After the rain clouds lifted over the Coachella Valley, the eastern San Bernardino Mountains dressed for sunset on Boxing Day.
Zoe Yale and Karen Malina White in "Eight Nights." Photo by Jenny Graham.
Looking for a New Year's resolution? Try seeing more LA theater in 2020. It might be necessary to show some resolve in the face of the growing number of distractions.
Beyond the usual complaints about LA distances, traffic and the price of tickets, LA theaters currently face competition from the increasingly urgent televised drama from Congress, the White House and the upcoming most-important-election-ever. And then there are the proliferating temptations of streaming movies and TV. Even stage devotees might be lured to sprawl on the sofa for the wonderful Canadian theater-centric TV series "Slings and Arrows" -- instead of going to see actual LA theater.
Still, for those of us who believe in that live-person-to-person alchemy that happens on stages but can't happen on screens, Los Angeles continues to offer enviable opportunities.
Here are the highlights of the LA-focused theater I saw in 2019 -- arranged alphabetically, more or less. As always, bear in mind that even especially active theatergoers can glimpse only a fraction of what's locally available in any given year. I saw almost 160 productions, but that's probably no more than a third of the professional productions that opened in Greater LA this year.
A Christmas Carole King. No theatrical production in Los Angeles in 2019 was funnier than this latest Troubadour Theater mashup, which officially opened last weekend and closes next weekend, at El Portal in North Hollywood. An updated version of a previous Troubies show, it sets the Dickens holiday story to the surprisingly appropriate tunes (and spoof-enhanced lyrics) of the Carole King songbook, managing the terrific trick of making fun of the source while also demonstrating just how great it is - and, of course, adding lots of references that only locals might appreciate. Master Troubie Matt Walker even references A Noise Within's annual "A Christmas Carol," mostly in order to charmingly deprecate his own version. And speaking of A Noise Within...
A Noise Within. The spring season of Pasadena's A Noise Within opened with a "Glass Menagerie" in which the hearts of Tennessee Williams' characters shattered indelibly, to the accompaniment of audience sobs. Geoff Elliott directed. The company's fall season began earlier than usual, in August, with Michael Michetti's commanding take on Nick Dear's adaptation of "Frankenstein," featuring Michael Manuel as a remarkably articulate Creature. This was clearly Manuel's year at ANW - he also played Iago in "Othello" and, in the fall, Tilden in a welcome return of Sam Shepard's "Buried Child." Later, the company's "Gem of the Ocean" marked the first time I've ever witnessed a shouting spectator walk out on a play at ANW. She was upset about the frequent use of the n-word by one of August Wilson's (African-American) characters, and she didn't hesitate to add her own voice to the drama.
Antaeus. Glendale's classics company expanded its horizons in the fall by producing, in rep, two premieres. But these new plays were thematically united as stories of Americans haunted by the darker chapters of their previous countries' 20th-century histories. Stephanie Alison's Walker's "Abuelas" cut deeply into the personal dilemma of an Argentinian-American's heritage from the days of Argentina's "desaparecidos," while Jennifer Maisel's "Eight Nights" traced the transformation of a Nazi victim into an American matriarch over the course of eight individual nights of Hanukkah, between 1949 and 2016. They were preceded by Stephanie Shroyer's sharp-eyed staging of Brecht's "The Caucasian Chalk Circle," which also tackled the theme of disputed motherhood in a post-war world, as Walker does in "Abuelas." No, "Chalk Circle" isn't set in America, but it was written when Brecht lived in Santa Monica, as a refugee from the Nazis.
"Big River." Speaking of the n-word (see A Noise Within, above) it sometimes causes controversy in discussions of Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn." But the rousing musical that's based on the novel is almost as irresistible as the flow of the river itself. It certainly was in Kirby Ward's staging at Ventura's Rubicon Theatre. The actors provided much of the instrumental accompaniment as well as their strong voices for Roger Miller's score, and they flowed frequently into the audience -- but then part of the audience was seated on the stage. A remount in LA, anyone?
