Category Archives: Media & journalism

“Baby Case” — the Lindbergh Kidnapping Musical

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That title up there: “Lindbergh Kidnapping Musical.”  When I’ve told people that the History Theatre in St. Paul was mounting a production of Baby Case and that it was a musical about the kidnapping and the trial, I was greeted with a lot of skepticism.

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“A musical?”  Well, yes, a musical play (note: I don’t say “musical comedy”).  If your image of “the American musical” is something frothy and giddy and funny and lightweight, then…. think again.  And the more you think about it, the more you can come up with musicals with dark themes about difficult subjects.   This includes classic works such as West Side Story (gang violence, teenage death); Sweeny Todd (murderous revenge); South Pacific (racism and World War II); as well as more recent works such as Parade (the Leo  Frank lynching in the South); Floyd Collins (tragic spelunker, media circus); not to mention blockbusters like Les Miserables and Miss Saigon and Phantom of the Opera.  Even Showboat— the grandpappy of American “book” musicals (shows that are story-driven, rather than silly musical revues) — deals with racism and miscegenation, and that show was written in 1927.

Michael Ogborn was inspired to write about the Lindbergh baby case sometime in the 1980s, when he happened to catch a episode of the Phil Donahue Show, of all things.  Among Phil’s guests that day were Anna Hauptmann, the widow of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, who had been executed in 1936 for the crime of kidnapping and murdering Charles Lindbergh, Jr., four years earlier.  Also on the show was Ludovic Kennedy, the author of The Airman and the Carpenter–a sensational “expose” of the Lindbergh case, in which he argued for Hauptmann’s innocence and the probable involvement of Lindbergh himself in the crime.  More than 10 years later, Ogborn got back to the idea of writing a play, and the result was Baby Case, which received its first production at Philadelphia’s Arden Theater in 2001.

The show focuses on the media circus that engulfed Charles Lindbergh from his first moments after landing in Paris in the Spirit of St. Louis in 1927, and then even more overwhelming with his marriage to Anne Morrow in 1929, followed by the birth of their first child in 1930.  All of that is compressed into a thrilling opening number–“American Hero”– that introduces the theme of popular adulation that gets out of hand, inflated and overheated by the American press.  The show moves swiftly–propelled by the major-domo character of Walter Winchell, the enormous radio news star of the age, and by newspaperman William Randolph Hearst, voracious for news to feed to sensation-seeking, tabloid-reading public– through the kidnapping, the few weeks of manhunt and ransom-paying, the discovery of the child’s dead body in May 1932, and ending the first act with the arrest of Hauptmann.  The second act deals with the trial and the tragic and ridiculous media circus  that the trial became.   The show ends with the electric-chair execution of Hauptmann (which even reproduces the double jolt required to kill him).   The show proceeds at breakneck speed, piling up the relentless, grotesque and at times embarrassingly hilarious events of the “LKC” (Lindbergh Kidnapping Case, in the shorthand of “LKC” buffs).

 

“Lindbergh Lands in Paris,” May 21, 1927: The Story about the Story

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This is the day that Charles Lindbergh landed in Paris, after 33+ hours alone in The Spirit of St. Louis, the day that changed his life and the world forever.

mpls journal 052227 headlineNewspapers all over the world trumpeted the news in banner headlines, but I’ve always been partial to this one, from the Minneapolis Journal (which no longer exists, like most papers from 1927), published the next day (May 22), of course.  The reason I’m fascinated by it is that stack of headlines on top and off to the left.  The “news” here is not just that Lindbergh had landed in Paris the night before, but that here, right here in THIS newspaper, he “tells own story.”   Those are key words:  Lindbergh will be doing the telling, and it will be his OWN STORY–not the words of some breathless ghostwriter.  Then   another layers of headline:  “World’s First Flier To Hop Ocean in One Flight Tells His Story.”  Then another:  “Lindbergh, in U.S. Ambassador’s Pajamas, Recounts Adventures.”  (more telling).  Then another:  “The Journal herewith presents Captain Charles A. Lindbergh’s own story of his epic flight . . . as told this morning to the American ambassador, Myron T. Herrick.”

Lindbergh was indeed in pajamas when he told his story at the American embassy to a small group of reporters, but later he would telling even more of it in an exclusive deal with the New York Times.  What’s interesting here is that the newspaper is selling the fact–repeatedly–that it has THE story, and that its Lindbergh’s own.  Clearly, readers of newspapers in the scandal-ridden days of 1920s “ballyhoo” had come to expect quite the opposite–flamboyantly embroidered stories of celebrities and crime.  Here, the paper announced, was going to be the Real Thing.

