For information on Lewis Mumford, I turned to Sidewalk Critic: Lewis Mumford’s Writings on New York, edited by Robert Wojtowicz (Princeton Architectural Press, 2000), a collection of his brilliant New Yorker writing. I also consulted The Lewis Mumford Reader (Pantheon, 1986), edited by Donald L. Miller, who also penned Lewis Mumford: A Life (Grove, 1989).
4.
Among the Reminiscences of Charles Poletti at the CCOHC was his quote about Robert Kopple (May 23, 1978, p. 551–552). In writing this chapter, I also read Caro’s The Power Broker and Ballon and Jackson’s Robert Moses and the Modern City. Martin Mayer’s Esquire story was integral to understanding how Kopple started the World’s Fair. Once again the online archive of the New York Times and its articles detailing Moses’ takeover of the World’s Fair, particularly “Originator of Fair Dropped by Moses,” April 9, 1960, were wonderful sources.
5.
Hi Ho, Come to the Fair discussed Moses’ trip to Paris. Once again John Brooks’s June 1963 New Yorker piece and Martin Mayer’s October 1963 Esquire piece were essential to understanding the behind-the-scenes power struggles and international problems of Moses’ Fair, as was Lawrence R. Samuel’s The End of the Innocence. Many articles in the New York Times and other papers detail Moses’ handling of the BIE and feature his commentary on the Paris-based organization. I found details about this episode, as well as the Master Builder’s battles with the short-lived Design Committee, in the Robert Moses Papers and the World’s Fair Archives at the New York Public Library.
Helen A. Harrison’s “Art for the Million, or Art for the Market?” is the best single source on Moses, the Fair, and art, and is found in Remembering the Future. Poletti’s comments about the US State Department sabotaging the Fair’s relationship with the Soviet Union are in his oral history at Columbia University. The New York Times detailed the Soviet Union saga at the World’s Fair, as did Moses himself in Dangerous Trade. Deegan’s quotation about the Fair being “the greatest single event in history” appeared in The New Yorker’s June 1963 issue.
6.
The two biographies I relied on for this chapter were Neal Gabler’s authoritative Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (Vintage, 2006) and Bob Thomas’s Walt Disney: A Biography (Star, 1981). Also helpful were letters and memos corresponding to Disney’s involvement with the World’s Fair from Robert Moses’ papers at NYPL. I also consulted “Disneyland, 1955: Just take the Santa Ana freeway to the American Dream” by Karal Ann Marling from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (found through jstor.org). Also useful were the aforementioned Cotter and Young books; Remembering the Future; and The End of the Innocence.
7.
The saga of Robert Moses and race is a complicated one that, particularly where it concerns the World’s Fair, was played out in the New York papers. A number of stories from the New York Times are mentioned by name in the text, as well as New York Post columnist James A. Wechsler, who bravely called out both Moses and New York’s powerful building trades for their stances. My narrative drew from such newspaper accounts and all the relevant memos, letters, and correspondences about the Fair’s racial controversies found in the Robert Moses Papers and World’s Fair Archives at the New York Public Library.
The controversy that surrounded Moses’ building of public pools in the late 1930s has been brilliantly analyzed by Professor Marta Gutman of the City College of New York, including her essay “Equipping the Public Realm” from Robert Moses and the Modern City and her essay “Race, Place, and Play” from Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (December 2008). I would also like to thank Professor Gutman for taking the time to speak with me on this subject. The information about Moses and Rochdale Village was gleaned from Peter Eisenstadt’s Rochdale Village: Robert Moses, 6,000 Families, and New York City’s Great Experiment in Integrated Housing and Moses’ unlikely relationship with Abraham Kazan; I would also like to thank Peter Eisenstadt for taking the time to speak with me about his work. Also key was the lengthy New York Times Magazine piece “When Blacks and Whites Live Together” by Harvey Swados (November 13, 1966).
Moses wrote, often brilliantly, on many topics; his New York Times Magazine piece “What’s Wrong with New York?” from August 1, 1943, is just one example. Bruce K. Nicholson discusses his colleague Dr. George H. Bennett joining the Fair’s International Division in Hi Ho, Come to the Fair.
8.