"Falsettos" and "Indecent". Before an undistinguished second half of 2019, the Ahmanson Theatre had strong late spring/early summer runs of two imports from the East Coast: James Lapine's sparkling revival of William Finn's "Falsettos" and the local premiere of Paula Vogel's klezmer-infused "Indecent." The latter expanded beyond its theater-history roots - the stormy story behind the early 20th-century play "God of Vengeance" - into the larger context of Yiddish culture, the threats to its survival and its integration into the New World.
"Friends With Guns." Both barrels blaze in Stephanie Alison Walker's play - and not only at characters on two or three sides of the gun controversy, but also at one of the friendly couples' husbands -- because his domineering attitudes toward his wife make matters worse. All of this is set in the progressive haven of LA's West Side. Randee Trabitz's staging for the Road Theatre in North Hollywood helped make this one of the year's most provocative plays (also see "Antaeus", above, for more on Walker's year in LA theater).
"The Great Leap." For more on BD Wong's triumphant rendition of Lauren Yee's expedition across the Chinese and American cultural walls in the late 20th century, see my last column. Kudos to Pasadena Playhouse and East West Players for cooperating on this production, at the playhouse.
"Handjob." For more on Erik Patterson's journey through the cultural minefields of the Me Too era, see this column, referring to Chris Fields' Echo Theater premiere production in Atwater. No, I still won't give away any spoilers, because this play deserves a second production soon.
IAMA Theatre. Pronounce it as "I am a theater." More opportunities to say its name are appearing as IAMA rises rapidly among LA's smaller companies, often performing in small spaces within larger, higher-profile venues. I enjoyed its premiere of Jonathan Caren's LA-set "Canyon" at LATC (set to re-appear next year in CTG's Block Party at the Kirk Douglas) and its West Coast premiere of Daniel Pearle's "A Kid Like Jake" on the smaller stage at Pasadena Playhouse, where Sarah Utterback and Tim Peper were terrific as the nervous parents of an unseen child whose tastes tend toward transgender.
Christopher Fordinal, Leonard Earl Howze and Nina Herzog in "Salvage." Photo by Ed Krieger.
"Lights Out: Nat 'King' Cole" and "Skintight." These were my favorites at the Geffen Playhouse last year. The first, by Colman Domingo and Patricia McGregor (who also directed), is one of those rare showbiz musicals that is vibrantly about something beyond the celebrity himself and his greatest hits - and most of it takes place in LA. Joshua Harmon's comedy "Skintight" isn't set in LA, but it should have been - if you buy the idea that Angelenos worship youth more than in most other areas.
"M. Butterfly." Speaking of the ever-growing conversation about gender ambiguity (see "IAMA," above), it was a great idea for South Coast Repertory to bring us David Henry Hwang's revival of his landmark play, somewhat re-written for the current times. Desdemona Chiang's direction was the first time the play was staged by an Asian-American woman.
"Men on Boats." Continuing in the same lane of plays exploring gender, Son of Semele brought us Jacklyn Backhaus' all-female play about John Wesley Powell's all-male expedition that explored the entire length of the Grand Canyon in 1869. Barbara Kallir's inventive staging had a sly sense of humor that I'll guess was absent from the original expedition.
"The Mother of Henry." A single mom finds employment at the Sears in Boyle Heights in 1968, just as her youngest son is sent to Vietnam. Guiding her through the times, as they are a-changin', is her vision of the Virgen de Guadalupe, but this particular manifestation of the Virgen knows her own limits. Evelina Fernandez ("A Mexican Trilogy") packed her script with poignance and comedy in its premiere at LATC, directed by Jose Luis Valenzuela.
"Ragtime." It was a good year for enthusiasts of "Ragtime," which ought to be dubbed the national musical. You could see the McNally/Flaherty/Ahrens masterpiece, based on the Doctorow novel, in David Lee's midsize staging at Pasadena Playhouse, or on an intimate scale at Chance Theater in Anaheim, where Casey Stangl was in charge. I'm grateful that I saw both.
