The Leonard Bernstein Letters

by Leonard Bernstein

  4 Marc Blitzstein (1905–64), American composer: a brilliant and innovative musician and a committed Communist. He met a violent death, murdered by three Portuguese sailors in Martinique. Bernstein's student production of The Cradle Will Rock in May 1939 took place less than two years after the famous Broadway opening of the original staging by Orson Welles and John Houseman (recounted in gripping detail in Houseman 1972, pp. 245–9 and 254–78). Bernstein was a dedicated advocate of Blitzstein's music (recording the Airborne Symphony twice), as well as a close friend. Blitzstein was godfather to Jamie Bernstein, and the two younger Bernstein children are named after characters in Blitzstein's stage works: Alexander after Alexandra in Regina, and Nina after the heroine in Reuben Reuben. In 1964, Bernstein led a performance of The Cradle Will Rock from the piano as part of the Blitzstein Memorial Concert at Carnegie Hall. The cast included some from the original 1937 production.

  5 Bernstein was conducting in Italy and Israel during the preparations and opening of this revival of Peter Pan, for which he had written new songs and incidental music.

  6 The opening night of Peter Pan at Broadway's Imperial Theatre was on 24 April 1950.

  7 This letter gives a glimpse into the preparations for Bernstein's score of Peter Pan, and the involvement of not only Blitzstein but also Hershy Kay and Trude Rittmann.

  8 John Burrell directed the production.

  9 Ralph Alswang, the set and lighting designer.

  10 Ben Steinberg was the show's conductor.

  11 Blitzstein was clearly already at work in 1950 on his English version of The Threepenny Opera. Bernstein conducted the first performance of this in 1952 at Brandeis University in Walthau, Massachusetts, with Lotte Lenya leading the cast and Blitzstein providing narrations.

  12 A reference to James Thurber's short story The Night the Bed Fell (1933).

  13 Male and Female by Margaret Mead, published in 1949.

  14 The conductor Paul Paray and his wife Yolande. Paray was briefly Music Director of the Israel Philharmonic in 1949–50.

  15 See notes 8 and 10 to Letter 296.

  16 This is the only mention of The Age of Anxiety in Bernstein's letters to Romney, who had sent Bernstein a copy of Auden's poem when it was first published, with suggestions for its musical treatment (see Letters 257 and 258).

  17 Kurt Weill died on 3 April 1950.

  18 Oliver Smith, who had lived there.

  19 The Baroness Bazooka (1942) is a delicious send-up of operetta by Comden and Green.

  20 The score for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was eventually written by Arthur Schwartz.

  21 Erik Johns (1927–2001). He became Copland's secretary in 1948 and they had a romantic relationship. He was later the librettist of The Tender Land (under the pseudonym Horace Everett).

  22 The Clarinet Concerto.

  23 Robert McGinnis (1910–76), principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic from 1948 to 1960. He was succeeded by Stanley Drucker.

  24 Judy Holliday was married to David Oppenheim at the time.

  25 Born Yesterday, directed by George Cukor. Judy Holliday won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Emma “Billie” Dawn.

  26 Bernstein's Age of Anxiety was given at the Holland Festival in Scheveningen on 12 July 1950 by the Hague Residentie Orchestra conducted by Willem van Otterloo, with Bernstein at the piano.

  27 On 13 July 1950, Furtwängler conducted the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Beethoven's Symphony No. 1 and Leonore No. 3 Overture, and Brahms' Symphony No. 1. The whole concert was broadcast and has been issued on CD by Tahra (Furt 1012–13).

  28 This is very similar to the story and screenplay that Comden and Green wrote for It's Always Fair Weather (1955), with a score by André Previn, directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly.

  29 The next Comden and Green film to be made was their greatest Hollywood success, Singin' In The Rain (1952).

  30 Harry Kurnitz (1908–68), American playwright and screenwriter whose Hollywood credits included Witness for the Prosecution and How to Steal a Million. He collaborated with Noël Coward on The Girl Who Came to Supper. In the 1930s he had also worked as a music critic for the Philadelphia Record.