The Kennedys’ stance on civil rights is treated with fairness and clarity in Richard Reeves’s President Kennedy ; insights were also drawn from Schlesinger’s A Thousand Days. The most elegant works on the civil rights movement I came across were Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963–65 by Taylor Branch (Simon & Schuster, 1998) and Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890–2000 by Adam Fairclough (Penguin, 2001). A wonderfully enlightening book on the topic is Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North by Thomas J. Sugrue (Random House, 2008). Also important was Louis E. Lomax’s The Negro Revolt (Signet, 1963). Another necessary text for understanding this crucial moment in American history is America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s, third edition, by Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin (Oxford University Press, 2008).
As ever, periodicals from the time, such as Time, the New York Times, Harper’s, and The New Yorker, proved to be full of vital information. My former colleague Hilton Al’s essay on James Baldwin, “The Making and Unmaking of James Baldwin,” from the February 16, 1998, issue of The New Yorker was especially useful (and insightful).
9.
For this chapter, I relied primarily on the relevant articles in the New York Times and other New York papers that dealt with the explosive summer of 1963 in the Big Apple. Moses’ decision not to pursue a pavilion devoted to “the progress and problems” of African Americans was found among the Robert Moses Papers. For my understanding of the civil rights “Big Four,” I turned to the aforementioned Kennedy books, particularly President Kennedy and A Thousand Days; Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963–65; Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890–2000; and Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North. Also helpful were The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr. edited by Clayborn Carson (Grand Central Publishing, 1998); and James Farmer’s autobiography Lay Bare the Heart (Arbor House, 1985). Also consulted were Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice: The Civil Rights Tapes by Jonathan Rosenberg and Zachary Karabell (W. W. Norton, 2003); America Divided; and The Last Innocent Year. I found some of Louis E. Lomax’s writings in Harper’s as well as in his book The Negro Revolt.
The stall-in saga of Brooklyn CORE is, in my opinion, one of the great forgotten moments of the civil rights movement. It was first covered in the New York papers. (Please see my notes for Chapter 20 for more.) My description of the March on Washington drew from the above books and newspaper accounts. Bob Dylan’s and Joan Baez’s participation in the March on Washington is detailed in Positively Fourth Street by David Hadju (North Point Press, 2002); America Divided; and elsewhere. Dylan’s quotation at the end of the chapter is from Dylan: An Intimate Biography by Anthony Scaduto (Signet, 1971).
10.
The Angela Davis quotation in this chapter is from the documentary film The Black Power Mixtape: 1967–1975 by Göran Hugo Olsson, an amazing historical document itself. American Experience’s Freedom Riders is also an all-important film about the early 1960s. I based my narrative of the four young children murdered in the Birmingham bombing on newspaper accounts, the aforementioned Kennedy and civil rights book, and Spike Lee’s documentary Four Little Girls.
11.
As often was the case, the New York Times became part of the World’s Fair narrative when it published its front-page story “World’s Fair Gains Impetus Despite Snubs” by Robert C. Doty on September 9, 1963. This happened again and again thanks to Moses’ belligerent attitude toward the media. The Gay Talese quotatio
ns on Moses and his relationship to the media are detailed in The Kingdom and the Power (New American Library, 1969). A very special thanks to Gay Talese—the greatest nonfiction writer of them all—for taking the time to answer my questions and share his memories of covering the Fair.
Moses’ handling of the H. L. Hunt episode was detailed in the daily newspapers, and his commentary could be found among his papers at the New York Public Library. Moses also addressed this episode in his book Public Works. The same was true of the Fair’s ensuing art controversy—in this case the New York Herald Tribune took the lead in its criticism of the Fair. My understanding of the Herald Tribune, and its place in both American politics and the New York media world, is based on The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune by Richard Kluger. Also helpful was Emily Genauer’s New York Times obituary. Helen A. Harrison’s essay in Remembering the Future deals with the whole episode brilliantly. I found Moses’ reaction, rebuttal, and commentary among his papers, including his surprising defense of Philip Johnson’s postmodern New York State Pavilion. I found Ada Louise Huxtable’s pieces on the Fair and Johnson both in the New York Times and in her wonderful collection On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change (Walker, 2008).
12.
