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From discussion leader to consumer guide:
A century of theater criticism in Chicago newspapers
by Scott Fosdick, Assistant Professor
Missouri School of Journalism
210 Lee Hills Hall
Columbia, MO 65211-1200
573/882-3496
[log in to unmask]
Submitted to the History Division of AEJMC
for its August, 2003, convention in Kansas City
From discussion leader to consumer guide:
A century of theater criticism in Chicago newspapers
Abstract
This article completes a three-part examination of the influence of theater
critics working for Chicago newspapers during the 20th century,
concentrating on the middle period, which saw a dwindling band of critics
functioning as quality control experts passing judgment on New York road
shows. After filling in that blank, this article uses the idea of
commodification, a concept borrowed from critical studies, to consider the
changing role of the critic over the entire century.
From discussion leader to consumer guide:
A century of theater criticism in Chicago newspapers
While New York has long been America's theatrical capital, and its critics,
therefore, have occupied a preeminent position, more theater is performed,
and far more theater criticism is written, in the nation's various regional
centers, beginning with our premiere Second City, Chicago. Previous
studies by this author have focused on Chicago critics at the beginning of
the 20th century, and toward the end, revealing vastly different
environments for theater and for those who review it for a living. This
paper explores how Chicago criticism traversed the historical landscape
from point A to point B, considering how changes in the worlds of theater
and journalism may have affected each other. Having traveled that road, we
will look at what the current century may hold, and at the extent to which
the experience of the Chicago critics might be expected to be reflected in
that of critics, theater artists, and readers in the nation's other major
regional centers outside New York.
THIS AUTHOR'S NAME (2001) noted the difficulty of positioning new research
on American critics within the traditions of intellectual, social, or
cultural history. Intellectual history is appropriate for the occasional
thought-leader (such as art critic Clement Greenberg), but not for the
larger critical community, taken as a group. Social history goes too far
in the other direction to be of use, concentrating as it does on broad
social classes. Not surprisingly, THIS AUTHOR'S NAME (2001) found cultural
history to be the most likely of the three, but noted that even here that
the definition of culture followed by most social scientists ("a particular
way of life," in the words of Raymond
From discussion leader to consumer guide:
A century of theater criticism in Chicago newspapers, page
Williams[1]) seems to push to the periphery the arts and its critics. Even
so, cultural history though not necessarily cultural studies, which tends
to focus on pop culture, a problematic term in its own right was seen as
the most promising basis for research on critics. Readers interested in
exploring that literature are directed to that study; although we rely on
that context here, we will not repeat that literature review.[2]
Since this study aims to consider broader issues, to divine (or construct)
the meaning of a century of theater reviewing, a more exacting theoretical
tool is called for. We are not prepared to wield the totality of critical
theory, much less the Marxism that spawned it. But we would like to borrow
one key concept from that tradition: commodification. Simply put,
commodification posits that in a capitalist society all human activity
tends over time to lose its intrinsic value and be replaced by purely
monetary market value. In other words, commerce eventually overwhelms
culture. The inevitable result is to progressively cheapen human
creations. By cheapen which might be a loaded term in this context we
mean that the impulse to cash in on human creation raises its cash value
only by lowering its true value.[3] As Bob Dylan put it, "Money doesn't
talk. It swears."
One need not tie commodification to a critique of capitalism to see its
value as a defining principle of cultural activity. If one creates
something out of love or divine inspiration, and then finds that others
might want or need this thing, it is only natural to offer this thing to
others in exchange for something else, either in barter or for cash. Only
the wealthy can afford to give away everything they create. And as one
becomes more adept at creating things that others want or need, others are
likely to offer more in return. So, in a needy world it is a natural
process for the trade value of something to grow to challenge the initial
value, the joy of creation. And as one turns attention away from the muse
and toward the market, creativity is replaced by an assembly line
mentality. Capitalism might have perfected this process, but it did not
invent it.
As an example, consider the words of the 17th century samurai warrior
Myamoto Musashi, author of The Book of Five Rings. If the 1993 translation
is an accurate one, Musashi anticipated Marx, Lukacs and the Frankfurt School:
As I see society, people make the arts into commercial products; they think
of themselves as commodities, and also make implements as items of
commerce
.The field of martial arts is particularly rife with flamboyant
showmanship, with commercial popularization and profiteering on the part of
both those who teach the science and those who study it.[4]
Without getting sidetracked by the issue of whether the martial arts are
really arts, it is interesting to note that Musashi went on to comment that
a fatal side-effect of the commercialization of certain moves or techniques
was that they became standardized, and once they became standardized, they
lost their power in battle because everyone knew them, everyone learned the
same sequences, so everyone knew what was coming next and could therefore
anticipate and defeat the warrior who knew only those techniques he had
purchased at the commercial martial arts school. Commodification kills.