  31 See note 88 to Letter 249.

  32 Bernstein's first performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was given on 30 August 1950 in the Kurzaal, Scheveningen. It was performed by the Residentie Orchestra of the Hague, the Hague Toonkunstkoor, and the soloists Corry Bijster (soprano), Annie Hermes (contralto), Frans Vroons (tenor), and Willem Ravelli (bass). In the first half, Bernstein doubled as soloist and conductor in the Piano Concerto No. 1. An unsigned review appeared in De Tijd on 31 August 1950. The critic was lukewarm about some aspects of the performance, complaining of “sensationalized tempi […] superficiality and lack of nobility in the expression,” but the overall impression of Bernstein's Beethoven was “very handsome and very lively, and the applause was exuberant.”

  33 Tanglewood.

  34 A popular British car, made from 1948 to 1972.

  35 Copland's Piano Quartet was composed in 1950.

  36 Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979), French teacher, conductor, and composer. On 5 December 1974, Bernstein recalled his first meeting with Nadia Boulanger in a letter to Sylvia Vickers: “I first visited Paris after the war (1947?), conducting the Radio Orchestra. I believe it was François Valéry (son of Paul) who took me at that time to the house of Marie-Blanche de Polignac, the beauteous Countess who had the great ‘salon’ of those years. I believe they were Sunday evenings, and since Marie-Blanche was a charming singer and music-lover (& patron) her salon was filled with the likes of Poulenc and Bérard and Valéry and, I think, Cocteau. It was there that I met Nadia, and have adored her from that day to this. I never studied with her, but I feel that I have since everything she said impressed me so profoundly. (Besides, so many composers who are close to me, such as Copland, did study with her.) I have almost never returned to Paris without visiting with Nadia, or at least speaking to her on the telephone. She is a super-faithful correspondent and has thus filled in the long gaps between Paris visits, if only with a few always moving lines. […] She is to this day so terribly aware of time passing, of missed contacts, of the need to be near those we love during every troubled moment. Only last week I had another note from her, in her own shaky but still legible hand, imagine, at her age and in her near-blindness. May she live forever.”

  37 Written on the headed writing paper of the Écoles d'art américaines, with Boulanger's personal address printed at the foot of the page.

  38 Written in French; English translation by the editor.

  39 Robert Rossen (1908–66), American film director who won an Academy Award for All the King's Men (1949).

  40 Presumably Mexico City, since Bernstein wrote this letter while staying in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

  41 The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), set up in 1938 to investigate subversive activities or Communist links of American citizens.

  42 Albert Maltz (1908–85), American author and screenwriter. One of the Hollywood Ten who were blacklisted in 1947 for alleged involvement with the Communist Party.

  43 Edward Dimitryk [Dmytryk] (1908–99), Canadian-born film director. Another one of the Hollywood Ten.

  44 John Garfield (1913–52), American actor and a friend of Bernstein's who had been among the guests at the party for his engagement to Felicia in 1947. Garfield appeared before HUAC on 23 April 1951 (a few weeks before Bernstein wrote this letter). When he refused to name any names, Garfield's life quickly disintegrated, and a year later, on 21 May 1952, he died of a heart attack at the age of 39.

  45 Ross Evans was Dorothy Parker's secretary and sometime lover.

  46 Robert Presnell (1914–86) was a screenwriter, married to the actress Marsha Hunt (b. 1917). Both were friends of Bernstein, and both were blacklisted in Hollywood during the “Red Scare.”

  47 Bernstein was composing Trouble in Tahiti.

  48 Bernstein conducted Beethoven's Mis
sa solemnis at Tanglewood on 9 August, in memory of Serge Koussevitzky who had died in Boston on 4 June 1951.

  49 Felicia was getting regular work in TV drama series. In August 1951 she appeared in “Death Sabre,” an episode of Suspense, with the young Leslie Nielsen.

  50 Felicia and Leonard had been married nine days earlier, on 9 September.

  51 Bruno Walter's illness gave Bernstein the chance to make his spectacular debut with the New York Philharmonic on 14 November 1943.

  52 The first recordings of Copland's Clarinet Concerto (Benny Goodman, Columbia String Orchestra, conducted by Copland) and the Piano Quartet (New York Quartet – Mieczyslaw Horszowski, Alexander Schneider, Milton Katims, and Frank Miller) were released on the same disc by Columbia Records (ML 4421).