"Salvage." This tiny but soulful folk-country one-act, with a book by Tim Alderson, who also assembled the score from songs by himself, the late Mark Heard, Pat Terry and the late Randy VanWarmer, offers the year's best LA-nurtured score of a musical. Produced outside the auspices of any of the well-known LA theater companies, it has been extended into mid-January, at the Lounge in Hollywood.
"Uncle Vanya." Although LA lacked any major productions of Chekhov's work this year, Jack Stehlin's small-scale but vivid "Vanya" made up for the gap. In this age of climate crisis, we again see how prescient the late-19th-century writer was in the scope of his environmental concerns. His characters often express their cares about what we might think of them, more than a century later, so I'm happy to assure their spirits that we still share their pain - and their comedy. Through December 21 at New American Theatre in Hollywood.
Also still playing:
I saw the original "Frozen" animated movie just before seeing the stage musical version. I'm nowhere near the movie's target audience, but if you too are older than, say, 30, consider this - that the stage musical is much better, at least from a relatively adult perspective. It helps that this version, opening its tour at the Pantages, has a two-sisters song that isn't in the movie or the original Broadway production. But most of all, I appreciated the fact that I didn't have to keep looking at the animated characters' gigantic eyes - which constantly suggest that they're Disney-princess dolls instead of human beings.
Nadezhda Batoeva and Kimin Kim in "Rubies." Photo by Natasha Razina/State Academic Mariinsky Theatre. Below, Stephanie Berger.
So there's just one question: Did you miss Mozart's merry "Magic Flute"? You know, that special one directed by Barrie Kosky, the one that first came here from Berlin six years ago?
Well, the obvious answer is here's another chance, possibly the last time for a while. It's playing now courtesy of LA Opera at the Music Center Pavilion.
But don't wait to decide whether you're an opera buff (it doesn't matter) or if you like Mozart. Because what's onstage there until mid-December is a crafty little show, an escape to unimagined worlds, a shamelessly clever amalgam with silent-film savvy, comic-book villains like Nosferatu and Cruella De Vil and wide-spectrum appeals to any current CGI maven who never learned the old-timey characterizations.
Yes, the divine music is intact. The singers in top form. The conductor, James Conlon, infusing the score with zesty love. There are cats, too -- drawn in black, their antique forms whimsically clambering across the screen, posing silent questions in bemused style. Did Mozart and his librettist Schikaneder even think of them? Assuredly not. But they fit the tone, the scheme.
And the central figures -- Tamino, Pamina, Papageno, Papagena -- seem like outtakes of 1920's urbanites, cavorting on little "Laugh-In" pop-out platforms in irresistibly stylish dress, aided by GIF motion.
The whole thing is a sophisticated collaboration -- thanks to animation specialists Suzanne Andrade and Paul Barritt; and set/costume designer Esther Bialas, easily in sync with each other. You'll come to love Tamino in his mustardy yellow street-corner, casual-guy suit and off-handed matching hat. Somehow all the visuals are endearing. We know these characters -- their plight, their desires, their challenges, their innocence -- made so relatable in Mozart's little Singspiel.
The narrative, a fairy tale about good and evil, love and hate, becomes a repurposed tickler with explanatory intertitles on a black screen (just like in the 20s' movie houses). They happily replace the burdensome German dialogue. And they benefit from the accompanying Mozart piano excerpts (C-minor and F-minor Fantasies), further enhancing the affect of the story line. Just brilliant.
So much for Berlin and Kosky's Komische Oper -- it followed visitors from other parts of the world, namely: St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Ballet and Dublin's Teac Damsa.
Unlikely as it may seem these two companies both basked in the imagery of "Swan Lake" on their trips here. One of them, the Mariinsky, in true Russian Imperial style, of course, offered us Balanchine's "Jewels" at the Music Center Pavilion. And, remember, that nearly every time the born-and-bred St. Petersburger has turned to tiara-and-tutu classicism at his New York City Ballet we could see how haunted we was by those powerful signatures.