For our purposes, it matters not whether commodification is a concept
constructed by Marxists out of whole cloth, was discovered as an essential
flaw of capitalism, or is a phenomenon endemic to most if not all social
systems. (It might be argued that a true Islamic state, with its rejection
of the materialism inherent in both Marxism and capitalism, would see
artists creating solely for the greater glory of Allah, without thought or
recompense, and that commodification would cease to manifest itself. As
soon as the ideal Islamic state is created, we'll get right on that.) What
matters is whether the concept has either predictive or explanatory powers
when it is brought to bear on the topic at hand.
How does the history of working theater critics in the 20th century look
when viewed through this lens? From this point of view, it soon becomes
clear that we are not talking about just one commodity theater criticism
but the interplay of two commodities: theater and the
media. Considering just one half of the equation the history of theater
in Chicago we can arrive at three main periods: "boom town, road town
and regional center."[5] As the first and third periods are times of
intense local production, and the middle period sees local stages dominated
by shows imported from (or headed to) New York, one might easily make the
assumption that by the end of the century criticism in Chicago had come
full circle. In one sense it had. At the end of the century, critics once
again devoted most of their ink to local products. When one puts theater
history aside, however, and looks at a century of media developments, it
appears the situation has changed considerably. Whereas in 1900 there were
a dozen newspapers, each with its own theater critic, by the end of the
century there were just two downtown dailies, and, according to THIS
AUTHOR'S NAME (2002), only one of them had significant influence over the
arts. A complete picture of theater criticism in Chicago and, by
implication, other regional centers requires that we keep one eye on the
development of theater and the other on the steadily dwindling number of
critics covering it. We will proceed chronologically through the three
theatrical periods, concentrating on the middle period, the one not
covering by THIS AUTHOR'S NAME (2001) and THIS AUTHOR'S NAME (2002). As
with these studies, our main source will be the thousands of reviews
written by Chicago daily newspaper critics. (These are readily available
on microfilm, although it is a rather tedious process to find them, buried
as they are on the inside pages.) An acknowledged limitation of this
method is the exclusion of weekly newspapers, magazines, broadcast
stations, and, most regrettably, the ethnic press.
Boomtown
Chicago's boomtown period began in the latter half of the 19th century, as
Chicago grew, built theaters, saw those theaters consumed by a series of
fires both before and after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and saw them
always rise again. Theater, commerce, and the media were closely linked
from the beginnings of this city on the lake. The first performance for
money in Chicago took place on February 24, 1834, and was advertised in the
13th issue of Chicago's first newspaper, the weekly Chicago Democrat. The
entertainment was offered by a Mr. Bowers, Professeur de tours Amusant, in
a private home. Bowers was a magician and fire eater. He managed to
complete his performance without burning down the house.[6]
Aside from the wholesale loss of the main theater district in the 1871
fire, the most devastating single fire was the one that consumed the
Iroquois theater and hundreds of matinee patrons in 1903, leading to the
temporary shuttering of all the theaters in town and the 70-year imposition
of severe restrictive fire codes on theater buildings in Chicago. The
eventual lifting of these codes was a crucial element in the resurgence of
theater in Chicago in the latter third of the century.
At the beginning of the century, most of the city's dozen newspapers were
just beginning to give bylines to their critics, so it is a convenient time
to begin our investigation. A circulation war begun in the 1890s continued
in 1900 with the first edition (on the Fourth of July) of William Randolph
Hearst's Chicago American. This introduced Chicago to a free-wheeling
style of journalism marked by frequent editions, many illustrations,
towering headlines, colors, more comics, serial fiction, signed articles,
and trust-busting. Although the American itself employed a variety of
ill-prepared freelance theater critics, its emphasis on features coverage
broadened the definition of journalism in Chicago and most likely spurred
more complete arts coverage by competitors.[7]
As THIS AUTHOR'S NAME (2001) points out, the combination of plentiful
theater and expanding arts coverage in ten daily newspapers made this a
golden age for Chicago drama critics. The presence of three great
theatrical controversies put critics in an enviable position: They
introduced important issues to readers. As their job was to provide
criticism, they inevitably not merely passed judgment on purely theatrical
matters, but framed the issues within and attending the plays. And,
because there were so many critics and they were in a competitive situation
(notwithstanding the clear leadership in circulation of the Tribune), they
very often disagreed with each other in print, sometimes naming each other
in attacks that approached the personal. While individual critics had
their own peculiarities and deficiencies, as a group, they functioned in a
way that modern critics rarely do: they were discussion leaders.