  53 Mina Kirstein Curtiss (1896–1985), writer, translator, and biographer of Georges Bizet. Her younger brother was Lincoln Kirstein, one of the most important figures in the development of ballet in the United States.

  54 It should be on the “o”. Her full name was Eva María Duarte de Perón.

  55 Hellman's plays included The Little Foxes and Another Part of the Forest.

  56 This project for an opera on Eva Perón came to nothing, but it's clear from this letter that Bernstein was contemplating it within days of her death (on 28 July 1952). The theatrical potential of her story was famously explored quarter of a century later in Evita by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.

  57 Jamie Anne Maria Bernstein was born on 9 September 1952.

  58 Wonderful Town had opened at Broadway's Winter Garden Theatre on 25 February 1953, directed by George Abbott. The show had a book and lyrics by Comden and Green, and a score (composed in four weeks) by Bernstein.

  59 Abbott was directing Me and Juliet by Rodgers and Hammerstein, which had a pre-Broadway tryout at the Hanna Theatre in Cleveland.

  60 Arthur Miller (1915–2005), American playwright. The Crucible was widely perceived at the time as an attack on McCarthyism. Miller was summoned to testify before HUAC in June 1956, following a routine request for a passport renewal (a parallel with Bernstein's situation in 1953; see Letter 328). For refusing to name names, Miller was found guilty of contempt of Congress in 1957, a conviction that was reversed a year later.

  61 The Crucible opened at the Martin Beck Theatre on 22 January 1953. In June 1953, Miller made several revisions and recast some of the roles. Brooks Atkinson wrote in The New York Times (2 July 1953) that in this revised version, “The Crucible has acquired a certain human warmth that it lacked amid the shrill excitements of the original version. The hearts of the characters are now closer to the surface than their nerves.”

  62 Francis Poulenc (1899–1963), French composer. Bernstein conducted Les Mamelles de Tirésias at the Brandeis University Festival of the Creative Arts in June 1953. For Columbia he recorded Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos (with Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale), the Gloria, and – as pianist – three songs with Jennie Tourel. Bernstein commissioned Poulenc's Sept Répons des Ténèbres for the New York Philharmonic. Shortly after Poulenc's death, Benny Goodman and Bernstein gave the world premiere of the Clarinet Sonata, on 10 April 1963.

  63 Written in French; English translation by the editor.

  64 This lengthy document, a kind of “loyalty oath,” is a chilling reminder of its time: McCarthyism was at its height, and thousands of Americans were investigated for alleged Communist sympathies. A number of Bernstein's friends had been ordered to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Jerome Robbins testified on 5 May 1953 and named several names (see Vaill 2007, pp. 215–20). Aaron Copland appeared as a witness on 25 May 1953. He wrote a darkly amusing account of his grilling by Senator McCarthy (printed in Copland and Perlis 1992, pp. 193–5): “My impression is that McCarthy had no idea who I was or what I did, other than the fact I was part of the State Department's exchange program at one time … It occurred to me … as McCarthy entered that it was similar to the entrance of Toscanini – half the battle won before it begins through the power of personality.” David Diamond was also summoned by HUAC, and according to Howard Pollack (Pollack 1999, p. 191), a nervous Diamond asked his mentor for advice: “What if I'm asked a question about Lenny?” Copland's sage reply was, “You say what you feel you have to say.”

  Instead of being called to HUAC (which was well aware of his alleged associations with “subversive” groups), Bernstein endured a different kind of torture: “He was not subpoenaed to appear before HUAC or Senate committees but was instead drawn into living hell in July 1953 by the US State Department's refusal to renew his passport” (Seldes 2009, p. 69). The State Department was entitled to use its regulations to refuse or revoke passport applications if it believed that an applicant had Communist sympathies or associations (a practice halted in 1958, at least in theory, by the Supreme Court's landmark judgment on the right to travel in the case of Rockwell Kent et al. v. John Foster Dulles). Bernstein's sworn affidavit, printed here in its entirety, was a comprehensive document, “a humiliating confession of political sin” according to Seldes (2009, p. 70). It had the desired short-term effect, since he received his renewed passport a few days later, on 12 August 1953.