Especially so in the "Diamonds" episode. This Odette's movements -- a raised arm twining round her head, neck leaning over shoulder, her contained anguish, her yearning for freedom, a fluttering away in despair, the Tchaikovsky symphonic excerpt, -- all spelled out the original characterization. And Maria Khoreva, tall, thin and almost still-pubescent, made a gorgeous Swan Queen (by the way, this 19-year-old has an alarmingly active online publicity campaign.)
But as a curiosity there was Yana Selina, billed only among the lower ranks, who danced a small "Emeralds" solo, one that simply dazzled with her performance's subtleties. Keep in mind, though, this is conductor/impresario Valery Gergiev's province -- he runs the whole show. And politics, in Russia, is the mightiest indicator of what performance perks a dancer gets -- or does not get. Luckily, without any hullabaloo, we got the chance to see her.
In a brief few bars elsewhere in "Emeralds" Selina also triggered a mind-flash when she took those big but precise steps out on stage -- maybe you know the quote from 19th century ballerina Marie Taglioni who famously said "I shall not bend a blade of grass (when I dance), Papa." Had there been a lawn neither would have Selina. That's if you can imagine dancing of such deliberation and delicacy.
But don't even ask what the Irishman (not Robert De Niro) Michael Keegan-Dolan brought to UCLA's Royce Hall with his "Swan Lake" (or in Gaeilge "Loch Na Heala"). Just know that it was a riveting sight, an ever-changing spectacle with a humorous edge, a post-modern melodrama, an antidote to all the sober, self-serious sameness of much dance today.
This so-called "Swan" did keep us hopping, though. A half-naked sooth-sayer groaning and tethered to a circle of cement soon gets released by men who then bathe and dress him as several women installed on high aluminum ladders watch, each with a big, white swan wing draped on a rung.
There is a prince figure, you see, a stringbean of a disheveled guy (the marvelous Alex Leonhartsberger), wearing dark sweats and a beanie pulled over his head. He sleeps a lot, stays isolated and depressed, except for listening to his mother's incantations.
Like Siegfried (here he's called Jimmy), he longs for a girl, but all attempts to touch any who swoop down from their ladders are repelled. Instead they resort to gestural dance -- a kind of Amish Martha Graham with a separate male contingent added. Fiddlers seated upstage play Irish country tunes. Ingenious, but simple stagecraft, carries the piece forward. The whole thing a rare treat.
And if you call any 100th anniversary party a rare treat, so it was on that actual date for the LA Philharmonic. Yes, a confetti-festooned event at Disney Hall where the orchestra's trio of living music directors (current and former) assembled, each conducting something of his respective specialties and with documentary clips through the years highlighting the occasion.
It was quite a sight. Three generations of maestros. The thirty-something Gustavo Dudamel, the 60-ish Esa-Pekka Salonen. The 83-year-old Zubin Mehta, who holds forth on a stool and walks with a cane, but hails the band with his old razzamatazz.
This festive nod to history did not slight the Phil's status as No. 1 commissioner of new music, though. To wit: a pièce d'occasion, Daniel Bjarnason's "From Space I Saw the Earth" and a commission from 1993, Lutoslawski's Fourth Symphony, led by Salonen for all its supreme clarity of line, sharp outbursts and lyric sumptuousness.
Sorry to say, though, that the "Space-Earth" work seemed far less than that; because it called for three divided ensembles on stage, each led by one conductor, all trying to stay in sync, heads looking over shoulders. You had to call it something of a stunt. A single leader, choose one, would easily have sufficed. Better, even.
But all the rest -- Mehta's "La Valse" and "Meistersinger" prelude, Dudamel's "Firebird" -- made for a celebratory night.
So has the opening season of LA Chamber Orchestra, under its new maestro, Jaime Martin been a cause to celebrate. The band is once more energized, giving off a positively electric frisson. Their Ravel was sweetness personified and with Stravinsky's "Pulcinella" Suite we heard an outright joyous performance.
Handing the LACO off to conductor Nicholas McGegan for a program was also salutary. You had to wonder, though, while listening to Schubert's 6th Symphony delivered in all its playful spirit, what deep pleasures this composer felt in his short life. They were inscribed here. For our own pleasure.