There was no competition from radio and television; readers were
encouraged to read multiple editions, or more than one newspaper. Even if
there was some segmentation of audiences, with 10 newspapers in town, there
was more than one for each class. So patrons of the theater could draw on
a multiplicity of critical voices, a multiplicity of interpretations. In
this environment, individual productions were less likely to be approached
by the public as settled commodities, good or bad, worth seeing or
not. Seeing that a variety of published critics held a variety of
competing views must have encouraged patrons to view plays as open texts,
texts they were free to interpret for themselves.
Three controversies rose to prominence in this period: the new "problem
plays" of European critics such as Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw;
the monopolistic advances of the New York theatrical Syndicate, and the
Little Theater movement. The most compelling controversy, to today's
readers, would be the one surrounding the plays of Ibsen, which, although
they were written some 20 years earlier, were just being introduced to
mainstream Chicago audiences. (Theater historians will object that Ibsen's
Ghosts received its world premiere in Chicago in Norwegian many years
earlier.) Perhaps because the women's suffrage movement was largely
ignored in the news columns of these newspapers, the critique of women's
role in society offered by Ibsen in such plays as A Doll's House and Hedda
Gabler was received by many critics with shock and dismay. Lyman B. Glover
of the Times-Herald (later the Record-Herald), Major George McConnel of the
Chronicle, Barrett Eastman of the Evening Journal and Amy Leslie of the
Daily News led the moralistic charge against Ibsen. A brilliant young
critic named Delancey Halbert, writing for the Evening Post, consistently
provided a fiery defense of both Ibsen and the other Europeans. He was
joined by James O'Donnell Bennett, who took over for Glover when he
retired. The Tribune straddled the fence.
Eventually, Halbert and Bennett carried the day; shortly after Ibsen's
death in 1906, he somehow made the transformation from immoral European to
master dramatist. But while the controversy lasted, it provided the best
single example of open debate among critics of the period.
Commodification was at the heart of the controversy surrounding the New
York Syndicate. Formed in 1896, the Syndicate mass produced theater and
distributed it by rail to America's major metropolitan markets. The most
popular dramatic vehicles of the day were what have been dubbed machine
plays: scenery-heavy spectacles of heavenly ascensions and battles at
sea. By shipping expensive scenery from city to city, it was able to
increase its return on investment, and make a profit off of the public's
increasing taste for flash over substance (a good example of the cheapening
influence of commodification). Some Chicago critics Halbert, Bennett,
and Tribune critic H. L. Hubbard -- deplored both the style of theater
offered by the Syndicate as well as its aggressive business practices, but
other critics and most audiences supported it. Still, the controversy
provided another instance of healthy critical debate.
The final major controversy of this period involved the Little Theaters, a
nationwide movement led by several earnest art theaters in Chicago for
about 10 years, beginning around 1906 with the founding of the New
Theater. These companies eschewed glossy professionalism, preferring
serious realistic plays by Europeans and progressive American
writers. With mixed critical support, these theaters folded, one by
one. Mass produced entertainment prevailed on two fronts: in the glitzy,
scenery-driven confections of the Syndicate (and subsequent touring
conglomerates like the Shuberts), and in the technological wonders of film,
radio, and, eventually, television.
Road Town
The transition from boom town to road town was gradual. Throughout its
theatrical history, Chicago always offered a mix of local and imported
productions. Local efforts did not disappear overnight. Further blurring
the boundaries is the fact that the careers of some critics overlapped
periods.
Perhaps the best example of a journalist whose criticism spanned
theatrical epochs was Ashton Stevens. Born in 1871, he found his ultimate
career by a roundabout route. As a young man he was forced to give up
studying law to make money for his family in Kansas by giving lessons on
the banjo, an instrument he played all his life. One pupil, the editor of
The News Letter, a San Francisco literary weekly, took 22-year-old Stevens
to a concert, was impressed by his comments, and hired him to write
criticism -- of theater. Not long after, Stevens replaced Bret Harte as
editor of The Overland Weekly. A chance meeting on the Oakland-San
Francisco ferry with William Randolph Hearst led to lifelong employment as
a theater critic for Hearst newspapers: The San Francisco Examiner,
1898-1908; The New York Evening Journal, 1908-1910; and, through the 1950s,
Hearst's ever-shifting foothold in Chicago, beginning with the Examiner in
1910.[8]
Stevens worked in a time when critics could hobnob with stars and still
command authority in print. In San Francisco, Stevens befriended one of
the greats of the time by writing, "Dull people don't like Mrs. Fiske's
acting."[9] He carried on a protracted feud with actor-manager Richard
Mansfield, also in San Francisco. In Chicago, he predicted the success of
the bright 15-year-old who lived across the street, Orson Welles.[10] In
his 1944 biography of John Barrymore, Gene Fowler interviewed Stevens about
his old friend, the once great actor who came to a boozy end on Chicago's
stages. Fowler described Stevens, "...this sagacious dean of the drama
critics," in admiring terms:
...(A)lthough Mr. Stevens never coddled an inferior performance, he smeared
no poison on his critical darts. He brought a gay creativeness to his
task, a voice clearly heard, yet so unlike the iconoclastic snarls of those
who grow violently wise after a last night's event. He became celebrated
in the three cities of his critical ministrations, San Francisco, New York
and Chicago, as "the mercy killer."[11]
Stevens was the only critic in town whose headlines frequently featured
his own name in large (36-48 pt.) type: "Ashton Stevens says..." or
"Ashton Stevens sees Great Acting in..." True, this may have been due in
part to the bombastic Hearst style, but Stevens usually managed to justify
the fanfare. Although Chicago's art theater movement was in mid-swing when
Stevens arrived, he was not a major player in the critical controversy
surrounding the movement.[12] Nevertheless, the fact that Stevens was an
unusually positive critic, coupled with the evidence that theater in
Chicago declined steadily during his long career there (from 1910 into the
1950s), suggests the limitations of a critic's influence.
