January 2011

Overrated & Underrated Overrated & Underrated Overrated & Underrated Overrated & Underrated Overrated & Underrated Overrated & Underrated Overrated & Underrated Overrated & Underrated Overrated & Underrated More on Vietnam More on Vietnam More on Vietnam More on Vietnam

…We were somewhere in North Africa when we heard a dull distant crash which echoed to the farthest wastes of the desert.

“What was that?”

“Did you hear it?”

“It was nothing.”

“Do you think we ought to go home and see?”

“No —it was nothing.”

New York rebuilt itself in the twenties. The most anarchic, self-regarding, self-proclaiming city of them all achieved its new self by an astounding vertical leap that thrilled, disordered, delighted, and terrified the critics who tried to take its measure. Since then Manhattan has suffered at least three origins of demolition, but many of the classics of that barely believable era remain — almost a miracle in a city where the concrete never sets.

This twenties boom wasn’t merely a matter of tall buildings. As far as true skyscrapers were concerned, Chicago clearly outdid New York in rigor and clarity. But abundant cash and credit, ambition and vanity, skilled labor and immigrant brawn, cheap steel, and trained architects nourished the wild overnight sprouting of a forest of forty- and fifty-story buildings: masonry exclamation points in a city outdoing itself in speed and flash and dazzle — or, in a word, jazz.

A demon salesman, the flamboyant builder who put up this building was surely aware of the sales value of saying, “The Fred F. French Building, Five-fifty-one Fifth Avenue, at Fortyfifth Street.” But his creation had more to recommend it than euphony. Built in 1927 on a tight corner plot, the long, thin building proved that a slab rising from a series of setbacks could turn a profit despite the overpriced land available in midtown. The very narrowness of the building meant that most of the office space it enclosed was within reach of natural light and thus rentable at prime rates, and the elevators at the end of long central corridors gave the remainder of each floor the flexibility to be designed for a variety of uses. French’s thirtyeight-story building was the first skyscraper on this part of Fifth Avenue, and he tricked it out sumptuously, from the bronze in its lobby to the multicolored faience decorations on top — among them heads of Mercury, the messenger, “spreading the message of the French plan.”

Although your recent article “Overrated & Underrated Americans” (July/ August issue) made the disclaimer that one need not agree or disagree with its judgments, I feel compelled to answer Walter Lord and to defend the honor of one of my junior high school students’ favorite heroes, Patrick Henry.

Patrick Henry’s prominence as a lawyer and member of the Virginia House of Burgesses began more than ten years before his “Liberty or Death” speech. I suggest that Mr. Lord read up on the “Parson’s Cause” case of 1763 and the Virginia Resolves of 1765. Henry’s “Liberty or Death” speech cannot be taken lightly. Prior to his speech the Loyalists appeared to have gained the upper hand. They had pointed out how the war would hurt the colonies economically. And so they had called for peace, even at the price of freedom. It was to this that Patrick Henry responded, and his strong oratory carried the day for those seeking independence.

In my opinion, the most overrated Americans are the historians you interviewed. Historians always wind up believing they are much smarter than the people they dissect.

At long last the deep thinkers are beginning to catch up with the reality of John Kennedy. Until now they’ve swallowed the media hype on Saint Jack with all the gusto of the boys at McCloskey’s Bar swilling beer.

Your survey on inflated reputations found eight intellectuals naming Kennedy, double the amount for Reagan, and more than double those for Wilson and Truman (three each).

But the late bloomers still didn’t mention the real stinking stuff: the theft of the election itself via the Democratic party machines in Chicago and Texas; the goon squads intimidating voters in both the primaries and the general election; the Pulitzer Prize for a book he didn’t write; the relationship with the Mafia via Judith Campbell; the turning of the White House into a wayside brothel.

All that will have to await a future generation of historians with tougher stomachs than the present bunch.

The motion picture palaces, as they are not very exaggeratedly termed by their publicity representatives, are greatly favoured by transient visitors because of the varied and continuous nature of their offerings. Music, dancing, a popular comedian, all add their piquant sauces to the main dish of the motion picture. So popular, indeed, has this kind of entertainment become that the number of straight vaudeville houses in New York has dwindled to one or two.…Roxy, genial showman of the radio, knows how to put together a good programme, and his theatre is in exceptional good taste, for all its crimson and gilt. Even its monstrous organ, which takes three musicians to operate, seems to fit naturally into the large-scale personality of the theatre. The Capitol, the Strand, the Rialto, the Rivoli, to mention only a few of the cinema houses whose electric signs help make the Great White Way the scintillating thoroughfare it is, are also favourites. Luxurious lounges, collegebred ushers, ice-cooled air
in summer, account partly for the popularity of these places.…

In 1921 Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake brought an all-black revue called Shuffle Along to Broadway. Not only was it successful enough to spawn eight imitators in the next four years, but it also spurred a nightly white migration to Harlem that lasted throughout the decade. Long after Times Square went dark, Lenox and Seventh avenues were busy with noisy crowds of visitors, some slumming, some merely curious, some actually drawn to the music played by musicians of the caliber of Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington.

Connie’s, on Seventh Avenue at 132nd Street, is the first white outpost on the uptown colored frontier, the first stop on the route of the downtown night clubbers. A wide red canopy stretches from the doorway to the curbstone, and once he has strolled on this tented way, the host to a party of four should be prepared to kiss a fifty-dollar bill a conclusive good-by. While at Small’s Paradise the average check is only about $4 a person, at Connie’s it is more likely $12 and possibly $15.