Dan LeFebvre  02:21

Before we look at some of the details in the movie, if you were to give Maria an overall letter grade for its historical accuracy, what would it get?

Sophia Lambton  02:31

I would give it a G. So it’s going off the scale of customary grades here.

Dan LeFebvre  02:38

Doesn’t even count as a traditional letter grade. The opening scene of the movie is Maria’s death, but it’s also how it ends. And then most of the movie itself is the final week of her life, and we get flashbacks of Maria’s earlier life here and there that will throughout the movie that we’ll talk about. But let’s start today by filling in some of the historical context, because since the movie is focusing on that final week of her life, we don’t really get a lot of who Maria Callas was. So for listeners who aren’t familiar with who Maria Callas was, can you feel in some more historical context that we don’t see up until the timeline of the movie starts,

Sophia Lambton  03:18

Maria Callas was a Greek American soprano. She was born to Greek parents in Manhattan on the second of December 1923 she had pretty negligent parents. They were quite first of all, they just didn’t love their daughters, especially the mother, Evangelia. But the father George was also not great. He He had trouble sustaining contact with his daughters through the years, and at one point, when callous and he actually did an interview together, he couldn’t remember he got the dates of both daughters birthdays wrong in public. In an interview, he was a pharmacist, they were not well off. When callous was 13 years old, Evangelia decided to take her and her sister, yanti, who was known in America as Jackie, and generally as Jackie to Athens, Marie Kals, began performing very, very early. She was actually, according to her cousin Mary annexy, she was actually singing whilst playing with a ball, even at the age of three, and by the age of five, she was parading around the living room with a with her other cousins, shawl singing the habanero, or just fitted Dan Yeah, from the opera mignon, which isn’t even that popular in opera. She actually began entering radio contests at the age of think it was 12 and, well, I’ll, I’ll share more on that later. But she had quite a difficult time during the war in Athens, not just the war that we know of, but also the Greek civil war between communists and allies of the British, which was actually bloodier in Athens than World War Two. She came back to New York in 19. 45 trying to make a career, and reunited with her father, whom she hadn’t seen in eight years. But that didn’t help her much, so she went to Rona in June 1947 and little by little, she both made a career, but she also met her husband, Giovanni Battista minigini, a man 28 years her senior, who was not at all attractive, but she was not really she didn’t have a big interest in men or romance, per se, so she did love him. He was a father figure to her, and she she saw him as a nurturing man. He also became her manager, but in his over greed, he actually inadvertently calls for a bad reputation, because he demanded too much from opera houses. Demanded too much pay from opera houses, you know, spread rumors about other soprano she would never have spread herself anyway. They began to have marital problems because he kept insisting she’s seeing more and more at a time when she was really having very severe vocal problems. And finally, I’ll get to this more detail later on. But finally, he admitted he had invested their money in forgeries as paintings. And she said, Well, I’d like to take over my own career. And he said, No, that’s not going to happen. And he left her. He left her coincidentally, truly, coincidentally, as a time when she was when they were both socializing with the Greek shipping magnate, Aristotle Onassis. And later on, later on, she began a relationship with Onassis that lasted for actually, it didn’t last much longer than eight and a half years. But throughout that time, having got I forgot to mention so she was building her career. Obviously, that what made her absolutely unparalleled was the fact that she could sculpt her voice. She could sculpt the tamper of her voice to really incarnate a character to the point that you sometimes don’t even recognize the voice. So you’re hearing a Japanese, 15 year old Japanese Geisha in the voice of a 3031, year old, a Greek American soprano who, by that point, was living in Italy, she took insane artistic risks that other singers generally do not take, because it’s it’s perilous for the voice, and her vocal decline is not exactly a mystery, but there were multiple factors going into it, various health problems, and that was the main plight of her life. Later on, actually, she she dumped Aristotle and asked us three months before he, quite famously, married Jacqueline Kennedy. During those three months after she dumped him, he kept trying to get her back, but she wouldn’t take his calls. He sent her bouquets. She you know, she just, she was actually traveling around the United States and Mexico, and was not answering his calls, but she did not know he was going to marry Jack Mackenzie, and was obviously hurt when he did later on. She knowing that she had this terrible vocal decline. I will have a mention that she never retired, and we’ll get to that point further on in the podcast, she never retired, so her career was never suspended or ended. But there were periods when she sang less because she was going through various health problems and that was impacting her voice. And she tried a film career. So she tried. She played the role of Medea in Pierpaolo pozzolini, Medea in 19 it was shot in 1969 came out in 1970 in the US. She tried being an opera director in Turin, where she and her tenor partner, Giuseppe DiStefano, who actually later, or actually around that time, in 1972 was already her lover, they tried staging Verdi’s events, but that didn’t fit her either. And she also tried giving master classes at the Julia School of New York series, master classes from October 71 to February 1972 which are all recorded and all on YouTube, and they’re tremendous fun. And this was later on, much later on. This inspired a play by Terence McNally called master class, which was on Broadway. It got Zoe Caldwell Tony, I believe it’s actually a very fictitious play, but the master classes themselves were fascinating. However, she found she didn’t really like teaching that much. She did have a big comeback tour with Giuseppe Miss Efrain from 73 to 74 when her voice was ready in a very, very bad way, and she considered many projects later on before Well, her health just kept getting worse, but also her voice just was not recoverable for various reasons. However, she was considering projects and practicing, rehearsing for projects up to her death. This film is apparently focusing on the last week of her life, but it’s very misleading even about that, because there have been various portrayals and perceptions of Mary camps being this terrible recluse at the end of her life. And yes, it is true that she did not go out as often she had. She was very, very unhappy, apart from the fact that Onassis, by that point, had died, because people tend to center her sadness on this, but also her dear friend, the film director, lucchinov. Ganti, who had staged her in opera, had also passed away not long after Onassis her dear friend Pier Paolo Pasolini, who had directed her only film, ROM role, had been brutally murdered at I don’t remember what age he was about. Her rating was about 5152 she had gone through various losses. She couldn’t understand why she couldn’t recover her voice. So it’s not just that, oh on US has died and then she didn’t eat the house. That’s absolutely not true. In the last week of her life, she met up with Princess Grace. So Grace Kelly, who had who then became Princess Grace, she had lunch with her and the conductor Franco manino, a longtime friend of hers, reminisced about the past. She was also going to meet with the French choreographer Maurice Baja to discuss a potential project, some kind of film about singing with him. She actually was on the phone with a woman I interviewed, Bettina Brentano, who was still only a kid then, I think, 18 years old, so just about an adult. And she told Bettina, they Betina told her. They told me often, because Bettina was going to undergo an appendectomy. But by the afternoon, Mary calles had died, and she was also planning, according to George Moore, the president of the Metropolitan Opera Association, she was planning to visit him in Sotogrande, Spain. So it is not the case that she alienated herself from everybody and shunned everybody and said, No, I’m not going to talk to anybody. The head’s true, but the ending of her life was very sad. It was obviously quite premature, because she died at 53 but she was still very determined to Pierce, persevere and to survive.