In 1947, the Chicago Stagebill Yearbook reported that there were nine
legitimate theaters in operation, up from four in the late 1930s but down
from 23 in 1922.[13] One major exception to this decline was the
construction of the Kenneth Sawyer Goodman Memorial Theater in the fall of
1925. Under the direction of Thomas Wood Stevens, the Goodman originally
featured performances by a company made up of students, former students,
and teachers of the theater department of the Art Institute, to which the
Goodman was both physically and institutionally attached. At the time many
compared its serious purpose to that of New York's Theatre Guild, although
it was less clear that the Goodman was a fully professional
operation. While the Goodman received the full critical treatment, critics
often made references to the actors' amateur or semi-professional
status. On at least one occasion a Goodman production required the
services of a professional press agent, one Samuel Putnam, who wrote an
indignant letter to the editor of the Post when the Tribune compared the
Goodman to the "little theater movement" of the previous decade. Putnam
evidently did not share that movement's distrust of commercialism: "...I
fear...that my days of amateur dramatics are over. I have a living to
make, and I should be surprised to discover myself associated with any
venture that did not imply shekels in the till (and in my own pocket)."[14]
In his "Behind the Scenes" column, Stevens credited Putnam with generating
great publicity for the U.S. premiere of Georg Kaiser's Gas, a production
that, in retrospect, seems to have demanded extensive coverage on its own
merits.[15] Gas was directed in the style of "constructivism" by Marion
Gering, who was Associate Director of the Meyerhold Theater in Moscow. The
Goodman Publicity Scrapbook at the Special Collections Department of the
Chicago Public Library contains many pre-play clippings on this
anti-realistic production. The Post alone had stories on the costumes,
unusual setting, and the director, all under different bylines.
The scrapbook's collected reviews of Gas provide an interesting
perspective on the range of critical approaches at the time. (All the
reviews were labeled as having appeared on January 28, 1926, except for Amy
Leslie's, which appeared two days later.)
Stevens said the play was not as gripping as Capek's R.U.R., and
complained that the cacophony of the machines on stage drowned out the
dialogue. "Trick scenery soon loses its thrill," he wrote. Despite his
reputation for gentle criticism, Stevens wasn't content to let the play
thrive, and continued to slam it in follow-up stories. With this
production one begins to form a more complete picture of Stevens as a
somewhat star-struck critic who was educated on well-made realistic plays
-- and was quite adept at responding to them on deadline -- but failed to
see that different kinds of plays require different expectations. (Similar
observations will be made of some of the critics of the third period.) In
Stevens' defense it should be pointed out that he had far less exposure to
non-realistic styles than his critical descendants would have 50 years later.
The reviews of Gas were mixed. The Tribune notice, signed "F.D." (for
Frederick Donaghey, presumably), termed the play "forum stuff" -- that is,
more a debate than a play -- but "interesting" nonetheless. Amy Leslie
made clear that she liked Gas, calling it "a tremendously thrilling
symphony of disaster." The Post's C. J. Bulliet began by calling the play
"half-baked," not because he thought it went too far but because it didn't
go far enough in its departure from past forms. Bulliet applauded those
aspects of constructivism that were furthest removed from realism. The
Variety notice, signed "Hal," seemed designed to offend the locals:
Chicago is still too much of a backwoods town to care much for dramatized
pamphlets on capital and labor....Chicago is primitive and goes to the
theatre to be amused.[16]
Hal himself (or herself) had nothing positive to say about Gas. And
primitive Chicago seemed to embrace the play; it drew standing room crowds
to an extended run.
