September 26, 2008
Anniversaries of births and deaths are faithful and welcome reminders. The most successful of these is, of course, Christmas, which celebrates the birth of Jesus worldwide. But there are also billions of lesser birthdays and death notices across the calendar, and you and I make careful note of our own birthdays.
A few years ago, I came across the announcement that in a week’s time we would reach the 435th anniversary of the birth of Miguel de Cervantes, author of the great Quixote tales. That was enough for me to get busy on a radio biography of Cervantes, which did not set either Hispania or the western world afire. Maybe it should have been written in Spanish, a task beyond my capacity.
Lately, it has been noted that the year 2009, next year, will mark the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln. That was called to my attention by Susan Loewenberg, head of the Los Angeles Theatre Works. She had already produced an historical play co-written by Geoffrey Cowan, then dean of the USC Annenberg, about the Pentagon papers. She reminded me of my own play, “The Rivalry,” based on the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, a play now 50 years old.
Before I had set to work on this play, all I knew was that Douglas was a short, dynamic man, who tangled with Lincoln in two vital contests. The rest was over-simplification and ignorance. I had no idea of Douglas’ rank in his own time – a rank not nearly indicated by his office of Senator. I tended to classify him among various enemies of progress, simply because he was an enemy of Lincoln.
I was not prepared for the status of Douglas as a “nation-builder,” nor of his untiring services to the expansion of American railroads, or of his donating the land on which the University of Chicago was built. I was not aware that before the debates, Douglas had completely overshadowed his adversary. Lincoln was strictly local stuff; Douglas was the most conspicuous figure in American politics, his prestige beyond that even of the then-President, the uninspired James Buchanan. The Douglas home—thanks mainly to Adele, his wife—far outranked the White House as the social cynosure of Washington. Never was a man more clearly indicated for the highest office in the land, and Lincoln was not being sardonic or coy when he said during the debates, “Senator Douglas has a world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians of his party have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be President of the United States…on the contrary, nobody expects me to be President.”
Yet, in this contest for the seat of Illinois Senator, Douglas was as brash as any figure in American history, in his yen for a Greater United States. Here he is suggesting that we acquire Cuba as a territory: “Indeed, the time has now come when our interests would be advanced by the acquisition of the Island of Cuba.” Lincoln made a quick reposte to this proposition, and the matter was dropped until, years later, we went to war with Spain over the unsettled issue of the dynamiting of the battleship Maine in Cuban waters.
Mrs. Loewenberg promptly cast as Lincoln David Strathairn, who played Edward R. Murrow in the hit picture, Good Night and Good Luck; and the great actor Paul Giamatti, who played John Adams in the recent stirring HBO biographical production. Adele Douglas, who narrates the play, had at this writing yet to be cast. A separate eastern company has been organized by Vincent Dowling, and already has dates in Massachusetts.
The University of Southern California is now old enough to have a string of anniversaries of its own, and I am sure that the student body, as well as the widespread faculty, will be involved. Good luck to them, and may the personnel of my own anniversarial companies break a collective leg.