BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Library of Congress -- Exhibit: Hope for America: Performers, Politics and Pop Culture

DC -- Library of Congress -- Exhibit: Hope for America: Performers, Politics and Pop Culture:

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Description of Pictures: Hope for America: Performers, Politics and Pop Culture
Ongoing exhibition, opened June 11, 2010.
Bob Hope, who entertainment historian and critic Leonard Maltin declared “may be the most popular entertainer in the history of Western civilization,” was arguably the nation's best-loved topical humorist during the twentieth century. Hope for America draws from the personal papers, joke files, films, radio and television broadcasts, and other materials donated to the Library of Congress by Bob Hope and his family. To put the history of the involvement of entertainers in politics into perspective, the exhibition also profiles the politically oriented activities of other prominent figures represented in the Library's vast collections.
The exhibition invites visitors to examine artifacts that represent an array of viewpoints and draw their own conclusions regarding the interplay of politics and entertainment in American public life and its consequences for the nation's political culture.

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[1] LOCBH_101011_001.JPG	[2] LOCBH_101011_014.JPG	[3] LOCBH_101011_016.JPG
[4] LOCBH_101011_046.JPG	[5] LOCBH_101011_053.JPG	[6] LOCBH_101011_066.JPG
[7] LOCBH_101011_075.JPG	[8] LOCBH_101011_081.JPG	[9] LOCBH_101011_085.JPG
[10] LOCBH_101011_090.JPG	[11] LOCBH_101011_100.JPG	[12] LOCBH_101011_107.JPG
[13] LOCBH_101011_112.JPG	[14] LOCBH_101011_121.JPG	[15] LOCBH_101011_135.JPG
[16] LOCBH_101011_142.JPG	[17] LOCBH_101011_150.JPG	[18] LOCBH_101011_162.JPG
[19] LOCBH_101011_168.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. LOCBH_101011_001.JPG: Feiffer on President Johnson: Of the presidents he satirized, Feiffer felt most betrayed by Lyndon Johnson. Early on, Feiffer's admiration for Johnson's domestic achievements interfered with his caricatures. "As a political satirist," he acknowledged, "my pen only works where it can hurt." With the escalation of the Vietnam War, Feiffer's image of Johnson coalesced. Following the July 1967 disorders in Newark and Detroit, Feiffer drew this cartoon, for which the White House requested an autographed original. Feiffer refused.
2. LOCBH_101011_014.JPG: Corrected Li'l Abner for 2-7-67 I'm entertaining some prominent protest singers tonight -- -- so keep the kids out of sight!! A toast to my last album -- "Songs of Protest Against the Filthy Rich!!" I made me a million!! She's demanding a two million advance for her new one -- "Songs of Protest Against Capitalist Greed!!"
3. LOCBH_101011_016.JPG: Jules Feiffer, Christmas card, 1972. Feiffer on President Nixon: Feiffer needed time to develop "some sort of psychological take" on presidents, he wrote, before he could create a "decent caricature." Anger at their policies improved his art. He stated, "Political cartoons are more likely to be good when the attitude is hostile, to be even better when the attitude is rage, and when you reach hate, you can really get going." In this regard, he thought of Richard Nixon as "Father Christmas." Jules Feiffer (b. 1929) arrived on the national scene after his first collection of Village Voice cartoons, "Sick, Sick, Sick: A Guide to Non-Confident Living," published in April 1958, became a best-seller. "My definition of humor," he stated, "is that to be really funny a joke, a story, a comic routine must make an observation on an existing situation, not the myth that we've come to know the situation by." "I began my cartoon with no intention of getting into politics... I was more concerned with the social focus of the country, on relationships between men and women, people and their jobs, parents and children. After a time I discovered that even these interests involved politics. The Eisenhower sensibility affected every phase of our lives, as did the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon sensibilities later one." -- Jules Feiffer, 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, playwright, author and screenwriter Jules Feiffer created satirical cartoons on a weekly basis for the Village Voice for more than forty years, beginning in 1956. His cartoon was entitled "Sick, Sick, Sick," and like the so-called "sick" comedians, Feiffer brought into focus disturbing aspects of a sick society. Like Bob Hope, Feiffer often focused his satires on American presidents. Unlike Hope, Feiffer's cartoons mercilessly ridiculed attitudes, decisions, and actions of leaders who, in his view, had caused the nation to lose its way. Feiffer, as he commented, "thought the country was coming unglued and that many of the values that we sentimentalized had this dark side that we chose not to reveal to ourselves." Like other satirists of his time, Feiffer became politically active during the 1960s, and his cartoons from that period reflected his deepening concerns. The "Radical Middle": Feiffer devoted a number of cartoons to warning his readers about the tendency within American politics and the media to marginalize extreme views at either end of the political spectrum. This stifling of debate, he believed, narrowed the range of acceptable solutions to persistent societal problems. He states that hte "voice of the middle or Radical Middle... was in its guise of reasonableness exacerbating our problems while pretending to address them."