While Hal's argument regarding Gas may have been flawed, he or she wasn't
the only one speaking of Chicago as a second-rank theater town. Gas
received financial support from a new organization called the Chicago Play
Producing Company. Its founding president, Arthur Bissell, interviewed in
the News on December 30, 1926, declared (in the reporter's paraphrase),
"The drama is and always has been in a bad way in Chicago." Bissell's
solution to the problem anticipated the regional revolution by 40
years. "`The theater needs decentralization,' he said. `Why should New
York continue as the one great American center of good plays?'" Bissell
went on to argue that theater, like music and art, deserves philanthropic
support, and should not be left solely in the hands of commercial
interests. Five days later, the News interviewed Goodman director Thomas
Wood Stevens, who also argued for decentralization. Stevens called for the
creation in Chicago of a subsidized theater along the lines of the Comedie
Francaise.[17]
In a look back at the year 1926 published on New Year's Eve, News writer
Margaret Mann Crolius took issue with the negative tone of other theater
commentators, declaring that "...there never has been a time when Chicago
could look back at a year of greater achievement than at
present." Crolius's evidence included the following: many commercial plays
had begun in Chicago before flopping in New York ("...but that was New
York's lack of taste"); the Goodman was thriving in its second year; Mrs.
Samuel Insull had begun a promising Repertoire Theater stock company doing
new plays at the Studebaker; there were two other stock companies in
operation doing less ambitious fare; the Theater Intime in the Fine Arts
Building had scheduled a production in which Ivan Lazaroff of the Moscow
Art Theater would direct the Chicago Laboratory Theater; and the
aforementioned Chicago Play Producing Company had plans to do a Eugene
O'Neill premiere, Lazarus Laughed. As a footnote, Crolius mentioned what
she apparently thought of as a sub-class of theatrical activity:
On the near north side a little theater group puts on daring and sometimes
revolutionary plays, going so far as to do Mrs. Warren's Profession. But
of the neighborhood groups there have been and are an endless number. All
have had their influence on the city's dramatic taste and growth.[18]
Under the heading, "Stage Attractions for Coming Week," a story appearing
in the News on February 4, 1927, listed 26 attractions, 10 of them
Vaudeville, and three of them one-women presentations (Ruth Draper, Ina
Claire and Mrs. Fiske).[19]
Whether the theater of Chicago in the mid-twenties is to be deemed a boom
or a bust, history tells us it was headed for trouble, soon to meet the
double challenges of talking pictures and the Great Depression. It was
into this environment that Chicago's most famous critic began her career by
writing short but pithy reviews for the Journal of Commerce.
The earliest Claudia Cassidy review found by this researcher was of a
Goodman production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The Tribune's Frederick
Donaghey raved (for a mere six inches). The Post's R. A. Lennon blandly
opined in a four-inch review that "...the effect was happy." In another
four-inch review, the Journal's Virginia Dale chatted that the play had
"much charm." The Herald Examiner gave Ashton Stevens seven inches, which
he used in characteristic fashion: "...[O]nly the loophound boob will miss
seeing this joyous production." In less space than any of them, Claudia
Cassidy managed to give a more complete picture of the various aspects of
the production. In the process, she displayed flashes of the bruising wit
that would mark her work for half a century: "...[T]he occasional
intrusion of sheer amateurishness is but another reason for mirth. If at
times the proceedings verge on the typical class play of Podunk, they are
nevertheless, and possibly because, quite uproarious."
It would be many years before Cassidy would become the acknowledged leader
of Chicago's critical community. As local theatrical expectations shrank
in response to talking pictures and the Depression, the critics on
Chicago's major newspapers were reduced to squabbling over such things as
what role Katharine Cornell should play next: Ashton Stevens recommended
Hedda Gabler, Lloyd Lewis, who had succeeded Amy Leslie at the Daily News,
recommended the lead from an old chestnut called Romance, and the Tribune's
Charles Collins recommended Lady Macbeth. All were dissatisfied with Miss
Cornell's choice, the title role in Dishonored Lady.[20]
Lloyd Lewis, like his predecessor at the Daily News, wrote with a style
that was precious and gushing. His daily "Stage Whispers" column was
dominated by speculation and comment on Broadway and what it might send
touring.[21]
Collins, though not previously noted in this necessarily limited
examination of Chicago's critical history, had a long journalistic
career. He joined the Record-Herald as a reporter upon graduation from the
University of Chicago in 1903, and covered the Iroquois Theater fire his
first year. In 1908, he became drama critic for the Inter Ocean. When it
folded in 1914, he moved to the Evening Post, where he served as drama
critic until 1925, when he quit to write adventure stories and light
musical comedy. From 1930 until 1938, Collins was the Tribune's drama
critic. For the next decade, he was a columnist, feature writer, and
author of the "100 Years Ago Today" column. He died in 1964.[22]
Claudia Cassidy moved to the Sun in 1941 and to the Tribune in 1942. The
role of the Tribune theater critic was already the dominant one in
Chicago's critical community when Cassidy stepped in; the combination of
her forceful writing and the fading fortunes of other newspapers would
increase that dominance markedly. Born in Shawneetown in extreme southern
Illinois and educated at the University of Illinois, this "Medusa of the
Mid-West," as she was termed in the headline of a 1951 Theatre Arts
profile, wielded a power over the box office unparalleled in the history of
Chicago theater.[23]
In a 1956 profile, also in Theatre Arts, Ward Morehouse quoted "a Chicago
showman," who apparently didn't want his name used, regarding Cassidy:
She's tough as hell, her standards are high, and she generally scares
hell out of actors and producers. But she's a wonderful person to have on
your side when she likes a play, and she's been known to like a
few. Playgoers who read the Chicago Tribune follow her verdicts and depend
upon them. She gets people into a theater. Her enthusiasms have the
effect of those of the late Alexander Woollcott; she has frequently turned
a seeming flop into a smash hit.[24]
The most celebrated instance of Cassidy positively affecting a play was
her championing of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, which was
coolly received by Chicago when it opened in 1944 starring Laurette
Taylor. Cassidy began her crusade with a positive review and kept
browbeating her readers with stories on the play until attendance grew,
giving America's greatest playwright his first success in the theater.