But what about pianist Jeremy Denk's Mozart Concerto in F-major, No. 19 on the same bill? It seemed barely contained, almost clamorous, on a runaway track. Could this brilliant musician/writer have gotten bored?
Perish the thought. But an eccentricity -- turning his head abruptly to the audience at phrase endings, as if to say, "Did you hear that?" -- really piques our curiosity.
So did his most peculiar (perverse?) encore: Wagner's overture to "Tannhäuser," done as syncopated ragtime and banged out with abandon. Call it a stage of life.
Christine Lin and Justin Chien in the Pasadena Playhouse and East West Players' production of "The Great Leap." Photo by Jenny Graham.
Sometimes, you can get two different impressions of an LA Times article, depending on whether you're looking at the newsprint version or at latimes.com.
This was the printed headline over a particularly incisive commentary by Times theater critic Charles McNulty last month: "Our local theater lacks direction, leadership."
This was the headline at the top of the online version of the same article: "As Center Theatre Group sputters, L.A. struggles to realize its artistic potential."
In other words, unlike the headline on paper, the digital headline drew attention to McNulty's argument that the primary problem is with Center Theatre Group, not with the much broader swath of "our local theater." To be fair, the print edition also had a secondary headline, over the continuation of the article inside Calendar: "L.A. theater needs CTG as leader." But even those words lack the impact of the idea that CTG is "sputtering".
Anyone who cares about LA theater should already have read McNulty's essay. But perhaps you missed a couple of subsequent developments, so I'll draw your attention to them.
First, in a letter to the Times, playwright David Henry Hwang responded to McNulty with a spirited defense of CTG artistic director Michael Ritchie's commitment to "Soft Power," the Hwang/Jeanine Tesori script and score that CTG birthed at the Ahmanson Theatre in May 2018. McNulty had mentioned "Soft Power," mostly favorably, in the next-to-last paragraph of his commentary, but Hwang's letter cited Ritchie's decision to continue "Soft Power" and bolster its resources with a move from the Mark Taper Forum to the larger Ahmanson Theatre as "arguably the bravest act of producing we have experienced in our careers." He also noted that Ritchie made this decision even after one of the major plot components of "Soft Power" had been changed by the 2016 defeat of Hillary Clinton.
Second, in a little-noticed development unrelated to McNulty's commentary, CTG finally made the smart decision to include a play set in contemporary LA, Jonathan Caren's "Canyon," among the selections in CTG's Block Party next spring at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. I had mentioned the possibility of IAMA Theatre's staging of "Canyon," among other then-current LA-set productions, as a Block Party candidate in a March column, in which I pointed out that contemporary LA settings were completely missing from the three-year history of the Block Party. So I'm happy to see this play's one small corner of LA receiving an invitation.
The cast of "Soft Power." Photo by Craig Schwartz.
That said, let's also note that only two productions are scheduled for the 2020 Block Party (the other is Sacred Fools Theater's "The Art Couple"). In each of the Party's previous years, three local productions were transferred to the Douglas. The Block Party announcement last month didn't acknowledge that this is a cutback, let alone offer an explanation.
Perhaps we should simply assume that the same financial and marketing pressures on CTG that McNulty discussed in his commentary are to blame. They're probably also responsible for the fact that CTG's largest venue, the Ahmanson, has been occupied since the beginning of September with two successive solo standup comedy acts, John Leguizamo's "Latin History for Morons" and Michael Birbiglia's "The New One". Each of these discuss fatherhood (albeit from very different perspectives), and each of them is either available or about to be available in Netflix specials. Of course, the 2103-seat Ahmanson was built for larger-scale shows. But at least wider-angle productions will start returning next month, with yet another version of Matthew Bourne's "Swan Lake."
Thematically, the widest-angled show in LA theater right now is "The Great Leap," at Pasadena Playhouse, in a joint production between the playhouse and East West Players. It would make an ideal play to see in rep with "Soft Power," if that were possible, because the theme of both productions is the culture clash between the two biggest sovereign powers on the globe - the United States and China.