Charles A. Lindbergh: The first “Man of the Year”

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CAL TIME MAN OF THE YEAR

TIME magazine’s “Man of the Year” (more recently, “Person of the Year”) selection used to be an important cultural/political year-end milestone:  no other media outlet– whether another magazine, or a newspaper, or a radio or TV network– had so thoroughly cornered the market on “significance.”  The annual choice by this most popular and culturally influential newsmagazine was akin to the Oscars, or the Pulitzers:  Americans love to read about awards and about “Best of” lists; awards like the “Man of the Year” –such hubris!– used to have enormous cachet, before everyone got famous for fifteen minutes.  (SEE all of the Man of the Year TIME covers here.)

Early on, many of the Men of the Year were businessmen and industrialists, like GE’s Owen D. Young, or Detroit’s Walter Chrysler.  Soon, the selection settled into a fairly predictable lineup of presidents and world leaders, including FDR (three times), Hitler (1938) and Stalin (1939 and 1942).  There were occasional surprises:  Wallis Simpson was the first woman to be named (1936), the “American Fighting Man” was the first “generic” choice; the Ayatollah Khomeini, a controversial, but defensible, choice in 1978.  And there have been some gimmicky winners: 1982’s winner was “The Computer,” or “Machine of the Year;”  the winner in 2003 was “You,” that is, all of us creators of online content.

This year’s Person of the Year is–no surprise– President Obama, his second appearance, and it’s a terrific issue of the magazine, well worth a newsstand buy.

Charles Lindbergh was TIME’s first Man of the Year, appearing on the cover–since the magazine’s debut in 1923, in its trademark red border–on the first issue of 1928, more than six months after Lindbergh’s epochal New York-to-Paris flight.  The story goes that TIME’s editors were looking for a hook for selling more magazines in the usually slow January market, and that, additionally, they were somewhat chagrined that they had not yet featured a single cover with Colonel Lindbergh (as he was titled after returning from Europe to the U.S.) — a shocking omission, given the wall-to-wall U.S. media coverage of the young aviator hero since late May 1927.   But even if there had already been a long-established Man of the Year series, it’s hard to imagine how TIME could have chosen anyone else, so thoroughly had Lindbergh the Man– and Lindbergh the Mania–so thoroughly dominated the news of 1927.

The cover illustration is an attractive pencil drawing of the Lindbergh profile, signed by the aviator himself:  “The Man of the Year:  He defeated fame.”  The story inside is quite short, especially in comparison to the sprawling features in today’s Person of the Year issues.  It begins quite charmingly:

Height: 6 ft. 2 inches.

Age: 25.

Eyes: Blue.

Cheeks: Pink.

Hair: Sandy.

Feet: Large. When he arrived at the Embassy in France no shoes big enough were handy.

Habits: Smokes not; drinks not. Does not gamble. Eats a thoroughgoing breakfast. Prefers light luncheon and dinner when permitted. Avoids rich dishes. Likes sweets….

Characteristics: Modesty, taciturnity, diffidence (women make him blush), singleness of purpose, courage, occasional curtness, phlegm….

The article continues:

To date he has flown to France; Belgium; England; Mexico; Canada in the interests (his) of aviation progress and the interests (governmental) of international good will. In his own writings last week he pointed out the risks of flying over lonely Central American mountains. Remarked dissenters: “How much more lonely are the wastes of the Pacific; jungles below the Equator; tropic waterways of the East over which he must fly if his portfolio of Ambassador of Good Will is permanent.” Grumblers wondered if interest accruing to the national welfare by his flights is worth the calamitous crash of principal which would accompany his death. Col. Lindbergh is the most cherished citizen since Theodore Roosevelt. Thought they: “He is worth keeping.” One way to keep him is to keep him on the ground.

Others argued savagely that Lindbergh must fly for his life in the public eye; heroes age swiftly when seated at office desks; argued that by his very nature he must fly.

Ziegfield, “Rio Rita,” and Lindbergh

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In the great post-flight frenzy that engulfed Charles A. Lindbergh in 1927, there was an insatiable demand for every bit of minutiae that could be conjured up about the man.  One of the factoids that entered the lore more or less immediately had to do with the smash 1927 Broadway hit Rio Rita, a “mammoth girl music spectacle” produced by the legendary Florenz Ziegfield.