And yet, Cassidy is best known as a killer of plays. Richard Gehman
argued in 1951 that this was to Cassidy's credit, since most plays at the
time deserved to be killed:
The great majority of critics, bombarded as they are continually by
mediocrity which would have been unbelievable to reviewers of fifty or even
twenty years ago, have suffered a gradual decline in taste and have allowed
their standards to relax. Miss Cassidy has somehow managed to keep her
sights as high as they were in the beginning of her career; she has never
become indulgent or coddling toward the second-rate.[25]
Cassidy was famous for roasting productions that offered performers who
didn't measure up to the original Broadway stars. Some producers charged
that she would criticize any change in cast. In The Critics, Lehman Engel
counters that charge with evidence that Cassidy praised new casts in
productions of La Plume de ma Tante and Toys in the Attic.[26]
In retrospect, it is easy to cast Cassidy as the champion of good theater
and her detractors as the defenders of mediocrity. In many cases, perhaps
most, this was no doubt the case. And yet there seems to be some truth to
the complaint that to Cassidy, art was either perfect or perfectly
dreadful. When, 16 years after The Glass Menagerie, Cassidy called
Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana "bafflingly bad," and compared
it unfavorably to the play she had championed, she revealed that her
artistic ideals left little room for the flawed but still commendable piece
of work. High ideals protect the public from bad art; very high ideals
protect the public from good art.
Cassidy covered theater, opera, music and dance for the Tribune full-time
until 1965, after which she began a freelance career, producing pieces for
such publications as the Chicago Lyric Opera edition of Stagebill. Her
impact on her era was great, as was the legacy she left the working critics
who followed her. No doubt the power of her voice, combined with the
circulation dominance of the Tribune and the gradual disappearance of much
of the competition, helped establish that newspaper as the one widely
acknowledged to matter most to patrons of theater.
Regional Center
While New York has never stopped sending (and trying out) productions to
Chicago and other road stops, the sixties and early seventies saw the
emergence of the regional theater movement, which began in various small
ways and proliferated phenomenally, to the point that it came to dominate
local arts pages. Certainly major credit for this goes to the theater
artists themselves, the mostly young who, in the early years, lived poor
and created theater on the cheap, gradually building audience demand. But
there is some reason to believe that the critical community played a
significant role in three ways:
1. Leading the boosterish, anti-New York battle cry.
2. Leading the campaign to repeal the fire codes.
3. Championing the style of theater favored by the Off-Loop theaters.
From the beginning of the century, in pieces railing against the New York
Syndicate, Chicago critics voiced local resentment on the imperialism of
the New York theater. Even after the New York producers had won the battle
and were the source of most of the theater reviewed by Chicago critics, the
frequent charges by Cassidy that New York was sending inferior casts fed
that long-standing resentment. Audiences were primed to prefer local
efforts, even before such efforts were forthcoming.
Although the regional theater movement in Chicago traces its beginnings to
the Second City improvisational troupe in the late fifties and the Hull
House theater of the early sixties, its expansion was curbed by the
difficulty of finding cheap performing spaces that the city fire marshal
would allow to stay open. Glenna Syse of the Sun-Times wrote a series of
commentaries that help lead the city council to overturn the fire codes
(which, as you will recall, dated back to the Iroquois Theater fire of
1903). That in turn led to a spate of new theaters.