Dan LeFebvre  11:33

Wow, yeah, it seems sounds like she had so much more to her than obviously we see in the movie, because we don’t really see much of her actual life in in the movie, it just kind of focuses on the end there, but the talking about the strain that it had on her voice, and just just the performances and opera that taking chances like that, but then getting into acting and teaching and all these other things too, was that something that was uncommon at the time, that she was doing things and then just almost mentioning her husband pushing her to do that was, was she being pushed to do more and more things that were strenuous and putting even more strain on her?

Sophia Lambton  12:13

Well, that’s a really good question. Dan, actually, because her career became very young, she sang, she was, I told I mentioned everything radio conscious. I think 11 was the first one. She was 11 when she entered the first one. She made her she sang her first role at the age of 15. Later on, she would say, my mother pushed me. But we also know that she herself was a performance geek from a very young age. She was very determined to succeed. She would say, reflecting back on her teenage years that she would work, she would work toward performing because she went, she actually attended two conservatories, the National Conservatory in Athens and the Athens Conservatoire, but she didn’t graduate from either one because she didn’t attend the mandatory harmony classes, as she thought the teacher was bad and she failed to examine music history. But she was a geek when it came to performance, and she would work from 10am to 8pm every single day. And she would reflect, reflect on it, saying, but you know, you would ask, well, didn’t I want to go out? Well, no, I had no interest in going out. I that was what she was. She wanted to she would say, the poet speaks of the mind’s eye. There is the mind’s ear. There is so much you can do even without a piano. And she would talk about rehearsing operas in her head, just on the bus in Athens during the war. So she she pushed herself harder than anybody else. Now, in terms of her vocal strain, that’s the whole giant topic, whether she pushed herself so hard that she handed is a difficult question. Is also the subject of her weight loss, which could have had an effect, but primarily what caused vocal decline was damage to the stomach muscles, which ruined her support, the support of her vocal apparatus, because her vocal cords were always fine. And she went to various kind of doctors, laryngologists, lung doctors, you know, she went to see all the specialists. And it wasn’t her ailment, in terms of her vocal decline. That wasn’t anything, uh, visible. It wasn’t something you could identify and say, Oh, so this happened, but she did get uh, several hernias, including one which she said was in the diaphragm, which would have also, uh, apparently it pushes out through the diaphragm, and she said it, she herself said it damaged her stomach muscles in terms of, was she being pushed to do things her husband when they were together, she was at the peak of her career, really the peak of her career. We’re talking 5758 59 Yeah, he wanted her to do things she didn’t want to do. He also tried to get her to sing when she felt unwell, so when she had the flu or bronchitis, and she did push herself through that, but she was also pushing herself through that because the media was giving her an unfair reputation as a diva, which was partly because her husband was demanding higher salaries, kind of to her, not to her knowledge. So she kind of left him in charge of all that, and didn’t want to. Have much to do with also because she had various arguments with Opera House managers, because she wanted everything to be perfect, not for herself, but for the composers. She always used to say, I am a servant of the composers. She was very self Lovick. She never thought she was giving enough, but she herself wrote an article for a French newspaper called out with just the arts, basically in 1958 saying, I will not, I cannot stand by and see opera being treated in a shabby or second rate way. So it was never about making life easier for her. It was about making life, making the world of opera as best as it could be when her husband did, and we’ll get on to this later on, when her husband did want her to do projects that she didn’t want to do, like film, for instance, he wanted her to be in. She was offered the role, the leading lady role in Carl Foreman’s The Guns of Navarone. I think Carl Forman was produced with that which eventually starred Gregory Peck and Irene papas. She was offered the leading role in the German film called the Prima Donna. She was offered some kind of gig singing in a cabaret at Las Vegas, and that’s when she told her husband, no, this isn’t me. I sing opera. I don’t want to do some stuff. And she and she didn’t, in terms of the master classes and directing evasive Giuliani in Turin and starring in Medea, those were more. Those were her trying to find herself in other ventures, and she tried, she really committed to them, but she never felt quite at ease in any one of the three. But that’s a later callus that doesn’t have anything to do with her husband, because those ventures started in 1969 she split from her husband in 1959

Dan LeFebvre  16:38

if we go back to the movie, kind of throughout the movie we see a character named mandrax. He’s played by Cody Schmidt McKee, and he’s interviewing her throughout the movie. But it doesn’t really take long, as was watching the movie, to figure out that he’s not a real person. Mandrax is the name of a drug that she’s taking quite a lot. There’s a one scene in the movie where we see Maria’s Butler, frucci, oh, keeping tabs on how many she’s taking, and it seems like she’s taking at least four pills a day, along with some other medications. The movie doesn’t really talk about why she’s taking it and some of these other medications, so I thought maybe she was perhaps ill. You kind of talked a little bit about some of the vocal decline in that. But then there’s towards the end of the movie, not to get ahead of our timeline here, but begrudgingly, she gets some blood work done, and a doctor flat out tells her that she tries to sing the extra stress and medications that she’ll need to get through that will kill her. So can you unravel this whole mandrax thing that we see in the movie and how it played into if there was an illness that Maria had?

