Thursday, January 14, 2010

This Day in New York History (Lenny Bernstein Throws “Radical Chic” Soiree)


January 14, 1970—Maestro Leonard Bernstein’s far-ranging interests—composing, conducting, performing, educating, writing—took a turn into P.R. disaster on this night, as he hosted a gathering at his Park Avenue apartment that gave rise to a savagely resonant Tom Wolfe catchphrase, “radical chic.” What probably annoyed Bernstein the most about the resulting public derision was that the event wasn’t his idea—it was his wife Felicia’s.

To hear Felicia Bernstein talk about the whole affair later, it wasn’t really a “party,” but a serious meeting in which 90 of her progressive (or, in the preferred term of the time, “liberal”) friends—including Otto Preminger, Barbara Walters, society bandleader Peter Duchin, and the wives of Harry Belafonte, Richard Avedon, and Arthur Penn--listened to spokesmen from the Black Panther Party discuss their program, police violations of their civil rights, and fundraising ideas to help pay for legal expenses.

But it was difficult to see matters in that light given the stark juxtaposition between the Bernsteins’ swanky, 15-room penthouse and the self-professed “Maoist” rhetoric of the Panthers present that night (or, as one of the guests exclaimed to a friend about one of the spokesmen: “He’s a magnificent man, but suppose some simple-minded schmucks take all that business about burning down buildings seriously?”)

Leonard Bernstein’s insatiable craving for attention rendered him vulnerable to the criticism that soon hailed down on him. He could have taken it if the carping had come strictly from the likes of, say, conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. But it was the liberal New York Times—first through Charlotte Curtis’ report the next day, then through a positively blistering editorial a few days later—that took the lead in bringing to light his romantic, naïve brand of political activism. (Wolfe’s original New York Magazine cover story—later paired with another from the same period to form the book Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak-Catchers—did not appear for another five months after the event.)

Two generations later, passions still flare over the incident. Conservative blogger Ed Driscoll, writing five years ago, believed that an argument could be made that Wolfe’s piece was “the most influential, or at least most significant, magazine article of the past forty years” in the way it pinpointed a Democratic Party in thrall to far-left ideologies hellbent on destroying even liberal institutions. New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, on the other hand, takes Wolfe to task for “advancing the new art of wedge-issue politics.”

Driscoll’s piece overstates the importance of Wolfe’s admittedly hilarious piece, but the normally sensible Ross has been so overcome by his own hero-worship of Bernstein that he ascribes more negative consequences to the piece than it in fact produced. In addition, while attacking Wolfe for thinly veiled malevolence, Ross ignores the very real anti-Semitic overtones of the Panthers--something that Bernstein overlooked or did not know (undoubtedly the latter--not only was he busy to the point of insanity, but his strong feelings about the Holocaust and the state of Israel would have made him look askance at any group that expressed anti-Semitism).

Moreover, Ross cites Bernstein’s daughter Jamie on how all the criticism affected her mother: “There was this sense that our mother never recovered from the heartbreak and shame of this incident. No one was all the way to happy again.”

Wrecking a family—that’s a pretty weighty indictment. Unfortunately, it’s also more than this cause celebre can bear. You can make—and many people have—a far stronger case that Leonard Bernstein’s long-unresolved sexual orientation did more to end his marriage than any mockery inflicted on him by Wolfe or The New York Times.

Several years after the Panther event, Bernstein left Felicia to begin a relationship with a man. Her wrath was something out of Greek tragedy. Upon their separation, she told her husband that she was laying a curse on him: "You're going to die a bitter and lonely old man." Her death from lung cancer in 1978 understandably left Leonard wracked with guilt.

All this said, the decline in Bernstein’s reputation in the 1970s had little if anything to do with his politics or personal failings. As I explained in a prior post, what stung him were music critics such as Leon Botstein who criticized him for scattering his creative energy.

In any case, his political views should not color how one feels about Bernstein’s creative achievements, anymore than John Wayne’s (on the right) or Susan Sarandon’s (on the left) should. It’s a particular irony in Bernstein’s case because, for a way, he became a convenient scapegoat for the entire “radical chic” impulse of that time.


Consider these events, which, as Wolfe notes, occurred at roughly the same period as the Bernsteins’ now-infamous gathering, and just think about this—nobody remembers any of these people for their incongruous blending of left-wing "happenings" in homes made possible by capitalist largesse:

* Sidney and Gail Horne Lumet also hosted a party for the Panthers;


* Jean vanden Heuvel threw a party for the Chicago Eight;


* Elinor Guggenheim gave a soiree for the Puerto Rican counterpart to the Panthers, the Young Lords.

2 comments:

Ken Houghton said...

Where are you coming to conclusions about John Wayne's politics? The image, yes, but the man himself?

(Honestly asking; unlike the union-breaker, I don't remember Wayne making public statements about political/social issues.)

MikeT said...

Ken,

John Wayne was fairly vocal about his politics, though he never ran for public office, unlike "the union-breaker." I'm not talking about just the fact that he was a solid Republican. In a 1971 interview with PLAYBOY, he came right out and said he believed in white supremacy "until the blacks are educated to the point of responsibility." In 1969, he told TIME Magazine that he thought blacklisted figures should have been sent to Russia.

One of Wayne's final public stands, in support of the Panama Canal Treaty, was so extraordinary because he WAS considered such a diehard conservative. (His letter to Reagan criticizing his opposition to the canal was even written on stationery of the Republican National Committee!)

Thanks once again for your faithful reading of this blog, Ken.--Tubs