Finally, one must consider the tireless championing of the Off Loop
movement by Richard Christiansen, beginning in the early sixties at the
Daily News, and continuing through the end of the century after he became
chief critic of the Tribune in 1980. THIS AUTHOR'S NAME's second article
on Chicago critics, covering the end of the century, makes a detailed
argument for the influence of Christiansen, concluding that while there
were other critics in town who had interesting things to say, it was his
vision of theater that prevailed, mostly for the better, and his voice that
mattered. The gist of that argument is that from the beginning of the
sixties, well before the so-called "Chicago style" had asserted itself,
Christiansen presented a clear aesthetic that lined up neatly with the
salient aspects of that style; moreover, he moved into the Tribune post at
a crucial moment in Chicago's theatrical development, and that style
subsequently flourished just as other types of theater failed to gain a
foothold. Just as Christiansen's self-effacing personality and writing
style prevented his emergence as the kind of dominating celebrity critic
one often finds in New York, it obscured his true impact as a gardener who
nourished certain types of theater and weeded out others. The happy side
of this equation was that Chicago came to have a recognizable
style: muscular, raw, actor-dominated naturalism, gripping in its impact
if somewhat anti-intellectual and thin when it came to pre-modern classics
and post-modern, anti-realistic work. It's a package that most regional
theater centers would be happy to trade-up for.[27]
Again, the credit for the actual theatrical work goes to those brilliant
folk at Steppenwolf, the Organic, Victory Gardens, Northlight, the Goodman,
and the 100 or so little theaters that fill the calendar pages on any
particular Friday. But there is considerable evidence that critical
contributions were, if not, well, critical, were certainly important
contributing factors.
Conclusion
The idea of commodification found its way into our discussion of the
Boomtown and Roadtown periods. How might it inform our consideration of
the century's final period? Looking just at the newspapers, it is
impossible to separate the arts pages from the fate of the newspapers at
large. Critics have their own strengths and weaknesses, their own devoted
readers, their own strengths and weaknesses, but they are tied to the
health and reach of the newspapers for which they work. When the Daily
News died, Christiansen was its drama critic, and its arts pages were
widely admired. We must presume that the paper lost subscribers and
advertisers for reasons other than its arts coverage. If Christiansen had
been gobbled up by the Tribune well before the decline of the Daily News,
one might be able to see that as the predatory cannibalization of one
commodity by another. Instead, the Daily News collapsed, and the Tribune
picked up Christiansen as an available talent. To make a case for the
power of commodification in the development of the newspaper scene in the
last half of the 20th century, one would have to look at factors beyond the
arts pages. At risk of oversimplification, though, we can say that as the
century progressed, one newspaper gradually increased its dominance in the
Chicago market, and, in part because of its attention to the arts, gained a
monopoly over upper-middle class and upper-class readers, the readers
valued by most commercial advertisers (including the theater).
Turning to the theater, one could make the case that commodification was
evident in the movement of successful local theater groups like Steppenwolf
to ever-larger theaters, bigger budgets, and slickly produced advertising
campaigns. Steppenwolf and some of its fellows became brands, evident on
t-shirts and other tangible souvenirs of a night at the theater. The
initially quirky, low-budget productions with high intrinsic value but
little or no money left over at the end of the season were replaced by
well-advertised, high-budget affairs in which the formerly unknown kids
from Illinois State had become names worth of putting on a marquee: Gary
Sinise! Joan Allen! John Malkovich! And sometimes, right next to those
names, you would find Christiansen's, together with a few choice adjectives
from his review.
Well, that's advertising, but is it commodification? And whatever you call
it, is it progress or the kind of degeneration of intrinsic value that
commodification predicts?
There are several answers to this. As theater prices rise, the role of the
critic as a mere consumer guide is increased, and his or her contributions
as a discussion leader dwindle. Moreover, the fact that there is one
theater critic in Chicago whose opinions affect product is something that
even that critic would not want.
Looking simply at theater, one might see cause for hope, however. It could
be argued that local product with high intrinsic value finally won the
day. The glossy machine plays trucked in from New York no longer dominate
the scene. Good has won, evil has been cut down to size. Yes,
commodification happens. It always has. But the human spirit fights back.
But that argument works best when we restrict our gaze to the theater and
its critics and even there it's a shaky argument at best, given the
dwindling in the ranks of the newspapers that hire the critics, and the
near-total abandonment of theater criticism by broadcast. What happens,
however, when we step back and look at the larger picture of entertainment
and its critics in the 20th century? In 1900, when a Chicagoan went
looking for entertainment, he could read 10 newspaper critics heatedly
debating a wide variety of productions, local and imported, classic and
contemporary, serious and light. Within a few decades, the great bulk of
these theaters especially the neighborhood theaters that offered work to
stock companies had been replaced or taken over by projectors showing
mass produced entertainments filmed on Hollywood lots. By the end of the
century, even those movie houses were closing as people stayed home to
watch television or pop a DVD into a machine. Fewer critics were
working. Far fewer actors were working. And criticism had devolved from
an open debate among peers to a single voice that was less of an invitation
to explore a text than it was a pronouncement on what was worth
buying. And even that voice had shrunk to near irrelevance: As any studio
executive will tell you, a good advertising campaign applied to a property
that has assembled the right mix of name-brand actors will ensure
profitability in the first few weekends, eliminating the need for critical
approval.