Moses’ reaction to the Kennedy assassination was found among his papers at the New York Public Library. While I was researching and writing this book, Magic Trip, the never-seen decades-old film that Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters shot of that first fateful cross-country trip to the World’s Fair, was released. In the film Kesey discusses his desire to visit the World’s Fair and his reaction to the JFK assassination.
The early references to the Beatles in the New York Times (“Britons Succumb To ‘Beatlemania’” by Frederick Lewis, The New York Times Magazine, December 1, 1963) were particularly helpful—and quite amusing to read from this distance. While there are many, many books on the Beatles, there are, in reality, few good ones. Among the best are Read the Beatles: Classic and New Writings on the Beatles, Their Legacy and Why They Still Matter, edited by June Skiller Sawyers (Penguin, 2006), which was key to trying to understanding the Fab Four and the impact they had in both Britain and the United States in 1963–64. There is also the authoritative Bob Spitz biography, The Beatles (Little, Brown, 2005), and my personal favorite, Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America by Jonathan Gould (Three Rivers Press, 2007), which successfully puts the band in its appropriate social, historical, and cultural context.
13.
For America’s shocked reaction to the death of President Kennedy, I turned to The Last Innocent Year as well as Robert A. Caro’s fourth volume of his biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, The Passage of Power (Knopf, 2012). I also drew from the New York Times coverage, particularly Gay Talese’s articles quoting people on the street. Moses’ desire to pay homage to the slain president is detailed in various memos and letters to Edward Durrell Stone in the Moses Papers at the New York Public Library.
My account of New York City’s crackdown on the downtown art scene was drawn from a wide range of sources (see my notes for Chapter 19). Information for this chapter came from Ed Sanders’s memoir Fug You (Da Capo, 2011) and I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg by Bill Morgan (Viking, 2006). Louis Menand’s New Yorker essay on Andy Warhol (“Top of the Pops,” January 11, 2010) was also an important revelation on the subject. References to the New York Times’ infamous article “Growth of Overt Homosexuality in City Provokes Wide Concern” on December 17, 1963, can be found in various books, including City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara by Brad Gooch (Knopf, 1993) and Arthur Gelb’s often brilliant memoir of his time at the Times, City Room (Berkeley, 2003). I found the article itself in the New York Times archive. I based my account of Dylan’s infamous reaction to receiving the Tom Paine Award from various Dylan biographies, including No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan (Da Capo, 1986) by Robert Shelton, the former music critic for the New York Times.
Part Two: Something New
14.
Moses’ complaints regarding the US Pavilion and his steadfast refusal to have the Beatles play any part in the World’s Fair are detailed in memos from his papers. My description of the Beatles’ arrival in New York is based on The Last Innocent Year, as well as The Beatles Come to America by Martin Goldsmith (J. Wiley, 2004); Bob Spitz’s The Beatles; and Jonathan Gould’s Can’t Buy Me Love.
Once again, newspaper accounts of the band’s arrival were, perhaps, the most enlightening sources and—no surprise—the New York Times’ coverage of Beatlemania was second to none: “The Beatles Invade, Complete With Long Hair and Screaming Fans,” February 8, 1964, and Theodore Strongin’s musical critique of the band helped illustrate how the Beatles were viewed by critics in 1964. The same is true of Time’s February 21, 1964, dispatch on the band, “Singers: The Unbarbershopped Quartet.” The New Yorker ran a series of Talk of the Town pieces about the Fab Four in early 1964 that were also useful.
Helpful too was the band’s own Anthology (Chronicle Books, 1997). John Lennon’s memories of that fateful first trip to America are from his 1970 interview with Jann S. Wenner, which is collected in Lennon Remembers (Verso, 2000). I also consulted Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation by Philip Norman (Fireside, 1981) and Read the Beatles. Dylan’s reaction to the band is drawn from David Hadju’s Positively 4th Street. Louis Menand’s essay “Why They Were Fab” (The New Yorker, October 16, 2000) was also immensely helpful.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the multiple Beatles documentaries I watched in an attempt to place myself in the middle of the mass hysteria known as Beatlemania, including Anthology and The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit by Albert Maysles.
15.
