Tea at Trianon: The History Behind 'West Side Story'

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

The History Behind 'West Side Story'

From The New Republic:

The new film sets the action in San Juan Hill, the slum in the West 60s cleared by Robert Moses to build Lincoln Center, and it portrays the neighborhood as a battleground between whites and Puerto Ricans. But in fact, San Juan Hill was a Black neighborhood of long standing, into which Puerto Ricans migrated during the postwar years. There was never much gang activity there during the 1950s. These jarring story elements make sense only when you learn that West Side Story’s creators drew inspiration not from gang wars in New York City but rather from gang wars in Los Angeles.

It was in L.A. that teenage gangs first burst onto the national consciousness with the 1943 Zoot Suit riots. The riots were provoked by Anglo GIs stationed in L.A., en route to the Pacific. The GIs harassed Mexican-American pachucos for flouting wartime regulations that outlawed the pachucos’ baggy zoot suits (because they used too much fabric). An argument ensued, and a uniformed Navy sailor was beaten up. In retaliation, 50 U.S. sailers marched through downtown Los Angeles and beat with clubs anyone in a zoot suit they could find. The result was six days of violence between servicemen and pachucos. These riots were, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt said, a “racial protest.” L.A. Mayor Fletcher Bowron replied that the Chicano rioters were gang members. Both were right. (Read more.)