If the two shows are ever produced together, the sensible chronological order would be to see Lauren Yee's "The Great Leap" before "Soft Power." Yee's play is set in 1989, with a flashback to 1971, while "Soft Power" is set around the 2016 election.
Yee's narrative takes us into the arena of international basketball. In the 1971 flashback, we see a brash young American brought to China in order to form a basketball team. In the 1989 scenes, the now middle-aged coach is returning to China for a match between the San Francisco college team he currently coaches and the Chinese team that has grown from the roots he planted in 1971. That team is now coached by the man who served as the American's interpreter back in 1971.
Back home in California, a young American, whose Chinese immigrant mother has just died, wheedles his way into the China-bound American team - and surprising developments ensue. I would be violating all the usual spoiler rules if I were to be any more specific about what happens.
Let's just say that even if some plot turns strike you as a bit far-fetched, think of it as a somewhat tall tale with enormous metaphorical impact. While "The Great Leap" isn't quite as accomplished as Yee's "Cambodian Rock Band," which won national and local awards for Yee in its premiere at South Coast Repertory, it comes close.
The economy of BD Wong's staging of Yee's play is remarkable. Only four actors are on the stage, and they're playing only one character apiece, but they get the job done. This is in part due to transfixing projection designs by Hana Sooyeon Kim. This production is so successful that it offers a ray of hope that Pasadena Playhouse and East West Players could eventually collaborate on that previously mentioned idea -- a concurrent double bill of "The Great Leap" and "Soft Power."
And now a few words about the concurrent double bill at Geffen Playhouse. Occupying the Geffen's smaller stage is Larissa FastHorse's "The Thanksgiving Play," a satire about a white director and actors who are striving to create a "woke" Thanksgiving play for schools. Among the jokes is the revelation that the one actor in this fictional group who was presumed to be authentically Native turns out not to be Native after all.
At least part of FastHorse's intent is to poke fun at the same theater companies that might be producing "The Thanksgiving Play." They want to do a play by a Native writer, she has said, but they prefer "castable" plays, and the casting is easier if all the roles are "white-presenting." Unfortunately, at least in this production, the broad satire can't sustain a full evening; it would be work better as a short sketch.
If you go next door to the Geffen's larger stage, you find a new adaptation of "Key Largo." This Florida-set noirish tale is best known as a 1948 movie with Bogart, Bacall and Edward G. Robinson, which was adapted from an obscure Maxwell Anderson play from 1939. The Geffen adaptation, which retains the movie's post-war time frame, seems to exist primarily to draw the movie star Andy Garcia (who has Cuban-Floridian roots) to the Geffen as co-adapter (with Jeffrey Hatcher) and as the actor in the Robinson role as the gangster boss. Doug Hughes' staging is moderately entertaining and boasts John Lee Beatty's impressively intricate set. But l prefer the close-ups yet also the outdoor vistas of the movie -- most of which was actually shot in Burbank.
The odd thing about the juxtaposition of "Key Largo" with "Thanksgiving Play" is that if you've seen the 1948 movie, you'll remember that some strictly secondary but sympathetic Seminole characters appear on the screen. Yet the Seminoles can't be found on stage at the Geffen, although you occasionally hear them mentioned.
So this adaptation of "Key Largo" subtly reinforces the message sent from "The Thanksgiving Play" next door - that roles for Native actors have a habit of disappearing. I imagine that some of the Native actors who work in LA are not amused.
I had just accepted a job offer from the Los Angeles Herald Examiner to become an editorial writer and op-ed columnist when I realized I might be making a terrible mistake.
It was late in the day on January 22, 1987 when I left the office after a promising first interview. On my way to my car, I spotted a Herald newsrack featuring the paper's "afternoon wrap," which was the morning edition with an added four-page wraparound section for late-breaking news. On the front page above the fold was a story about R. Budd Dwyer, the Pennsylvania state treasurer. That morning, a day before he was scheduled to be sentenced to prison on bribery related convictions, Dwyer held a press conference to proclaim his innocence--and then pulled out a Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum and blew his brains out in front of the stunned reporters. The Herald fronted a pair of photos: the first showed Dwyer brandishing the weapon; the second, with the gun in his mouth pulling the trigger.