Sophia Lambton  17:36

Oh gosh. Well, first of all, she did not have any kind of substance abuse disorder at all. She was not addicted to pills. She did take a pills called mandrax to sleep. She had terrible insomnia problems. And on two occasions in her life, it is true that on two occasions in her life, she accidentally took too many so and it was hard to wake her up. So that was on the 17th of February, 74 when she was supposed to sing at Carnegie Hall, and four years, almost four years before that, on the 25th of May, 1970 but those were accidents caused by the fact that Maria Callas was, to be honest, quite an ignorant person when it came to anything except mutual sorry, music, music and culture at large. She her entire schooling. Her entire schooling, except for music, finished at the when she was 13 years old. Wow, she did not graduate high school. She went from her mother taking her from New York, from middle school to enlisting at a Conservatoire, being asked by her mother to lie and say she was 17, you know. And she also did not have close relationships with her parents. Her sister, that was a tricky relationship. So nobody. There was no guidance to say other than the fact that in those days, you know people, her generation typically do not know much about pharma, pharmacological things in general, you know tablets or anything else. But there was also no guidance to tell her about this. So there were two occasions when she took too many but she did not have a disorder. She was not addicted. She was not dependent on these tablets. It is true that in the last couple of years of her life, she really, really had problems sleeping, and she did ask her sister Jackie to send them from Greece because they were not on the market. But I don’t understand why that’s such a big deal when they were, for instance, they were, they were not on the market in Paris where she lived. That’s true, but they were on the US market until 1983 so we’re not talking about some forbidden, you know, forbidden, taboo drug. Here she was, however, yeah, so I will mention, also in the film, it’s, it’s completely fictional, because the doctor mentions her liver. And Marie Kellis did have many health problems. I never heard about anything wrong with her liver from her or anybody else. Ironically, I actually remember there’s at one point she says, Onassis liver is okay, but there was never anything about her liver. She had so many problems throughout her life. She was such an unwell woman for. First of all, and most of all, she had, or you could say, lethally, low blood pressure, because eventually she died of a heart attack, but was mostly spurred on by her blood pressure. But she pushed herself and pushed herself, and at one point in May 1965 performed Norma, which is one of the most difficult operas for any soprano, when her blood pressure was 70 over 50, so she would just push herself and push herself. She had had an underactive thyroid in her youth. She had eczema, she had acne, she she had such low blood pressure she could drink 10 espressos a day. She had allergies to antibiotics, which meant that when she in 1958 when she had she had an, I won’t say what it was, because it was an embarrassing for her. It would have been an embarrassing gastro, gastroin, gastrointestinal, yes, gastrointestinal thing that caused it made her have an operation. She couldn’t have painkillers after them because she was allergic to the painkillers. But she performed il Perata, which is one of Opera’s most difficult operas ever. The next day, when she got on a plane, her legs would be swollen in this film, at some point, Angelina Jolie’s character Maria, says her legs went purple. Don’t know where that came from. Her legs never went purple, but her legs would be swollen because her circulation wasn’t that great, which is what happens to people with low blood pressure. She would suffer from terrible migraines. She had allergies to various herbs, including garlic. She would have anemia in about 1970 I think she had cerebral anemia, which is a particular kind of anemia. She would be diagnosed with exhaustion at various points in her life. She had jaundice at various points in her life, and also at various points in her life, she got laryngitis, bronchitis, pharyngitis, trachetitis, which all disturbed her performances, because obviously they have an effect on your voice when she did finally die. This happened shortly after she had complained to her doctor that she felt pain on the left side of her back, which was obviously a precursor to a heart attack, but he he attributed it to flu and rheumatism. It is, however, also true that she had been diagnosed with dermatomyositis, which is an autoimmune disorder by a doctor called Mario Joker. So Marco jocovid. So I remember his name is Joko. That’s it. Marco Mario. Okay, sorry, I don’t remember for this moment that was an autoimmune disorder. And he then later speculated much, much later in about 2002 so decades after her death, he said maybe that caused a vocal decline, but the median prognosis for somebody with that disease is about 12 years, 12.3 years, for someone receiving treatment and her vocal decline. You can speculate when it began, but it was already very present. By 1957 she died in 1977 so I don’t think she had dermatomyositis, untreated and survived for 20 years, but that caused a violet tinge on her neck and wars on her hands. So she did have very many ailments, obviously. I mean, I say obviously, obviously. I’m not a doctor. She also didn’t have a post mortem, but she had a heart attack. She collapsed in front of you. Mentioned her button of filcho. She collapsed in front of him and her maid, Bruna, who was also fictionalized in this film, they were there when she died. She clapped. She had a heart attack. She died in terms of, was her singing killing her? I wouldn’t go that far for sure. And she was never told by any doctor, if you sing, you will die. She was, however, advised against singing because of her exhaustion at various points, and she often did it anywhere because she feared terribly. She feared being villainized by the media and being described as a diva who refuse to go on stage. Because, instead of saying no, I mean, I know the media have to exaggerate and have to have clickbait headlines. And Callis, by the way, understood that too, she would say, I know, you know, they have to fill their pages, and they have their job, and I have mine. But instead of saying, recalci goes on stage despite having blood pressure of 70, over 50 or, you know, despite being very ill, they, they would say every time she had to cancel or suspend a performance, Marie Council does again. She’s a diva. She’s unruly, uh, they were not interested in reporting on her health at all. Um, so, yeah, that’s, that’s a story that’s just a little bit of her medical history, correct

Dan LeFebvre  24:21

me if I’m wrong. But with that, and then what you’re talking about earlier, with with her husband kind of being almost like a manager for handling all the business side, but then also with her not having a lot of schooling and focusing more on just the creative would it be correct to say that she she trusted, say her husband or or others, for a lot of that diagnosis, and she was that really just focused on pushing herself creatively, and then whatever the consequences were, she not being a doctor herself, just kind of trusted whoever was giving her advice at the time, whether it be her husband or doctors or. Wherever that may be,

Sophia Lambton  25:00

I would say that’s pretty much correct. But, yeah, she was a workaholic, and she really ran herself ragged. But even in July 1957 when she was diagnosed with exhaustion, and the doctor said, you really should cancel the next performances of La sonambola, she didn’t. She didn’t. She had previously asked for four instead of five. And there was then a scandal, because the manager, I can’t remember, who was organizing it, didn’t understand that she was going to sing the fifth one. So instead of the media saying there was a mix up between her husband, her manager, and it was, it was a La Scala production, but it was performing in Edinburgh and saying that there was a mix up between my guinea husband and it wasn’t getting Getty. Someone else was organizing it anyway. Do you remember the the guy? The name of the guy organizing this round was an ambulance. The media said, Oh, there she is off again, canceling performance because she’s such a big celebrity, and she thinks she has, she thinks she’s entitled to, and of all of all adjectives, Maria Carlos was not at all entitled. On the contrary, she was. She could be quite self loathing, and she endlessly tore herself to pieces feeling she hadn’t given enough.

