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| The cast of Newsies at the Marriott Lincolnshire Theater are caught mid-leap in one of their signature dance numbers. Although most of the historic newspaper street peddlers were 8-15 year tears old don't expect to see an adolescent cast. Te choreography is too demanding. With the exception of one precocious boy, the ensemble members are athletic 20 somethings or maybe even a tad older. |
Last
night my wife Kathy Brady-Murfin and
I on one of our periodic Date Nights
caught the production of the musical Newsies at the Marriott Lincolnshire Theater. As
always this bastion of middlebrow theater catering to a rather
senior suburban base—that’s us in spades—did a spectacular job with an attractive
cast of talented Actors Equity professionals. This dance
heavy show also offered a rare
opportunity for a large ensemble
of male dancer to take center stage and shine in in muscular, athletic,
and ballet heavy choreography.
The
leads were charming—Patrick Rooney channeled
the brash cockiness of an Irish slum product a la young James Cagney,
Eliza Palasz embodied the spunky independence with a dollop on naiveté of Judy Garland, and for our performance blonde Carter Graff conjured pre-teen Mickey Rooney. It
was probably no accident. The reliance on these architypes if not stereotypes
helped open up the story and make it accessible to an audience likely
largely alien to both turn of the 20th
Century slum poverty and a class conscious
labor movement.
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| Before the show Kathy snapped Mr. First Nighter in all his suave sophistication in front of the convenient photo-op display in the lobby. |
As
a theatrical experience, we thoroughly
enjoyed the show and would recommend it to anyone. But the play
itself raised some questions beginning
with its source.
Although
I never saw more than clips from the
1992 film on which the subsequent Broadway show was based, the
Disney Studio always seemed like an
odd originator for this story based on an actual New York City newsboys strike in 1899. After all Walt Disney himself had always shrouded the turn of the century in
a gauzy glow of fond nostalgia in films from Pollyanna to Mary Poppins and in the Main Street America attraction that he
made the centerpiece of Disneyland.
A gritty urban underbelly to
middle class coziness was scarcely imagined.
Even
more to the point, Uncle Walt was no friend of labor. The Screen Cartoonist Guild strike at Disney
in 1941 was one of the most bitter
in Hollywood history. Although a lengthy Federal mediation process eventually found for the strikers on every issue and forced Disney to accept a
union shop and contract many top animators left the company in disgust and Walt
could barely contain his fury or sense of betrayal. He blame Hollywood Reds for his woes and latter
would encourage and abet the House Un-American Activities Committee post-war investigations and
in the subsequent Red hunt and studio blacklisting. Even with Walt gone, the Disney company
retained an anti-union culture that fiercely resisted any attempt to organize any parts of its far flung and growing empire.
None
the less, the studio green-lighted a live action musical in which invested heavily and hyped intensively. But Newsies was a big time flop
at the box office losing
millions of dollars and generating a
mini-crisis for the studio.
It turns out people would not pay to
see singing and dancing urchins play
out class warfare on the streets of
old New York.
Since then, however the movie
achieved a cult following through video
releases largely because the intrepid
young hero was played by Christian
Bale, who grew up to be the Dark
Knight.
After languishing mostly in obscurity for nearly twenty years, composer Alan Menken and Lyracist Jack Feldman with the backing of
the mighty Disney empire enlisted Broadway
maven Harvey Firestone to write
a new script. It premiered to rave reviews at the at the Nederlander
Theatre on March 25, 2012. It went
on to earn Tony and Drama Desk Awards for Menken and choreographer Christopher Gattelli plus
a slew of other nomination. The show ran
for more than 1,200 performances.
Brilliant and edgy Broadway fixture Harvey Fierstein whose credits
as an actor, writer, and deirector included Torch Song Trillogy.amd
Legs. La Cage aux Folles, was the bold choice to completely overhaul the script. And Fierstein turned out to be more conventional in his choices than
would have been expected. Although the first act sets the scene for the brutal conditions endured by the largely homeless street urchins who peddle
the Big Apples papers and indulges
in some bravado class war rhetoric, the
second act pulls those punches.
The film’s romance between the tough
swaggering and charismatic leader of the strike and the sister of his Jewish intellectual co-leader is jettisoned in favor of pairing him with
a pretty young reporter channeling Nellie
Bly who turns out to actually be the daughter of the Newsies’s exploitive boss, publisher Joseph Pulitzer of
the New
York World. Even more egregiously and unbelievably she is abetted by the sons of two other power publishers including Pulitzer’s arch enemy William Randolph Hearst. The inference was that wealthy liberal youth would erase
the sins of their fathers. Another cop out is depicting strike
leader Jack Kelly as not just a street
punk but as a secret and sensitive artist who Pulitzer becomes
so impressed with after being forced
to capitulate to the strikers that he magnanimously offers to hire
him as a political cartoonist
and waltz away with his stary-eyed daughter. And everyone
lives happily ever after. The End.
Fierstein remade the second act into a real Disney fairy tale with a male princess.
The real life Newsboys’ Strike of 1899 was less charming and far more dangerous.
It was another chapter in the grim class war that was a staple of turn of
the 20th Century life, albeit with a
somewhat happier ending than many
conflicts.
The 1890’s was a period of heavy competition among the 15 major daily English language newspapers published in Manhattan and others in Brooklyn.
Respectable broadsheets like the
Post,
Herald, Tribune, Times, Morning Sun, and American were challenged
by the more sensational Yellow
Journalism sheets, Joseph Pulitzer’s
New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s Morning and Evening Journals.