4. LOCBH_101011_046.JPG: Letter from Al Capp to Jules Feiffer, March 3, 1966. Al Capp: Li'l Abner by Al Capp (1909-1979) satirized American life from the vantage point of the hillbilly community of Dogpatch. Acclaimed by the intelligentsia when he targeted conservatives, Capp lampooned liberalism in the 1960s and lost their favor. When Capp complimented Feiffer's artistry in a Playboy interview, Feiffer responded that in light of Capp's other opinions, "I must be considerably poorer as an artist that even I had dreamed." Capp took umbrage at Feiffer's comment, prompting this exchange of letters. Feiffer's response was in the tone of Li'l Abner. The Sting of Satire: In January 1967, Capp created "Joanie Phoenie," a hypocritical, money-hungry folksinger who visited Dogpatch with her slovenly cohorts. The folksinger Joan Baez charged that the character was a caricature of herself and a "stupid, vulgar satire" of the anti-war movement. After she demanded a retraction, Capp criticized her "protests about others' rights to protest." Years later, Baez confessed that the satire stung especially because of her own "confusion about being rich and famous."
5. LOCBH_101011_053.JPG: Draft of letter form Jules Feiffer to Al Capp, March 16, 1966
6. LOCBH_101011_090.JPG: Doonesbury "We are the world... We are the children! We are the ones..." "Who make a brighter day so let's start giving! There's a choice we're making..." "We're saving our own lives... It's true we make a bet- ter day, just you and me!" "We are the..." Quincy, wouldn't "you an I" be more grammatical? Jimmy! "We Are The World" More than forty-five leading American pop recording artists gathered together in a Los Angeles studio on January 28, 1985 to record "We Are the World," a song written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie, and produced by Quincy Jones to raise money for famine relief in Africa. Cartoonist Garry Trudeau spoofed the recording session in two weeks of Doonesbury comics, in which he inserted the strip's fictional pop star, Jimmy Thudpucker, among the performers.
7. LOCBH_101011_100.JPG: George and Ira Gershwin. Ink doodles of heads by George Gershwin with lyric by Ira Gershwin from "No Comprenez, No Capish, No Versteh!" in "League of Nations Finale," from Le 'Em Eat Cake, 1933. Musical Theater and Satire: Satire "had the automatic effect of adding weight" to 1930s musicals, Alan Jay Lerner wrote. "Of Thee I Sing" and "Let 'Em Eat Cake" contrasted greatly with the Gershwin's lighter 1920s shows. The former's "Who Cares?" cynically asked "Who cares what banks fail in Yonkers -- Long as you've got a kiss that conquers?" a line Ira replaced in the 1952 revival. The sequel offered the bleak vision of a proletarian dictatorship complete with guillotine.
8. LOCBH_101011_112.JPG: Jules Feiffer. Sketch of Judy Collins on witness stands with US marshal at Chicago Seven trial, January 22, 1970. Entertainment at the "Chicago Seven" Trial: The trial of the "Chicago Seven" -- activists indicted for conspiring to foment a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention -- took on a circus atmosphere, with counterculture defendants confronting a contemptuous judge. When folksinger Judy Collins, on a witness stand, answered a question by singing "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" the judge ordered her to stop, saying "We are not here to be entertained." Cartoonist Jules Feiffer, in the courtroom, captured the ensuing moment.