Dan LeFebvre  26:12

Yeah, yeah. But that passion that she, I mean, you don’t get to that level without loving what you’re doing. And she obviously loved it. And you’re saying, you know, the hours that she practiced even, even as a child to get there, I mean, and then being a workaholic, you’re just gonna run yourself to that, to your own detriment, even, I think we see that happen a lot with with a lot of people, yeah,

Sophia Lambton  26:34

yeah. I mean, rehearsals until 3am and then to continue, you know, a record that was only 40 minutes long. Took her 40 hours to record and add another for another record. She spent 12 hours on, no, sorry, she spent three hours recording 12 bars of an aria because she didn’t like the way it was coming out. Wow,

Dan LeFebvre  26:57

wow. Well, I have a feeling I might know the answer to this next one. But in the movie, mandrax is not the only hallucination that we see her having. We see orchestras and choruses in various places that she’s going, but then not you mentioned her sister. And near the end of the movie, she gets to her sister comes to visit, and she grasps onto her sister arm to see if she’s even really there. Do we know if Maria saw hallucinations, like we see happening in the movie?

Sophia Lambton  27:27

No, Maria did not see hallucinations, except for when she was four years old, shortly after she got knocked over by a car. She kind of dramatized this when I don’t know how well she remembered it, but she remembered it as I was in hospital for three weeks because I got knocked over by a car, and I saw in my head hallucinations about music, which were fascinating and stimulating. But I don’t know how much of that was true. That was adult Maria, remembering four year old Maria, but other other than when she was four years old, she never reported hallucinations. She did have insomnia, and she did wake up quite late by the last two years of her life or so, so typically waking up midday or one o’clock. But no, she did not suffer from hallucino. Because, what I mean, why would she have suffered from because she would, that’s the thing. It’s bizarre. Mandrax was prescribed primarily as at least for her, it was a sleeping pill, right? And she didn’t have a substance abuse disorder, but she took them to sleep. I don’t know how this movie continues. Can insinuate she was taking them four times a day when she wasn’t asleep for the full day. You know, she takes

Dan LeFebvre  28:29

it right before she goes out. You wouldn’t take a sleeping pill right before you’re going out.

Sophia Lambton  28:35

Oh, by the way, I also forgot to mention that she had glaucoma. She had to take eye drops every at one point is every half hour. Maybe later on, it was every hour, but yeah, she was also going blind for some reason. This, this movie which wants to be so dramatic and serious, doesn’t touch on that, but it makes up hallucinations when she actually was losing the ability to see. Having already been severely myopic her whole life, she was very short sighted when she was on stage, she couldn’t really see anything. But she preferred it that way, because that way she felt she was on her own world. So she wouldn’t put in contact lenses. At one point, she accidentally left them in. So she would wear contact lenses in the daytime, and at one point she actually lent she accidentally left them in a torsca in Paris in 1960 this would have probably been 1965 and then she told her friend, Michelle glords, who was produced at EMI France, the record company EMI France, which is now Warner Music, she told him, I was completely overturned. I saw my colleagues, I saw the props, I saw the audience members scratching their heads. I was she said I was literally overturned. And I was shocked. And you know, she was horrified, because she felt so exposed. Because, other than that, she would come on stage before every before, well, yeah, during rehearsal, she would create a mental map of all the props in her head, because she had to know where everything was not, so as not to bump into everything, bump into anything. At one point, actually, her friend Stelios galatapos, who’s a music critic. Who then actually wrote one of the, one of the better books about her, quite a quite a good book about her. Remembered she was playing Medea, and she lost the dagger, the dagger she was using to kill her children. She lost it at some point, and she had to feel for it. And the way she felt for it was remembering where that the sound of the metal falling had landed by ear. I mean, that’s

Dan LeFebvre  30:22

impressive. I mean, just being able to remember all of that for each performance, because I’m sure you know, the stages in around the world that she’s performing are going to be different every time, and I don’t have that kind of memory either, wow. Well, if we go back to the if we go back to the movie. You already talked about some of this, but the way that the movie shows her being forced to stop singing, she we don’t see it happening, but she visits this theater to privately practice. There’s only one guy there who’s playing piano for he’s never really named in the movie. By looking at the cast listing, it’s Steven ashfield’s character, Jeffrey Tate, and Maria tells him that her last performance was in Japan about four and a half years before the time of the movie, she got a hernia. Her legs turned purple as you talked about it not happening, and everything swelled up. We don’t see that happening, but then we do see a scene with Maria burning her theater dresses at her home in Milan, which movie seems to suggest was a symbolic gesture of marking the end of her career. How well does the movie do telling the end of her career, although, as you mentioned earlier, her career never really seemed to end. So I feel like I already answered that one.