This was not what I thought I was signing up for.
My previous job had been writing editorials and producing documentaries for a radio station whose owners considered public service programming not just a ruse to keep their license, but a solemn obligation. Its sleek and modern Hollywood offices looked more like an insurance firm than a typical radio station.
The Herald, by contrast, was located at the bottom of downtown, in more ways than one. Its once-splendid 1913 Julia Morgan-designed Mission Revival building had gone to seed, the ground-floor arched windows long-since covered over as a result of vandalism during the punishing 1967-1977 strike. Its beautiful lobby and graceful staircase to the second-floor newsroom were virtually all that was left of the original interior; the rest looked like a cheap 1950s-era retrofit.
Still, after a second interview with the editor-in-chief, I took the job. It would be the first and last newspaper I would ever work for. The Herald was already ailing when I joined, and for the nearly three years I was there, it was on life support. The final six months were like a prolonged death rattle, and after a few feeble attempts to rally, on November 2, 1989, it gave a last gasp and expired.
Thirty years ago this week, at the age of 86, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner died. It wasn't easy, but those Herald days were some of the most fun and rewarding experiences in my career.
Let me tell you why.
I was hired by an editorial page editor five years my junior--lucky for me, because a more senior editor never would have taken a chance on a radio guy with no print experience. Was it innovative out-of-the-box thinking, or sheer desperation? Either way, it was my lucky break. As a distant second to the Times in circulation and advertising, the Herald had nothing to lose, and could afford to gamble. Long shots, after all, were all it had left.
Every morning our editorial page staff would meet, and as our editor barked out "OK, what have you got?" we frantically riffed on our underdeveloped ideas. I'd offer, "I think we need to do something about the Israeli settlements," and the editor would fire back,"OK, what are we going to say? Land for peace?" I'd be thinking, "Middle East peace plan? Yeah, 600 words ought to do it."
We each churned out 4-6 editorials a week, with a punishing deadline of 2 p.m. The writing process itself only added to the pressure. Where my radio station had spoiled me with my own IBM PC, our overworked Coyote network at the Herald often crashed--invariably around deadline--and you could hear the cursing and shouts of desperation wafting up from the newsroom one floor below us.
Now and then, I had an eerie reminder of what it meant to be part of "legacy" news organization. There was mysterious pile of several hundred dust-covered Underwood manual typewriters in an otherwise empty office nearby. Once I found a ruler in my desk with the name "Ribicoff" inked on it, and realized with a start it had once belonged to Sarai Ribicoff, an editorial writer who had preceded me. A Phi Beta Kappa Yale graduate and niece of Connecticut Sen. Abraham Ribicoff, Sarai had been shot and killed in a street robbery near her Venice apartment seven years earlier; she was just 23.
I also learned about "the power of the press," and the reality checks about that power. In 1988, County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, first elected to the Board of Supervisors when Harry S Truman was still president, ran for reelection to a 10th term, despite a debilitating stroke that had severely limited his effectiveness. His district was roughly 70% people of color, and we thought it was time for a younger, healthier candidate, so we endorsed his long-shot challenger, the mayor of Carson and an African-American. A furious Hahn told the Times in an interview that he wasn't about to let the Herald run him out of office--and he didn't, an ailing white man in a heavily minority district still winning reelection with 85% of the vote.
We also notched a few David-and-Goliath wins that year. We were one of the only outlets to endorse Prop. 103, sponsored by a protégé of Ralph Nader and considered the most radical of five competing insurance-related measures on the ballot, three of them sponsored by the insurance industry. Voters approved 103 and rejected the others; last year, a study by the Consumer Federation of America found that California drivers have saved themselves $154 billion in premiums over the past 30 years.