The Fab Four’s meeting with Cassius Clay is recounted in many places, but the most informative is David Remnick’s masterful biography on Muhammad Ali, King of the World (Random House, 1998). Clay/Ali’s connection to Malcolm X is also discussed in Manning Marable’s brilliant Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (Viking, 2011). I also consulted Nick Tosches’s The Devil and Sonny Liston (Little, Brown, 2000). But most fun of all was my afternoon with the effervescent George Lois, the brilliant mind who produced all those Esquire covers in the 1960s. My thanks to him for his hospitality and taking the time to meet with me.
The various works of art, books, plays, and films that broke taboos in 1964 were detailed in various papers from the time and The Last Innocent Year. I also consulted The End of Obscenity by Charles Rembar (Harper & Row, 1968). Also important was Louisa Thomas’s 2008 profile of Barney Rosset in Newsweek (“The Most Dangerous Man in Publishing”); his obituary in the New York Times from February 22, 2012; and the 2007 documentary on Rosset, Obscene. The long-forgotten New Statesman article by Paul Johnson is among the pieces collected in Read the Beatles.
16.
My trusty old copy of Malcolm X Speaks (Grove, 1966), acquired years ago from a used bookstore, was my guide to the powerful commentary on American life that is Malcolm X’s “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech. Audio files of the speech are readily available online. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention was key to understanding the speech and Malcolm’s evolution as a civil rights fighter. I also consulted Martin Luther King Jr.’s autobiography for this chapter and various newspaper accounts that referenced Malcolm X during this period in his life.
17.
A. M. Rosenthal’s short book, Thirty-Eight Witnesses: The Kitty Genovese Case (Melville House, 2008), is a sad testimony to this unforgettable episode in New York City history. I also consulted the original New York Times stories. Arthur Gelb recounts the sordid affair in his City Room memoir. A 1964 Talk of the Town piece about Rosenthal’s book from The New Yorker was also helpful. I found the letters regarding crime in New York City that Moses began receiving shortly after the Genovese murder among his papers at the New York Public Library. One of the
best stories I came across on the subject was a piece titled “Kitty, 40 Years Later” by Jim Rasenberger in the late great City Section of the New York Times (February 8, 2004).
18.
My narrative about Andy Warhol, pop art, and the World’s Fair drew from many sources. For starters there is the aforementioned Helen A. Harrison essay from Remembering the Future. Key to understanding Warhol and his work Thirteen Most Wanted Men is Richard Meyer’s chapter on the subject from his brilliant 2002 book, Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art (Beacon) as well as “Andy Warhol Remembered” by Mark Lancaster from the Burlington Magazine (March 1989), which recounts Lancaster’s trip to Flushing Meadow with Warhol. Also invaluable was Calvin Tompkins wonderful profile on Warhol, “Raggedy Andy,” which I found in The Sixties: The Art, Attitudes, Politics, and Media of Our Most Explosive Decade, edited by Gerald Howard (Washington Square Press, 1982).
Also helpful—and amusing—were Warhol’s own The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (Harcourt, 1975) and Popism: The Warhol Sixties, cowritten with Pat Hackett (Harcourt, 1980). The best biography on Warhol that I came across was Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol by Tony Scherman and David Dalton (Harper, 2009). I also consulted Philip Johnson by Franz Schulze (Knopf, 1994). Louis Menad’s aforementioned “Top of the Pops” New Yorker essay on Warhol was also helpful for this chapter. Roy Lichtenstein’s homage to Jack Kirby was found in Marvel Comics: The Untold Story by Sean Howe (Harper, 2013).
For general background knowledge about the postwar New York art scene and the pop art movement, I turned to New Art City by Jed Perl (Knopf, 2005) and City Poet, Brad Gooch’s biography of poet Frank O’Hara, an important player in the New York art world. Tompkins’ New Yorker profiles of Robert Rauschenberg (“Moving Out,” February 29, 1964) and Philip Johnson (“Forms Under Light,” May 23, 1977) were also invaluable. Ada Louis Huxtable’s New York Times Magazine piece on Philip Johnson’s work (“He Adds Elegance to Modern Architecture,” May 24, 1964) was both useful and enlightening.
Tomorrow-Land Page 38