Sophia Lambton  31:34

Yeah, it’s, this is all very mixed up, because it’s not based it’s it’s taken various elements out of context that have nothing to do with so there’s her vocal decline, and then there’s a whole costume burning thing. So it’s true that she burned her costumes, but it had nothing to do with her vocal decline, and it had nothing to do with the progression, or, on the contrary, the devolution of her career. So Rhea Callis had a very interesting career until 1953 until about the spring of 1953 she was a very, very heavy woman. I don’t know. Did you? Did you know this? Dan, so she was very, very overweight from about the age of 18, 1718, because she wasn’t an overweight teenager at all. Rather, she wasn’t overweight young teenager child. But she then gained a lot of weight, and so she was a very, very heavy woman. And then in about spring of 1953 she realized that she couldn’t carry on that way, because firstly, was just she found it, you know, she was not a very well woman in general, and she found logging around her weight difficult. And she also needed the chin for expression. She was singing the role of Medea in Florence in 1953 conducted by Leonard Bernstein, whom she had personally recruited, having heard him on the radio, and she needed the chin for expression, so she decided to lose weight, and she lost about 95 pounds in the span of 18 months. So that’s a lot, and that’s why there’s been a lot of deliberation. Did that affect her voice? That’s a whole other topic. But just going through her perspective of things when she was overweight, that was also very early on in her career, and she was starring in really tacky opera houses where, I mean, when she was in Sicily, in Palermo, I think it was, maybe it was a Catania, I don’t know, but when she was in Sicily, the opera house actually called her two hours before the performance to remind her she had a performance, and she was so she was outraged by the idea that she had to be reminded she would write to her husband. Can you believe it? This is how well organized they are that apparently their other singers don’t remember their singing tonight. So khaki opera houses, very cheap productions, including very cheap costume, she said, stank of sweat, insinuating that they hadn’t even been washed after their previous wear by the previous hanger. Yeah. The director Lucchino Visconti, who was is most more famous for his films the leopard and Death in Venice, was also an opera director because of her. He actually said, I staged opera for callous, not because of callous, he said for callous. And the first time he saw her was in Wagner’s Parsifal. And he said she was wearing something that looked like a bra and a pillbox hat on her head that kept falling on her nose as she sang. So this was a period of her career, very early on, when she was relegated to wearing tacky stuff. Eventually, she actually asked her husband, menegas mother to supply some costumes, and she would eventually bring some of her own costumes, because she did not like what she was being given when she burnt costumes. It was not the costume shown in this movie, at least, at least what they were implying. She burnt the costumes from what she knew as her overweight period, her tacky period, her I haven’t developed as an artist yet, period. And she talked about Efrain in a French interview in 1965 which is where they got this information from. She said. That the past that I didn’t like that is to say it was before the birth. My birth artistically. So once tastes change, the body changes, one changes artistically. And I’ve read the screenplay of this movie because it came out before the film itself. It was published a deadline, and in the screenplay, it said among it had tags on the costumes, and it included Anna Bolena by Don it SETI. She would never have burnt the Anna Bolena costume because that was a Latino Visconti reduction. That was a gorgeous dress, and she I mean, so this refers to costumes from a completely different era, costumes from a completely different part of her career, where she looked different, she felt different, and she also sang differently. So that’s a whole other topic. But in the early part of her career, she was not as tailored, and she would be over dramatic. She would do vulgar things with the voice, and then she she really wanted to to worship and honor the music, and she tried to doing she really wanted to devote us up to doing exactly what the score required, and not what she would call pyrotechnics. So not fireworks, not, you know, adding a high note just so the audience would be impressed. That’s the costume burning thing. In terms of her vocal decline, that’s a very different subject. So she noticed it as early as about August 1954 when she was recording Verdi’s La forsa del distino in Milan, and she later that night at beefy restaurant, which is the restaurant at La Scala. It’s since been renamed, but it was traditionally known as beefy. She asked the prana, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, who was also the wife of EMI records producer Walter Lech, to touch her diaphragm, and she performed a high a. She said, Elizabeth, can you ask? Can you teach me how to perform this high a so it doesn’t wobble, because Walter, her husband, Walter, the EMI producer who was overseeing the record la Ford del distino, Walter says mine make him seasick. So even as early as that, when she had lost weight, well, shall we say, about a year that she started to lose she had started to lose weight about a year and a half before. So this was shortly after she lost weight. And that problem became more and more and more prevalent as she got older. But I’m saying older. I mean the first time, you know, in August 1954 this was a 30 year old woman. So she was not old, she wasn’t even middle aged. She was still very young. By january 19, sorry, by March 1959, she was really, really struggling. And the 10 of Ferruccio talevini, who sang with her on her second record of Lucia de Lama more, said she kept singing the same E flat and she kept cracking it when they were recording the the opera she was she tried and tried and she kept cracking the E flat, the top E flat, and she would soon start seeing less and less because of that. Simultaneously, she had been having problems with opera houses, partly on account of her husband, partly on account of the high standards she expected of them. And she had actually said, way back in September 58 she had said, in about a year’s time, I will probably retire, or at least I will sing a lot less because I don’t understand, I don’t understand the purpose of singing in conditions that are not, you know, conditions that are not optimal. She meant the various opera houses that she said wouldn’t, wouldn’t give her enough rehearsals, not just her, but wouldn’t give the company enough rehearsals. She specifically spoke of the met in New York, saying, I’m not the only one dissatisfied with the way they work. You know, for instance, not having enough rehearsals. For instance, introducing me to my baritone and La Traviata a few hours before we have to go on stage to perform it. Giuseppe de Stefano doesn’t sing there. Elizabeth Schwartzkopf doesn’t sing there, and Eileen Farrell doesn’t sing there. So, you know, I’m not the only one dissatisfied. It’s just that the media lights on to me. And then so she was having vocal promissory on 1959 that happened to coincide with the time when her husband left her and she later paired off with an asses. She also had sinusitis, which she said was very bad, because it was like she said, the pus dripped onto my vocal cords and blocked the sound chambers, and I felt like a deaf man who shouts because he can’t hear himself anymore. And she had several hernias, and one of them, she said she she had, well, she had an operation for the sinusitis in December, 1961 she had an operation for the hernia in january 1963 but then she got another hernia. At the same time, she was having terrible problems with blood pressure, because she felt so stressed that by this time when she would perform, her blood pressure would just tank hours before the performance. So at one point, as I mentioned earlier, she had to give a norma with a blood pressure of 70 over 50, and her friend Stella tapos said she could barely walk on stage, but she was going through it because she didn’t want media to say, callus abandons performance. Yeah. Yeah, no, it’s bizarre. It’s really bizarre because actually, even from a tabloid perspective, they could have said callous almost kills herself trying to sing, right? Callus almost faints. But instead of that, it was all about, oh, callus is being a diva. Or in that, you know, in that case, there was some dramatization of her fans in the audience that there were anti callous people or pro callus people, and it was all about their feud.

Sophia Lambton  40:25

But she quite soon realized, by 1964 she was saying that the first hernia, she said, it knocked me out so much I damaged the muscles of my abdomen, which naturally drained my strength and affected my singing apparatus, to which the abdomen and diaphragm are as much apart as the vocal cords. So she had hoped the operation would improve things. Immediately following her operation, in january 1963 she had a tape recorder, and she was listening to herself obsessively, but that didn’t improve things. On the contrary, she got another diaphragm. Sorry, another diaphragm. What? She got another hernia, which was in the diaphragm. She got another hernia, which was in the diaphragm. And by the time her concert tour, which took place, not in this movie, they said, four and a half years, or something, her last performance as part of her concert tour, which was her last performance ever, was in November 74 so it was only two years and 10 months before she died. It was not four and a half years. She was in terrible pain after that because she said, Probably I’m working my diaphragm more and better and it starts kicking. Also, after that performance, she had labyrinth, it’s which is an infection of a labyrinth in the inner ear. She said, I couldn’t stand straight or sit straight for 12 hours, or see or see for nearly 12 hours. So I don’t know why. In this film, they made up something about purple legs. Weird. Because, to be honest, even if they wanted to be ultra dramatic, they could have used this stuff. A lot of it isn’t new to my book, either. It’s it’s been out there for a while. This information,

Dan LeFebvre  42:03

I think it kind of tells a gives an idea of how accurate a movie is when in that in that case, like, she’s telling the story, we don’t even see it on screen. But even saying four and a half years, as opposed to a couple years, like, it’s so easy to change that dialog and make it just a little bit more accurate, but for some reason, they don’t do that. And I mean, unfortunately, there’s movies that do that.