9. LOCBH_101011_121.JPG: Letter from Meejuna [?], et al for Haymarket Square to Jules Feiffer with draft reply by Feiffer, ca. March 1971. Political Vaudeville: In 1971, Jane Fonda headed a "political vaudeville" counter-USO troupe as part of the GI movement to encourage soldiers to refuse to fight. During the troupe's first phase, they performed satirical skits by Jules Feiffer, Herb Gardner, and Peter Boyle in GI coffeehouses, including Haymarket Square near Fort Bragg. By Christmas, the troupe re-formed with more women involved as "FTA" -- standing for, among other things, "Free The Army" -- and performed near military bases in Asia.
10. LOCBH_101011_135.JPG: Letter from Cathy Perkus, Political Rights Defense Fund, to Jules Feiffer, with Nixon "Inoperative" button, October 17, 1973. "Inoperative": In April 1973, Nixon press secretary, Ronald Ziegler, announced that all the president's previous statements about Watergate were "inoperative" and that "the President's statement today," which conflicted with earlier pronouncements, "is the operative statement." That phrasing provoked satiric commentary. Bob Hope joked, "I've played golf with the President and he scores very well. Of course, every time he hits a bad shots he declares it 'inoperative.'" A Jules Feiffer button branded Nixon himself as "Inoperative."
11. LOCBH_101011_142.JPG: Presidential Medal of Freedom: "When the time for recognition of service to the nation in wartime comes to be considered, Bob Hope should be high on the list. This man drives himself and is driven. It is impossible to see how he can do so much, can cover so much ground, and work so hard and be so effective. He works month after month at a pace that would kill most people." -- John Steinbeck, 1943 On his last morning in office, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded Presidential Medals of Freedom to twenty individuals, including Bob Hope. Bob Hope's citation noted that, "With his gifts of joy to all the American people, he had written his name large in the history of our times."
12. LOCBH_101011_150.JPG: Bob Hope. Handwritten draft of announcement for Frank Sinatra to read during Academy Awards broadcast, April 8, 1975. I wanta make an announcement for the Academy -- we are not responsible for any political utterances on this program and we are sorry that had to take place Academy Award Controversy: During the 1975 Academy Award ceremonies, with the Vietnam War nearly over, Bert Schneider, accepting an award for the antiwar documentary "Hearts and Minds," read a telegram from a Viet Cong diplomat thanking Americans for "the liberation of South Vietnam." After receiving angry telegrams backstage, Bob Hope, a co-host with Frank Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine, composed this draft disclaimer on the back of a telegram for Sinatra to read, over objections from MacLaine.
13. LOCBH_101011_162.JPG: Jules Feiffer. Cartoon with handwritten notes, March 18, 1973. Feiffer and the POWs: When POWs began returning home, speculation spread that they had been coached on what to say in press conferences. Nearly identical statements from a few POWs gave credence to the rumor. POWs and the Defense Department, however, vehemently denied the accusation. When Jules Feiffer's cartoon on the subject was published, he received letters of outrage, including one from a publisher who threatened to renegotiate his contract with Feiffer's syndicate, provoking this pointed reply from Feiffer.
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Description of Subject Matter: Hope for America: Performers, Politics and Pop Culture
Ongoing exhibition, opened June 11, 2010.
Bob Hope, who entertainment historian and critic Leonard Maltin declared “may be the most popular entertainer in the history of Western civilization,” was arguably the nation's best-loved topical humorist during the twentieth century. Hope for America draws from the personal papers, joke files, films, radio and television broadcasts, and other materials donated to the Library of Congress by Bob Hope and his family. To put the history of the involvement of entertainers in politics into perspective, the exhibition also profiles the politically oriented activities of other prominent figures represented in the Library's vast collections.
The exhibition invites visitors to examine artifacts that represent an array of viewpoints and draw their own conclusions regarding the interplay of politics and entertainment in American public life and its consequences for the nation's political culture.
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