No doubt there is much more that can be said about the development of
theater criticism in the 20th century, and we hope much more will be
said. But the idea of commodification allows us to organize and understand
many of the developments in this field, even if it does not quite have the
final word on the future of culture in America. One can't deny that
serious local artists managed to stake out some high ground in Chicago in
the final decades of the 20th century. A quick glance at the recent rise
of independents in the film and music recording industries suggests that
there is hope in the electronic realm as well.
Perhaps, finally, what we can say about commodification is that is it a
powerful force in our society, and that it will dominate our culture if we
let it. But if dedicated artists and determined critics can wean audiences
away from the addictive banalities of mass-produced culture, there is
hope. At present, the weakest link in the chain appears to be the lack of
respected outlets. Perhaps if the web develops local sites that offer a
variety of recurring critical voices, that may come to supplement the
dwindling number of newspaper critics, and we will again see the rise of an
atmosphere of equal and open critical discussion. In any case, increased
awareness of our critical history should encourage us to recognize that the
situation is not static, that what sometimes feels like a dead end might
turn out to be a living beginning.
Endnotes:
[1] Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society,
revised edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 76-82.
[2] THIS AUTHOR'S NAME, "Chicago Newspaper Theater Critics of the Early
Twentieth Century," Journalism History 27:3 (Fall 2001): 122-128.
[3] See: Hanno Hardt, Critical Communication Studies: Communication,
History and Theory in America, (London and New York: Routledge, 1992)
139-141. And, for definitions of commodification: Denis McQuail, McQuail's
Mass Communication Theory, 4th ed., (London: Sage Publications, 2000) 96
and 492.
[4] Miyamoto Musashi, translated by Thomas Cleary, The Book of Five Rings,
(New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1993) 6.
[5] THIS AUTHOR'S NAME, "Chicago," Cambridge Guide to American Theatre,
edited by Don B. Wilmeth and Tice L. Miller, (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1993) 107.
[6] THIS AUTHOR'S NAME, "The Press on Chicago Theater: Influencing an
Emergent Style," (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1991) 51-52.
[7] Wilma Jane Dryden, "Chicago Theatre as Reflected in the Newspapers,
1900 through 1904," (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 1960).
[8] THIS AUTHOR'S NAME, "Ashton Stevens," American National Biography,
edited by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1999).
[9] Bill Doll, "Ashton Stevens," Theatre Arts, July 1951, 24+.
[10] ibid, 94.
[11] Gene Fowler, Good Night Sweet Prince: The Life and Times of John
Barrymore, (Philadelphia: Blakiston, 1944) 24.
[12] See: Jan Charles Czechowski, "Art and Commerce: Chicago Theatre
1900-1920" (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1982).
[13] William Leonard, ed., Chicago Stagebill Yearbook (Chicago: Stagebill,
1947) 15.
[14] Samuel Putnam, "'Gas' Agent Explodes," Letter to the Editor of the
Chicago Post, circa 1926. Undated clipping found in the Goodman Publicity
Scrapbook at the Chicago Public Library, Special Collections department.
[15] Ashton Stevens, "Behind the Scenes," Chicago Herald Examiner, 5 May
1926, from the Goodman Publicity Scrapbook.
[16] Goodman Publicity Scrapbook.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Charles Collins, "Picking Parts for Future Use of Miss Cornell,"
Chicago Tribune, 5 October 1930, Part 7: 1.
[21] See, for example: Lloyd Lewis, "Stage Whispers," Chicago Daily News,
3 October 1930, p. 15.
[22] "Charles Collins" (obituary). Chicago Tribune, 4 March 1964, Section
2: 8.
[23] Richard B. Gehman, "Claudia Cassidy Medusa of the Midwest," Theatre
Arts July 1951: 14+.
[24] Ward Morehouse, "America's Dramatic Critics," Theatre Arts, November
1956: 33.
[25] Gehman, "Claudia Cassidy Medusa of the Midwest," 14.
[26] Lehman Engel, The Critics, (New York: Macmillan, 1976) 230.
[27] THIS AUTHOR'S NAME, "Newspaper Critic Shapes Chicago Style of
Theater," Newspaper Research Journal, Vol. 23, No. 2,3, (Spring/Summer
2002): 114-128.
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