That same election, we also stood nearly alone in opposing Armand Hammer's Occidental Petroleum scheme to operate slant-drilling coastal oil platforms at the base of the Pacific Palisades cliffs. Mayor Tom Bradley, the LA Times, most of the heavy-hitting consultants and lobbyists, and nearly the whole political establishment lined up with Oxy to push the drilling plan. Mayor Tom sent in Mickey Kantor and his delegation to lobby for our editorial endorsement. Kantor, a longtime Westsider himself, railed against supposedly greedy Westside homeowners who were depriving the city's communities of color of public services funded by oil revenues, just to protect their wealthy enclaves.
They failed. We wrote a full column Sunday editorial against the plan, endorsing instead Councilmembers Zev Yaroslavsky and Marvin Braude's initiative to protect the coast. Hammer pulled his ads from the paper and personally called the Hearst CEO in New York to clip our wings. But even though the Herald was losing millions every month, the CEO told him to take hike. The public stood with us and defeated the drilling plan, Zev personally called to thank us and to say how much the Herald's editorial support had meant to their underdog campaign.
But by the spring of 1989, the string was running out. When our union contract came up, Hearst gave us a first and last best offer, telling us that if we didn't accept it they'd shut the paper. Our negotiating committee wanted to accept it, but many of the reporters wanted to stand and fight. After an incredibly bitter all-day union meeting at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, we voted to authorize another strike.
Things were by then so stressful that I was almost continuously playing my cassette of Pete Seeger and Utah Phillips labor songs just to lift my sagging spirits. But before anything else happened, our negotiators caved and accepted the Hearst offer. Then we learned that Hearst had been lying to us across the bargaining table the whole time and was secretly negotiating to sell the paper. In response, our union filed an unfair labor charge with the National Labor Relations Board--but then quietly withdrew it without explanation. The reporters were so upset with the union that our shop steward quit--so one night after work over drinks at Corky's, the dive bar across the street, I found myself drafted to become the new shop steward.
For the next six months, I advocated for my members and represented them at grievance hearings. I think I may have saved one or two jobs. But the union and its contract were ultimately of no use. Rumors of a possible sale--or imminent closure--hung in the air like circling vultures; we were practically delirious with anxiety and exhaustion. Then, on Halloween, I got a call from a friend at the LA Times. Had I heard that the Hearst brass were in town, huddling in a downtown hotel? Something about a big announcement. On behalf of my members, I asked our local management about it. They claimed to know nothing.
The next day, November 1, the Herald's editor sent word that there was to be an all-hands-on-deck meeting in the newsroom that afternoon. We knew this was it. As we all gathered anxiously, Hearst newspaper division chief Robert Danzig, in a scene straight out of a movie, stood on a desk and grimly announced that they were closing the paper and that the next day's edition would be the Herald's last edition. Tears of sorrow, tears of relief--and then we trooped back to our computer terminals to write our final copy. We spent the next day cleaning out our desks, fielding condolence calls, and raiding the morgue for the clips we hoped would see us into our next journalism job. KTLA interviewed me as I was boxing up all my stuff. "What are your plans?" the reporter asked. I answered, "I don't have any idea."
As it turned out, I was one of the lucky ones. I was recruited again, this time to join a political staff as a press deputy. And that's where I stayed for the next 26 years, as the journalism world as I had known it collapsed entirely.
There have been many times when I mourned the loss of my journalism career, but very few times when I regretted my decision to leave it behind. The Times circulation peaked the year after the Herald closed, and it's been an accelerating slide ever since.
Yet I would not have traded my Herald days for anything. My tenure there was relatively brief, but it completely changed my life. I made some lifelong friends, I did work that I'm proud of, and occasionally, somebody even still remembers me.
For all of its final decade, the Herald was fighting a losing war--with changing public taste, with technology, with the economy, with time itself. On November 2, we survivors will gather for an informal 30th anniversary reunion, and I'm reminded of the famous lines from Shakespeare's "Henry V," as the king exhorts his men into the final momentous, glorious battle of Agincourt:
"From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here..."
