My bit on ‘the grassy knoll’

 

I guess every self-respecting historian must weigh in a little bit today on the 50^th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. I am not a Kennedy scholar and while I was alive 50 years ago (just barely! I was only a few weeks old!) I do not have particular expertise about Kennedy’s legacy…however…that hasn’t stopped every other reporter, witness, editorialist, somewhat historian and/or hack from having his or her say about the event and JFK’s legacy…so why should I not weigh in about the anniversary today???

“Fifty years from now, they’ll still be arguing about the grassy knoll, the Mafia, some Cuban crouched behind a stockade fence.”

Those words are ‘lines’ that come from a surreal scene in the Broadway musical, Assassins. Twenty-something John Wilkes Booth, ninety-eight years dead, is encouraging twenty-something Lee Harvey Oswald to shoot President John F. Kennedy.

Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim’s collaborator, John Weidman, wrote those words some time in 1990, around twenty-seven years after that fateful day in Dallas. They’d first be heard publicly when Assassins, one of the most unlikely Broadway musicals ever, had its world premiere production in January, in New York.

And yet, as we today mark the fiftieth anniversary of the first Kennedy assassination, we see that these words, more than twenty-two years later, are still painfully accurate.

Over here in Jordan I get a number of the ABC and NBC news shows, about a day behind airing in the United States, and there have been tributes galore, interviews, and stories about every facet of the fabled Kennedy clan, that long ago November, and of course, that toothy family continues to still provide public servants and grist for the gossip mill.

But very few have commented on the 50^th anniversary of the Kennedy shooting and what connection there may be with Broadway musicals. Don’t laugh. If you google JFK right now (I just did about 10 minutes ago, and there are umpteen articles, natch, and many say what this one headline observed:  “Fifty Years After Camelot, JFK Still Lives In The World’s Imagination.” We are so accustomed to the Kennedy era designated as “Camelot,” that some have forgotten how that designation came to be. It came from one of history’s most astute and savvy history-watchers: Jackie Kennedy.

In case you never knew this story, today is a good day to recount the genesis of the ‘Camelot’ label. A week after her husband’s murder, on November 29, 1963, Jackie called journalist Theodore White and requested he come meet her at Hyannis Port where she had spent a somber Thanksgiving with the Kennedy clan. White had published The Making of the President, a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the 1960 presidential campaign, and Jackie apparently trusted him. She wanted to speak to the American public, she wanted to do so in the pages of Life magazine, and she wanted White to write the article. White recounts that Jackie explained how much President Kennedy loved the then-current Broadway musical hit, Camelot, and she recalled,  “At night before we'd go to sleep … Jack liked to play some records. And the song he loved most came at the very end of this record, the last side of Camelot: ‘Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.’ There'll never be another Camelot again.” Sigh. Jackie very carefully created the line that would become the hagiography of her husband’s legacy. From a Broadway musical…

White and Jackie spoke alone for several hours that night, White later commenting that Jackie didn’t want to leave her husband’s legacy in the hands of historians or journalists. Jackie told White that when Jack was a young boy he fantasized about being a great Knight, like those of King Arthur’s Round Table, and performing great deeds. That’s one of the reasons he so loved Lerner and Loewe’s musical, Camelot.

In the same way that Jack used the media to promote himself and win over voters in the 1960 presidential race, Jackie used the press to help spin the mythology she thought fitting for her husband’s life of public service. She used a Broadway musical.

And of course no one minds believing that they, too, lived in a Camelot in that earlier time of America. That is why this date, this assassination, resonates so much with many Americans. Listen to the reports—how often will we hear of the ‘loss of innocence’ that Americans suffered 50 years ago today?

Indeed, one of my favorite acquaintances in New York is a writer named Peter, and he told me once when he saw the musical Assassins in 1991, he couldn’t even bear to watch that scene of Lee Harvey Oswald. He said to me that he may have been oversensitive, “because JFK was a god to me while he was president. He was elected the year I began high school, and while Lord knows his family was far richer than mine, I nevertheless identified with him because I too was raised Roman Catholic and hailed from Massachusetts.”