  But this document was to haunt Bernstein for years to come. In 1954 it was presented to the American Legion for its approval, so that Bernstein could be allowed to work in Hollywood to compose the score for On the Waterfront (see Seldes 2009, p. 71) – a film directed by Elia Kazan, with a screenplay by Budd Schulberg and including Lee J. Cobb among its stars: all three had named names to HUAC. That all three should have been involved in the creation of a film about the shame and danger of informing is bitterly ironic.

  The submission of this affidavit didn't end Bernstein's problems. His declassified FBI files make for absorbing reading (they are available online at vault.fbi.gov/leonard-bernstein) and show not only that he continued to come under suspicion, but that this affidavit was often used as a document that indicated the need for further investigation. In 1954–5 the FBI compiled a report for William F. Tompkins, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Internal Security Division in Eisenhower's administration. On 1 October 1954, Tompkins wrote to the Director of the FBI with the subject: “Leonard Bernstein. Security Matter – C[ommunist]. Fraud Against Government.” The alleged “fraud” was based on apparent contradictions between Bernstein's 1953 affidavit and the information gathered by the FBI about his political affiliations. A memorandum was sent to the New York office by the FBI Director on 12 October with instructions to start an investigation, adding that “this matter should be handled immediately.” The reports subsequently sent to Tompkins reveal that informants against Bernstein in the past were recontacted for this investigation. Almost a year later, on 11 August 1955, J. Edgar Hoover wrote to Tompkins that the Bureau had “forwarded additional information for your consideration with regard to a possible violation on the subject's part of the Fraud Against the Government Statutes. It is requested that you advise this Bureau of any decision reached by you relative to this matter.” After reviewing this “additional information,” Tompkins replied that “the only available evidence linking the subject with the Communist Party is based on hearsay rather than personal knowledge. As such it is insufficient to warrant prosecution of the subject under Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001 [relating to making “materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation”] and Section 1541 [relating to fraudulent issue of a passport], for his denial of Communist Party membership or having ever knowingly engaged in activities connected with the Communist Party movement.” That investigation was closed in September 1955.

  But Bernstein was the subject of other security (rather than fraud) investigations by the FBI between 1951 and 1958, catalogued in an Office Memorandum dated 31 August 1959 from G. H. Scatterday to Alan Belmont (then Assistant Director of the Domestic Intelligence Division). This memorandum also states that “During the security investigation of Bernstein, Washington Field Offi
ce reviewed HCUA [House Committee on Un-American Activities] files which were found to be replete with information concerning Bernstein's connection with C[ommunist] P[arty] front organizations.”

  During the Kennedy years, Bernstein's past was raked over yet again. On 1 September 1961, Hoover wrote to Kenneth O'Donnell, Kennedy's Special Assistant, responding to a request for “name checks concerning eighty individuals in connection with the Advisory Committee on the Arts” and attaching a rehashed summary of the FBI's findings on Bernstein since the 1940s. In 1962 the New York Office of the FBI sent the Washington Field Office a photograph of Bernstein, with a bizarre memorandum headed “Unsub: American musician alleged to be a Soviet agent.” During the early 1960s, several concerned cranks wrote directly to Hoover, one of the oddest being a nun from the Sisters of St. Joseph in Brooklyn, NY (as with the names of all informants, her name has been redacted in the released Bernstein files). In a letter postmarked 9 March 1963, she wrote: “It has been brought to my attention that Leonard Bernstein, the noted conductor of the new Lincoln Center in New York City, has Communistic tendencies. For this reason I am writing to you with the hope that you will be able to enlighten my Community (two thousand Sisters of St Joseph) and me with the truth. His performances are listed among our very limited number of programs which may be seen. I do not know if the Bureau is permitted to disclose any findings of Mr. Bernstein's past life […] May God bless you for your wonderful work.” J. Edgar Hoover replied personally on 13 March, thanking his correspondent (“My dear Sister”) for “the kind sentiments you expressed concerning my efforts as Director of the FBI,” explaining that information in FBI files is “confidential and available for official use only pursuant to regulations of the Department of Justice,” and ending: “I trust you will not infer either that we do or do not have information regarding Mr. Leonard Bernstein.” A note attached to Hoover's reply states that “Leonard Bernstein was placed on the Security Index 5–2–51, and was canceled 3–18–52, when the Prominent Individuals Subdivision of the Security Index was discontinued.”