Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2000 | Page 128
Popular Culture Review
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Leonard Bernstein quoted in Craig Zadan, Sondheim and Co. (New York: Da Capo,
1994), 17.
Fredric Jameson in Sohnya Sayles, The 60s Without Apology, (Minneapolis: Univer
sity of Minnesota Press, 1984), pp. 180-186.
Kennedy was nearly the vice-presidential nominee in 1956. Like Bernstein, Kennedy’s
1950’s popularity soared and by 1957 along with his bestselling book he gained na
tional recognition on the hit television show Omnibus.
Norman Mailer, THE THIRD PRESIDENTIAL PAPER - The Existential Hero, “Super
man Comes to the Supermarket.” October 1960 in The Presidential Papers. New York:
Bantam, 1960, 1964, pp. 37-38.
Sondheim was previously a television writer influenced by the postwar 1950’s trend
toward “realism,” his first Broadway play was West Side Story.
“There were two ways movies could outflank television: (1) do what television could
not do in the matter of spectacle (form) or (2) do what television could not do in the
matter of controversial images or narrative (content). In short, “make ‘em big or make
‘em provocative.” During a decade notorious for conservatism and conformity, the
motion picture industry, with a vigor bom of desperation, became more technically
innovative, economically adventuresome, and aesthetically daring than at any time in
its history.” (Gene Ameel, “Pix’ Big and Bold Bid for Gold,” Variety (8 August 1956):
3 cited in Doherty, 25-26.)
An early juvenile delinquency prototype was RKO’s Are these Our Children? in 1931.
Gangster and juvenile delinquency films—discouraged by the PCA—were banned
during the war as potential “anti-American” Nazi propaganda. Juvenile delinquency
resurfaced as a controversial social topic in 1943—Monogram starred Jackie Cooper
in Where are your Children ?, RKO responded with Youth Runs Wild in Val Lewton’s
noir B unit (when Wise was there); both projects faced scrutiny by the Office of War
Information (OWI) and Office of Censorship. Monogram’s Where are my Children?
and RKO’s Youth Runs Wild listed as Are These Our Children? in Fred Stanley’s “All
is Confusion: Hollywood Views Juvenile Delinquency Films Through Haze of Cen
sorship,” New York Times 17 October 1943.
Wise quoted in Kutner, 33. According to production records titled, “West Side Story:
The Problems of Style,” in the Robert Wise Collection and Ernest Lehman Collection
dated January 21,1960, producer-codirector Wise (collaborating with Lehman) writes,
“In looking at and analyzing previous musical pictures we find that dances and song
numbers done in completely realistic settings and given straight realistic treatment
have a very unreal feeling and are often embarrassing. This poses an even
bigger...problem in the case of West Side Story. First, it is a musical drama, not a musi
cal comedy, so many of the accepted musical conventions will not work for us. Sec
ond, its story is based on a most contemporary and serious problem which has to be
treated with as much honesty as possible within the frame of the musical picture. Third,
the biggest impact made by the stage version was the highly stylized dance numbers
and lyrical quality of the love story with its highly theatrical treatment.” Thus, to “make
West Side Story even more distinctive than it was on the stage,” Wise utilized the