The scene in this Broadway musical, John Wilkes Booth emerging out of the darkness with nine others—both assassins who succeeded in their missions and would-be assassins who did not—show up at the Texas Book Depository in Dallas to convince Oswald to shoot the President.

I have watched this musical four times, and played the cast recording dozens of times—who writes a musical about the people who fantasized and succeeded in killing American presidents?????

Yet if art is meant to provoke, well, then my friends, that scene set 50 years ago today in a Broadway musical succeeds. Each time I have watched the show (I have seen it on Broadway, in a high school production, and in community theater renderings) how well I remember the potent silence in the audience as the scene unfolded.  On Broadway, when Oswald actually took the shot, I can still see, in the row in front of me and a bit to left, a theatergoer’s hands involuntarily leap up and cover his face in horror. And he wasn’t the only one.

Besides the obvious, what is Assassins about? Does it mock shooting our Presidents? Not in the slightest, but it is not an easy tale. It begins at a carnival, much like any county fair, at a shooting gallery. The show then moves from the carnival barker’s introduction to a chronological survey of the men and women who have attempted and succeeded at killing American presidents. Composer Sondheim shows a real genius in that each assassin’s song is composed in a musical style popular at the time of the shooting.

But it is the scene in the Texas Book Depository that is the most riveting. We hear Gerald Ford’s would-be assassin Sara Jane Moore tell Lee Harvey Oswald, “We’re your family,” followed by Ronald Reagan’s would-be assassin John Hinckley adding, “I respect you,” then James Garfield’s assassin Charles Guiteau remarking, “I envy you,” and the iconic John Wilkes Booth demanding, “Make us proud of you.” Whoa. They encourage Oswald by noting that tomorrow  “around the world, everyone will know your name.” Celebrity.  A celebrity-driven culture. Fame. This scene stands as one of the best-written scenes in the history of musicals.

If, as I said earlier, art is meant to provoke, the conclusion of the show certainly gives us pause. The number is called, “Another National Anthem,” in which the assassins express their intense dissatisfaction with American life. Stephen Sondheim purposely wrote an ugly, dissonant melody to reflect the anger that these people felt at not having the American dream delivered to them while it had wended its way into other homes. What is it about America that creates this need, spanning a century-and-a-half, to shoot our commanders-in-chief?

This show sparks visceral reactions. In each performance I have witnessed (except the high school production!) theatergoers get up and walk out in a huff. (I often thought, “Don’t you know what this production is about at all???”) In one production the actors saw the four women walk out and I swear, the actors increased their volume, intensified their craziness, played directly to them, stared them down and matched the ladies step for step until the poor souls stumbled onto the aisle, grateful for this ribbon of escape.

“You want to shoot a president?” is among the first lyrics in the show. “How the union can never recover” and “No, the country is not what it was” comes in the second song. And then, in that final number, Booth predicts that the Kennedy assassination will bring “grief beyond imagining.”

So the historicizing will be strong today. Everyone will assess Kennedy’s strengths as a leader, and the “what if’s” will be especially strong today. What if Kennedy had lived???? Would the Civil Rights Movement have gone differently? Would the United States have pulled out of Vietnam sooner?

No matter what your political stripes, Kennedy is fascinating and inspiring. Kennedy knew how to create “moments.” One of the interesting ones from 50 years ago today involve Kennedy travelling from Fort Worth just a few miles away to Dallas. (The photo above is from a breakfast 50 years ago this morning in Fort Worth.) President Kennedy insisted on flying to Dallas (it probably took 90 seconds!) because JFK said that presidential plane landings always look great!

So today I may play both of the Broadway musicals I associate with President Kennedy. I will also look at Kennedy’s political savvy as a possible guide for U.S. policy in the post-9/11 Middle East. I will look at how Kennedy sought to re-balance hard and soft power and use the superpower contest as a battle for ideas as well as of strength of force. And I will remember how brilliant Jackie created the wistful memory for a nation: ‘Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.’