Sophia Lambton  42:29

But bizarrely, in the screenplay, it talks about 19 June, 1959 and it says it introduced the husband, many Guinea, and it says in the screenplay, a man in his 40s, and by that time, he would have been 63, years old. Bizarre, quite bizarre. I don’t get it to say the least, yeah. Well, if

Dan LeFebvre  42:53

we circle back to like when she was telling that story, she was telling it to the Jeffrey Tate character. And there’s another thing I found interesting, because Maria in that specifically says he is not a repetitier. But correct me, if I’m wrong, he actually was, and you had an opportunity to interview him before he passed in 2017 so can you share a little bit more about the real Jeffrey Tate that we don’t get in the movie?

Sophia Lambton  43:19

Yeah, I was really surprised that a film about Marie cows would include a fictional Jeffrey Tate, because Jeffrey Tate worked with her for six weeks of all the collaborators with whom she worked, he worked with her perhaps the least even. I mean, even in her last years. I assume they did that, because first he was English, so they didn’t need to get a French person, you know, I mean, her main vocal, vocal coach then was Janine Rice, who is a lovely, lovely French lady who might my first interviewee, who’s also gone. Now she’s passed away, but I presume they didn’t want to use her, because that would have been a French woman speaking English with with a French accent, even though they spoke French in real life, because calla spoke French, Italian English on Italian, English on Greek. But Jeffrey Tate I in advance of this film, I listened to my interview of him again because I hadn’t in ages. I interviewed him in january 2014, he was a repetitor. He works for the Royal House here in London. He was recruited to work with her, even though Italian music and Italian opera in general wasn’t his specialty. He preferred German music so leader and and operas by Wagner. I think he also preferred Baroque music so callous his favorites of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi were not his specialty, but she was considering singing Cavalier rusticana at the Royal Opera House. Now this was in March 1976 it had nothing to do with the last week or even the last month or even the last year of her life. They only worked together for four to six weeks. He said he was very, very shy with her, and I have to say that when I saw his portrayal in this film, I felt really sorry, not just. For callous, who’s obviously being I don’t know what is going on, because that’s got nothing to do with her. But for Jeffrey Tate, this conductor, he later became a conductor for Jeffrey Tate, whose partner is still alive, as far as I know, and the bizarre realm in which Jeffrey Tate, who came as a very young, very shy, repertor, very scary, scared of this big, you know, big name of callous being portrayed as thomp, I would say, quite arrogant character. They did warm to each other, meaning, he felt free with her. So eventually he said I could treat her as any other normal singer. He I could say Maria, that was flat. Try that again. She was very determined to work hard. He called her extremely nice. Um, he they, he said they didn’t talk about because I deliberately listened to my truth him. They’d never talked about personal stuff. She’s, I mean, occasionally she might mention analysis, but she never said anything specific. And I, I really pushed him on this, you know, are you sure she didn’t say anything specifically on Onassis or Pasolini? You know? And he said, No, no, she we didn’t know each other long enough for that to even occur. We stopped mainly to the mezzo repertoire because her voice was in a really bad way then. And he said she was never harsh, never difficult. He called her again about five to six months after their initial collaboration, asking if she wanted to resume, and she said that she would be back in touch or probably later on. He said, When I called, when I ran her up again, she was extremely nice. So they, typically, they would only work together up in a theater, which was the teaser. Once a week she was allowed access to that theater because the manager, char Dan, had given her access, probably because she had contacts in EMI. Otherwise they worked in her apartment. But it wasn’t as dramatic as as it’s portrayed. And also I still find it weird that he was even, that even a fictional version of him was included in the film.

Dan LeFebvre  47:07

And the way you mentioned it, like they didn’t talk about personal stuff, but in the movie, the impression that I got, I don’t remember the exact line of dialog, but she meant mentioned something about about him, and immediately the Jeffrey Tate character knows who she’s talking about, which implies to me that they have this whole kind of personal connection and background like that she knows that, or he knows that she’s talking about Onassis and all you know, it’s like they start to get very personal very quickly in those discussions in the movie, which implies there’s this whole backstory that wasn’t there in real life. Um,

Sophia Lambton  47:41

well, it was only then so far as everybody who had heard of Marie callus by that point associated her with onas. But I do want to say because obviously I have seen the movie, and it’s definitely not the first instance of a portrayal of Marie callus as saying, oh, Onassis forbade me to sing. That is not only incorrect, but it’s kind of the opposite of the truth. Because when she first began, I would say her friendship with Manassas, because she wasn’t together with him for a while, primarily because, as I mentioned earlier, she really wasn’t interested in romance. She wasn’t a very sexual being. And that’s a whole other subject. But I mean, there are nine separate sources, including callous herself, who attest to the who say something suggests that, strongly suggestive of of the fact that she wasn’t really that much intersex. So when people portray the callous analysis relationship as this big affair, it’s not true. First of all, not because Marie Callis was such a good person. And, I mean, she was, she tried her best to be a good person. But I’m saying it’s not true primarily because she just, she wasn’t interested in that, in that kind of thing. I mean, you know, when she met Onassis, she she later would, remember, I was rather indifferent to him. She wasn’t looking to have an adult an adulterous affair. She wasn’t looking to leave her husband. And even though she and many were having difficulties, she actually what she tried to salvage that marriage. But anyway, going back to Onassis for the moment, he was working with her to try to get her some role at the Monte Carlo opera so she could sing there wherever she wanted. He eventually tried to found a Marie Callis television production company with his friend who Roberto Arias, who was the ambassador, the British ambassador to Panama, also the husband of ballerina Margo Fontaine. But for some reason he was good in finance. So that’s why NASA approached him, because Anas could see Carlos was going through terrible strain, both vocal strain, but also psychological strain as a result of the vocal strain, and he thought performing in a pre recorded environment would be less stressful for her, but she didn’t like that. She always preferred life stage. She didn’t really, she didn’t really like pre recorded anything that much. And Onassis also, it has been multiple times alleged that Onassis did not want her to star in a film of Tosca, but that’s actually the opposite. He was the one working harder than she was on that because she didn’t like the idea of starring in Tosca, but he communicated with Jack Warner of Warner Brothers, so I. Found a letter of him, of his to Jack Warner, that had actually not it’s never been published before, and he communicated with Spyro scurris, the chairman of 20th Century Fox, trying to incentivize callous to do a film of Tosca later on, when their relationship soured. That happened at a time when both he was having terrible bad luck in his business. So he had lost all his stocks in the associated de van de mer, which is this big, big conglomerate in Monaco, which is where he was mostly based. At least his business was based at the time thing. And also his airline, Olympic airways, was making terrible, terrible losses. And actually, council would remember to her friend Surya, who wrote a diary entry about this, he would she would say, he’s so nervous. He’s so frat he, she said, fragile, unstable man. I tell him go and see a doctor about your nerves. He says, It’s not the business of a doctor. And she would complain about that to her friend Leo Lerman as well. She would say, He’s so stubborn, I would tell him he needs to see a doctor because he’s so anxious. He has anxiety. He can’t say I have anxiety. So, you know, you had a situation where they’ve been together already for I mean, I think things were especially going bad, and by the spring of 67 so they’d been together for at least seven and a half, well, about seven years, depending on where you begin to count their relationship. But over seven years, and his career is in the pits, her career is in the pits, and obviously they’re very, very insecure, so she eventually dumped him, because they were tired of each other, and she herself remembered in reference to the relationship, familiarity breeds contempt. He did not forbid her from singing. But what I will admit is that after they split, as you know, three months later, he married Jacqueline Kennedy. She was very hurt, despite the fact that he had tried to call her many, many times, and she had not taken his calls. So I’m not sure how he had told her if she was blanking him all the time, but no, I understand she was hurt. Obviously she was blindsided by this, but she she used a lot of the performative energy she wasn’t using on stage because of her vocal decline, in very long rants about Onassis and some stuff about their arguments was true. Yeah, obviously they in their spots, they said some unpleasant things to each other, but other times she would say stuff like, here we only ever had his friends on the yacht, not my friends. And that was totally untrue, because she had had her best friend of a time, John nawatsu There, the conductor Herbert von Karajan, who actually said he was best friends with Onassis than callus and Onassis actually they had had a spat about Lucia dinamimore and Onassis had actually reconciled them after they hadn’t spoken to each other for a while, and Princess Grace had always been callous friend and Frank, as efrali Callis had friend had been on on the Christina, and so had the conductor, Josh Kretz, one of her favorite conductors, who had rehearsed with her there using the Steinway and Asus had had commissioned to withstand dump the Steinway piano that he had had commissions so the callous could practice on his yacht, withstanding the dump. And I spoke to his step niece, Marilena Patroni colas, who was about 16 the time when she was spending time on the Christina. And she remembered, generally, most people who knew callous of time remembered her practicing on the Christina. Both Marilena, his step niece, and also his and callous physiotherapist COVID espanidou, told me how much Onassis liked castaiva. Told me he liked Bucha. It is true that he wasn’t a big opera fan, but it is completely untrue to say he forbade me from singing because he didn’t do that. Why would he have done that? That’s crazy.

