far, he hasn’t found farces plausible enough or actors outrageous enough (or vice versa) to justify that hubristic subtitle. The right people for this genre, authors and performers alike, seem either to have died out or to have gone over, tamed and domesticated, to situation comedy on TV. What we’ve seen at the Garrick to date has been curiously academic—conventional farce as it might be re-created a century hence by a keen group of archeology students. The results have been about as jolly as the Christmas long-jumping contests in Lapland. I can’t say much more for Alan Ayckbourn’s Relatively Speaking, the official laugh smash of 1967, which is an atavistic country-house comedy written with the sort of smirking cuteness that often accompanies a punning title. It’s all about misconstrued relationships—a husband mistakes his mistress’s boyfriend for his wife’s lover, and the boyf
riend mistakes the mistress’s lover for her father. If any of them were to ask a couple of obvious questions, the whole uninsurable structure would collapse, and the curtain would fall inside thirty minutes. The setting was pure nostalgia: wickerwork furniture on a terrace in burning sunlight, with a willow casting its shadow on a heavily creased backcloth. The company was led by Celia Johnson and Michael Hordern, who rowed away furiously like stoical scullers trapped in a waterlogged skiff. Meanwhile, at the East End theatre where she made (and consolidated) her name with such productions as A Taste of Honey, The Hostage, and Oh, What a Lovely War!, Joan Littlewood directed a bonhomous little crowd pleaser called Mrs. Wilson’s Diary. Her admirers hid their chagrin under gallant smiles, but it wasn’t easy: a cozier, more rubber-fanged piece of political lampooning you could scarcely conceive. It’s based on a popular column that the authors, Richard Ingrams and John Wells, contribute to the satirical fortnightly Private Eye. Life with the Prime Minister is seen from the viewpoint of his awed but adoring wife, in whose chatty journal Downing Street becomes the epitome of chintzy suburbia, ruled by a plump, Pooterish figure with a bad case of folie de grandeur. The joke is sharper on the page—where it deftly mirrors the suffocating banality of the Wilson regime—than it is on the stage. Having gone through the Littlewood treatment, it emerged as featherweight gossip, distinguished by three clever acts of impersonation: Myvanwy Jenn was a winningly gauche first lady, Bob Grant struck the right note of apologetic bluster as George Brown, and Bill Wallis was a chubby young ringer for the ringmaster himself. Clad as Batman when he made his first entrance, Mr. Wallis later changed into Churchillian garb and sonorously declared, “I am now going into the garden to paint a brick wall with my bare hands.” From time to time, members of the cast indulged in typical Cockney ad libs, all of them robustly unfunny. The production’s failure as satire was proved by the fact that nobody either loved it or hated it.