 Lindbergh had been in New York for more than a week getting ready for  the right moment to take off on the flight, and had already started to attract a lot of attention, with his every move noted by swarms of reporters.  On the evening of May 19, 1927, some of Lindbergh’s new “handlers” planned to take the “bashful” aviator into Times Square to see the show, and — it was hoped– get some pictures of him surrounded by some “Ziegfield girls.”   But at the last minute the party received news of a break in the weather, and Lindbergh cut off the plan and headed back to his hotel to get some sleep (which, however, he did not manage to get).  The next morning, he did indeed climb into the cockpit of his plane, and the rest is history.

Upon his return to New York a few weeks later, it was earnestly hoped by the “Lindbergh Welcoming Committee” that the new hero would finally get a chance to see the show he had missed.  Ziegfield was in close touch with Grover Whalen, the city’s official greeter and head of the committee, and writes in this letter (preserved in the New York City Municipal Archives) from May 25, 1927:

 I know he wants to see Rio Rita, because he had arranged with me to attend the night before he hopped off to Paris, and he sent me word at the last minute exceedingly regretting the fact that he could not be present, as he had been notified that the weather had cleared, and he intended leaving in the morning.

I am very much gratified that he has not been carried away by the numerous offers he has received from vaudeville houses, motion pictures, and theatres, for his appearance in something entirely out of his line.  Although I was very anxious to get him myself for the Follies, I am very gratified to know that he is not going to be tempted to do something that he cannot do.  If he only would realize it, he can stay right in his own line of work—flying, and get a couple of million dollars in a year properly handled, and remain the great hero he now is.  Very sincerely yours, Ziegfield

For the record, Rio Rita was a predictably silly romantic comedy, with an exotic locale (the Rio Grande), Mexican bandits, and mistaken identities.  It was a huge hit, and was made (by Ziegfield himself) into one of the earliest and most lavish talking (and singing and dancing) pictures in 1929 by RKO.  It was the studio’s biggest hit until King Kong came out in 1933.  Here’s a lengthy clip from the 1929 movie, parts of which were filmed in Technicolor.

“Lindbergh Lands in Paris”

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By this time (about 1 pm CDT on May 21) eighty-five years ago, Charles A. Lindbergh was just a few hours away from landing in Paris on his historic nonstop, solo flight across the Atlantic.  He had been airborne (and awake) for more than 30 hours, and he had finally caught sight of land–the southwestern tip of Ireland–for the first time since passing over Newfoundland and out over the open ocean.

In The Spirit of St. Louis (1953), Lindbergh writes about flying over a little Irish village in nearly ecstatic terms.

People are running out into the streets, looking up and waving. This is earth again, the earth where I’ve lived and now will live once more.  Here are human beings.  Here’s a human welcome.  Not a single detail is wrong.  I’ve never seen such beauty before–fields so green, people so human, a village so attractive, mountains and rocks so mountainous and rocklike.  . . . I haven’t been far enough away to know the earth before.  For twenty-five years I’ve lived on it, and yet not seen it till this moment.  . . .  During my entire life I’ve accepted these gifts of God to man, and not known what was mine until this moment.  It’s like rain after drought; spring after a northern winter.  I’ve been to eternity and back. I know how the dead would feel to live again.

Lindbergh Baby kidnapping newsreel, March 3, 1932

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Eighty years ago, on March 1, 1932, the toddler son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh was kidnapped from the family’s new home in Hopewell, New Jersey.  Thus began what instantly became one of the most sensational news stories of the 20th century, culminating in 1936 with the electric-chair execution of the person convicted of the crime, Bruno Hauptmann.

That paragraph is about 60 words.  Within the first 24 hours after the kidnapping, one service alone–Hearst’s International– pumped out 50,000 words on the crime, the equivalent of a 200-page book.   The story of the kidnapping and the manhunt and the trial was certainly an avalanche moment of American journalism– in terms of sheer scale, if not in ethics or quality.  But it was through the radio, far more even than newspapers, that most Americans by 1932-36 were consuming–voraciously–a daily diet of news and sensationalism.   Radio coverage, coupled with dramatic newsreels such as this one from March 3, 1932, made the sad and lurid Lindbergh baby story the first great electronic media sensation in history.

[The newsreel clip here is from the “Critical Past” website (readily apparent by the watermark), and is about 3 minutes long, including the “Ride of the Valkyries” music that opens the clip.]