Dan LeFebvre  53:34

Yeah, mentioning him forbidding her to sing, that leads to another question that I have for you about something that’s portrayed in the movie, because in the movie there, it’s implying that her career is over, but she’s still trying to get it back into singing. There’s, I think, a line where she mentioned that her mother made her sing, and then Onassis forbade her to sing, and now she’s finally singing for herself so, but she also mentioned that she wasn’t going to perform for anybody. So the impression that I got just watching the movie was she still wanted to sing, because it was just so deeply ingrained into who she was that maybe she felt lost without being able to sing. Is it true that she was still trying to sing, even if it was not to ever perform on stage?

Sophia Lambton  54:19

Yeah, she sang all the time. And if there’s you know, I have tried resisting speculation about her vocal decline. I do want to resist speculation because, other than the fact that her stomach muscles were damaged, we can’t really say why that was, but I still think she worked too hard, if anything, for her. Have got her own health for the blood pressure that was really low. She herself said, when I’m alone with a score, that’s where I find my true self. But how can one bring paradise to Earth? That’s why I’m also obligated to live another life. So in terms of her mother making her sing, I did touch on that briefly earlier. Her, yes, it’s true. Her mother pushed her from a very from callus, very early years. But Carlos also pushed herself. And then once she was really completely, you know, enslaved to music, she pushed herself really, really, really hard. Late in her life, she did contribute herself a bit because she didn’t know what or whom to blame for her decline. So sometimes she would say, Oh, my mother made me sing. And at other times she would say, manegini made me sing. And you know, I guess you can say that was kind of true, but she was the one making her, making herself sing more than anybody else. So you can’t really attribute all of that to her mother or to maneu. And when she was with an Assa, she was singing less because of her vocal decline. And she there were times when she may have tried to convince herself that at least she had Onassis. And, you know, maybe she’s trying to see this other side of life and in love and relationships. But she was bored. She would she would get bored because, you know, late is 1970 after 1970 so she had left an asset in July 68 and in a 1970 interview, she says, what is there in life if you don’t work, you can only live on work by work, through work, without work. There are only a few sensations, and you can’t live off them. And it’s true, she was really having an identity crisis without the opportunity of performing. Yet she was considering engagements all the time. She was considering them all the time. She would get nervous so throughout all the years, and she was considering engagements, including in 1963 she was considering she was going to do Macbeth, but she didn’t. She was going to do Trevor Tory, but she didn’t. Sorry, Macbeth, I think she was going to do in 59 but she’d be at Macbeth was going to be 59 and then there’s a room about 63 she’s going to do Trevor Tory in 63 but she didn’t. I found correspondence between her and her manager signed a golden ski at the Victoria and Albert news. And Albert Museum here in London, which had bizarrely never been uncovered. Which is quite funny, because he was saying the Victoria Albert Museum is a quite major institution. And gorlinski really detailed what she was considering doing at various points. And there was so much that hadn’t been in the public eye, so she was considering an American tour in 1963 but she was so nervous that at first she’d say, Okay, let’s postpone it, because I’m not ready. And then it would be, well, I know we were going to start in New York with the tour, but can we start in Philadelphia or Washington? Because there’d be, there’ll be too much, but the nerves will be too much in New York, because there’ll be all this publicity in New York. So let’s start at a less, you know, less prestigious city, less visited city, and then eventually would get canceled. So if we actually go to her final performance in November 74 she did consider many things after that, because she stopped at that point. I mentioned she had LeBron. She had terrible pain from her hernia, and she she was diagnosed with labyrinth. It’s an infection of the inner ear. But her partner both actually at that point in life and in the concert tour, Giuseppe Di Stefano continued with the accompanist Robert Sutherland. They went on to perform in Australia. When she returned to Paris, she was going to do Tosca with him. She was planning it for a very long time, but eventually she sang the second act in front of her friend, the costume designer Umberto tirelli The teata del opera in Rome in May or June, 75 she saw he wasn’t very impressed, and she thought, I’m I’m not up for this. There was a rumor she was going to sing with the Pasadena Symphony Orchestra in LA in January, 76 and then in March 76 Jeffrey Tate visited her to practice for a potential Cavalier ruscana at the Royal Opera House. She never did. She was practicing with her vocal coach, Janine rice, the role of Charlotte in basnes vertell. She was hoping to do a recording of this opera she had never fully performed before. She recorded, it’s a letter Aria. It’s an air delet a letter ARIA for a compilation album. But she had never recorded the full opera Verde, and she really wanted to do that. She was working on that two days before her death, and her vocal coach, Janine Weiss, traveled to New York for some work, I think, with Herbert von carrion, carrying luggage full of scores, full of opera scores. And when she arrived at the airport, a porter took the luggage and said, Oh, you’ve got a really heavy suitcase. Are you in fashion? Because he thought maybe she was carrying fur coats, I guess, or something, or outfits. She said, No, I’m an opera you know, these are schools. And he said, Oh, did you know a very famous opera singer died today? And she was she said, No, who was that? And she and he said, Marie Callis and Janine rice learnt about the death of her friend and student from a porter at an airport. You know, people really shocked, because, as I mentioned earlier, yes, she was definitely less social than she hadn’t previously. She was definitely extremely dismal. And Jeffrey Tate did tell me that her attitude, although she he said he did want to precise. She didn’t run people down. She ran the whole world down. So she had that, you know, attitude of an older person. Everything’s changed. Nothing is good anymore. But she didn’t, she didn’t run people down. She didn’t say, oh, remember him. He was terrible. She didn’t do that. He said she had. She felt like a 79 or 80 year old woman. In how completely dispirited she felt, but she was in touch with various people up to the day of her death, so she did not close herself up away from everybody else. She was singing. She wanted to sing and but her most horrifying thing was how her voice just got worse and worse, despite her continuous attempts to improve it.