The battle for circulation,
particularly between the Hearst and Pulitzer papers, was often literally fought out on the streets
with gangs of thugs hired to wreck delivery wagons, burn piles
of papers at distribution points,
and assault vendors on the streets. Even the “respectable” papers engaged
in this activity to one degree or another.
There were about 10,000 newsboys—and
a few newsgirls—on the streets of
Manhattan and thousands more in Brooklyn and outlying areas. They were
both cannon fodder and ground troops in the circulation wars.
Depicted in popular literature as plucky
little businessmen rising in the world, most of the newsboys, some as young
as six years old and ranging to their late teens, were desperately poor.
In fact the majority were homeless—orphans, run-a-ways, abandoned cast
offs. Many slept on the
streets. Some found refuge in homes
for waifs. Some squatted
in empty buildings. Others
slept dozens to a shared room in
some of the city’s worst slum tenements.
Some still lived with large, impoverished and usually immigrant families who need all hands to eke out a living.
The kids were generally hungry, dirty, and cold.
They were also tough as nails and
regularly brawled for control of the
best locations both with and without
the encouragement of company circulation
agents. Contemporary writers sneeringly compared them to feral dogs.
Kids lined up as early as 4:30 in
the morning outside circulation docks.
They bought their newspapers by the bundle
of 100. That was about all smaller children could carry. Some
had wagons or carts and were able to take several bundles. Before 1898 they
paid 65 cents a bundle and sold them for two or three cents apiece, depending
on the paper. The papers were un-returnable and kids generally stayed out
until the sold the last one. Often on the streets for fourteen hours, a street hawker might make 30 cents a
day, barely enough to eat.
Conditions had generated conflict
for years. The first recorded newsboy strike was way back in 1866 and
there had been strikes, mostly for reduced cost for bundles, again in 1884,
1886, 1887, and 1889. But none had been well organized or lasted more
than a day or two. Papers had no trouble using the natural gang-like rivalries among the sellers
themselves, hired plug-uglies, and blackballing strike leaders to crush
the strikes.
The Spanish American War was a bonanza
for the newspaper business. Hearst had practically created the war himself with dramatic accounts of the Cuban Insurrection and the explosion of the battleship USS Maine in Havana harbor. Lurid accounts of action caused papers
to literally fly out of the vendors' grimy hands. Taking advantage of the
situation, all of the papers raised their prices to 85 cents a bundle.
Despite the increased costs,
newsboys were able to marginally prosper
on vastly increased sales.
When the war was over, newspaper
sales plummeted to pre-war levels or
even lower. All of the papers except those owned by Pulitzer and
Hearst returned to pre-war pricing.
The papers probably expected trouble, but were confident that they could handle
it. They were wrong.
The street urchins had evidently
been learning something from watching
labor struggles unfold in front of them on the streets, particularly recent
street car and Teamster strikes. They learned the value of mass picketing and of going after all
avenues of the papers’ circulation. And they may have been listening to street corner orators about the value
of solidarity.
Although sometimes portrayed as a spontaneous action, the refusal of
newsboys to handle Pulitzer and Hearst papers on July 20, 1899 seems to have
been well planned in advance. Manhattan vendors secured the cooperation and support
of newsboys in Brooklyn, then considered almost a different world.
For several days thousands of boys from both sides of the East River massed on the Brooklyn
Bridge snarling traffic and
blocking circulation to the entire of Long
Island. Similar actions around trains
bound for New Jersey blocked
circulation on the other side of the Hudson
including markets in suburbs
like Yonkers, Up-State New York, and Connecticut.
Almost daily rallies of as many as 5000 vendors clogged key points in the city.
Amused and delighted at the
misfortune of their rivals, other papers, especially the Times sympathetically chronicled the
struggle, particularly the rousing
speeches of the strike leader
identified only as Kid Blink for his
eye patch. Estimated to be 13 or 14, he was credited with the organizing skills of a mini-Napoleon. Whether he was the
strike true “leader” or just a colorful
spokesperson, the Times loved to
record his speech in exaggerated street argot:
Me men is nobul, and wid such as dese to oppose der
neferarious schemes how can de blokes hope to win?
Friens and feller workers. Dis is a time which tries de
hearts of men. Dis is de time when we’se got to stick together like glue…. We
know wot we wants and we’ll git it even if we is blind.
The papers fought back with
everything they had. Goons
attacked rallies and tried to pick of individual strikers. Police were roused to bust heads and make arrests. Calls went out for scabs, confident in the popular maxim of railroad robber baron Jay Gould that he could always hire half the working class to shoot the
other. But the strikers held
firm. And scab peddlers met with rough
justice from the fists and clubs of
strikers.
As the strike dragged on,
circulation of the Pulitzer and Hearst papers plummeted while their rivals profited handsomely from their
losses. It was reported the circulation of the World dropped from 360,000 papers daily to less than 125,000.
After two weeks the press tycoons ran up the white flag. Although they refused to lower the bundle price, they
did agree to buy back unsold papers,
which made peddling them marginally profitable again. The competing
papers, with their lower bundle prices, also felt compelled to start buying
back copies, lest the ire of the newsboys turn on them.
The reform was lasting.
Unfortunately the newsboys’ organization was not. It disappeared along
with Kid Blink and other colorfully
monikered figures like Barney
Peanuts, Race Track Higgins, Crazy Arborn and Crutch Morris.
But their victory lived on. And, I guess, that is something to sing and dance about.
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