January 2011

Ralph G. Allen’s article on Philadelphia’s Trocadero (“Burlesque,” June/July 2002) in the middle of the last century brought back floods of memories. Fifty years ago I held the presses on the Haverford News so that we could review the week’s show at the Troc. The resulting furor at Quakerly Haverford College inspired one of the freshmen to bring the week’s headliner, Irma the Body, to the campus for a visit. At dinner he and Irma challenged us to visit the Troc for the evening’s show.

That night, for the first time in burlesque history, I suspect, rows of eager college students challenged the old men with bottles in paper bags for seats in the house. We had our reward when in her grand finale Irma appeared not in pasties and a G-string but in two Haverford buttons and a Haverford pennant. We never found out what the management or the habitués thought of the event, but for the students it was a bright spot in a quiet winter.

This is not scholarly analysis. It is pure and old prejudice. As a Spanish-American I am offended in two ways: It repeats a litany of defamation now 400 years old, and it ignores the Spanish contribution to the American heritage.

Painting Philip II as a Catholic bin Laden may be politically correct, but overstretching the canvas causes rips in its accuracy. To say that he “disliked the company of women and viewed them as tools at best” goes against the evidence. He may not have been enamored of all his queens, but his deep love for Elisabeth of Valois plunged him into melancholy at her death. He was also very fond of her daughters, especially Isabella Clara Eugenia, whose wisdom he greatly admired. And in what way did Philip “destroy his own family"? His policies and religious stubbornness and intransigence are indefensible. Why attribute to him more vices?

I just finished reading and rereading Ralph Peters’s wonderful essay “Who We Fight” (August/September 2002). I have read much on Islamic fundamentalism but I never felt able to understand the minds of Osama bin Laden and other fundamental extremists until Mr. Peters compared him to Philip II.

Jack Kelly accurately points out that the FBI’s “big year” was 1934. Prior to that, agents were not allowed to carry guns or make arrests; after it, everything changed. But if the year 1934 was one turning point, there was another that the author neglected to discuss.

It was not until the early 1980s that the FBI became heavily armed and militarized. That was when the Agency—under pressure from the Reagan Justice Department—created the highly dangerous federal hostage rescue teams, entities whose very constitutionality is open to question. And it was none other than the counselor to the President, Edwin Meese, who pressured the FBI to create this entity. It is Meese who must bear at least indirect responsibility for the disasters of both Ruby Ridge and Waco.

Say what you will about big bad J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI’s longtime chief was too responsible ever to have permitted his agency to be militarized in the way it was in the early 1980s.

As a retired FBI agent, I read with particular interest Jack Kelly’s article “’The Most Dangerous Institution’” (August/ September 2002), an eye-catching title, but as the story unfolds, we see another attempt to defame J. Edgar Hoover and to some degree the FBI. Yes, there were some balanced attempts to portray the Agency’s work, but too much of the emphasis was negative.

I served under J. Edgar Hoover for 10 years before he died in 1972, and I did not see in the man the shortcomings that have been publicized since his death. He was a disciplinarian, no doubt, and he expected the highest loyalty and performance from his agents. He was also human and could make mistakes, but never at the expense of this country. In the 1920s he took over an organization that was corrupt and incompetent. He built it into one of the finest law-enforcement agencies in the world.

25 YEARS AGO

October 3, 1977 The United States threatens to impose punitive tariffs on five Japanese companies found to be “dumping” steel plate in the American market at prices below cost.

October 18, 1977 Reggie Jackson homers in three consecutive at-bats, on the first pitch each time, as the New York Yankees defeat the Los Angeles Dodgers 8-4 to win the World Series four games to two.

50 YEARS AGO

October 2, 1952 Great Britain becomes the third nation to explode an atomic bomb, after the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

On October 6, 1927, the Warner Brothers movie The Jazz Singer opened in New York City. In most respects, it was a conventional melodrama. The creaky plot revolved around Al Jolson playing a singer whose father wanted him to continue the family tradition and become a cantor in a synagogue. Most of the dialogue appeared on title cards, as was usual in silent movies, to the accompaniment of a pre-recorded score. The film’s main attraction was in the few sequences where Jolson sang and talked—something that was virtually unprecedented in a full-length feature film.

As the man responsible for generating publicity for Playboy Enterprises in the 1960s and 1970s, I became more than a little inured to fielding oddball requests. One day in 1966, I took a call at my Chicago office from a man who said he wanted us to send him photographs of a couple of Playmates. I proceeded to articulate the company’s policy of not promoting nudity outside of its editorial context—that is, we did not make Playmate centerfolds available independent of the magazine.

My caller persisted. He explained that he was phoning from Cape Kennedy and that his job title was something akin to “Capsule Manager” for the Gemini missions; he would be the last person to tuck the astronauts into the capsule before buttoning the hatch on Gemini X.