Dan LeFebvre  1:00:27

Yeah, yeah. Well, like you said, like the I think what’s life without work? I mean, I feel like that’s a any, anybody who is a workaholic, and you know, focus is so hard, and you have to do that, to get to the level that she was. But I think that’s it’s it’s normal to to do that, and then with on top of all the all these medical things that you know, she’s just still pushing herself, despite that, I can see how it can be very it’s got to be so disheartening, because you you remember the way you were, but your body just isn’t able to do that anymore, and so you just want to keep pushing harder and keep practicing and keep doing that. But it sounds like that was her body failing her in ways like that, even though she’s, you know, keep pushing. Yeah. Well, a moment ago, I mentioned with Maria feeling lost, but in the movie, there are some flashbacks that we get that give another indication that maybe there’s something else that makes her feel lost, beyond the ability to perform on stage. And specifically, there is a flashback that we see with a room with Maria, her sister and her mother. There’s two soldiers that enter the room wearing Nazi uniforms, Maria and her sister are forced to sing for the soldiers they pay her mother for that private performance. And in the movie, Maria mentions that’s where it all began. And I’m assuming that that’s talking about kind of her mother forcing her to sing, and that kind of career starting, there was that a moment where she started performing first.

Sophia Lambton  1:02:04

No, not at all, not at all. She started performing first when her mother entered her into radio contest back in New York, and she didn’t win any of them, but she got some kind of compensatory prize. I don’t think, I don’t think she actually said if it was second prize or third prize. She won a Bulava with wristwatch because Jack Benny. Do you know Jack Benny? Yeah, Jack Benny was one of the judges, right? Well, Jack Benny was in the judges, and he apparently voted for her, but, but not many of the others did. So he she won some kind of runner up prize, and she never forgot that Jack Benny had been partly responsible for her winning a bit of a wristwatch at a radio contest when she was 11 years old. But the first role she sang she sang at the age of 15, and that was Dan Tutsi Cana. That’s the same opera that she was hoping to sing when practicing with Jeffrey Tade in 1976 she made her professional debut on July 4, 1938 in a celebration of the American Independence Day in Athens. And she, back then, would have been 14, yeah. July 38 she was 14 Yeah. She signed her first professional contract with a National Theater the age of 16, and she was given just a swarm of chain for performances. By the age of 18, she was seeing Tosca in a professional production. So she spent the war earning, you can’t really call it money. She was pretty much earning food as a result of performance. She now evangelio was, it is true, she was a very unsympathetic, negligent woman. She wasn’t really much of a parent at all. Later on, she had various psychological problems. She wanted her daughters to get money any which way. That’s true, but she did not ask them to prostitute themselves at all. I mean, how could she even have what she did, what she would say? Well, you know, socialize with the soldiers, meaning, go get food, not not become I mean, obviously we’re looking at a very extreme context when a lot of people did things so they would never have done ordinarily for their own survival. But thankfully, callous did not have to sleep with anybody to get money or food. The only thing she ever mentioned about her mother trying to set her and Jackie up in that context was that her mother made her go out with a German soldier, and Carlos was so anguish, she started crying, and the German soldier took pity on her and gave her, I think, some spaghetti anyway, or some of some food. Other than that, I’d like to mention what she actually did do in the war, other than performing. And I mean, she really became a team player during wartime. I’m sure she was one before, but that really war time is obviously a very, very extreme, especially in Athens, first during World War Two, then during their civil war, she would hike for miles and miles, not hike, but walk rather. Maybe she did hike as well. I don’t know. I would imagine. Well, Athens is quite hilly, but anyway, what I mean is she would walk for. Miles and miles to get cabbage leaves and tomatoes for herself or her family for her colleagues, she would barter the complimentary opera ticket she had at the National Theater, both hers and her colleagues for food for herself and for the company. She persuaded some kind of anti Nazi to sign a food warrant for the company, because they were being paid in food, but they were being paid something like less than a meal a day. So she went through a very, very hard time, but she did not have any kind of childhood trauma from any kind of sexual abuse, thankfully, thankfully, because I think her childhood was hard enough. No, I I’m pretty sure she was a virgin up to, actually, when she met manygini, which would have been much later, when she was 20. I mean, I’m, I can’t for sure say when Cal’s lost a virginity, but she it wasn’t in Athens. And also, as I mentioned earlier, yeah, she wasn’t particularly interested in sex. And she was actually 18 years old, the first time she had she heard of how babies were born, meaning the first time she realized what reproduction is, as in, she found out because no one had told her. No one had told her. This is Athens wartime. There isn’t a TV. She’s not going to hear about stuff on the radio at that point, you know who’s going to tell her? She could only have learned on her own experience and had. The flirtation she had with men at that time didn’t really amount to much, so all three men who were in close proximity to her. There was a Greek businessman, tech is cigars. There’s a British soldier, Ray Morgan, and there was a doctor called elusive testus. He was more like a father figure. All three men commented, not to me, because they they died. I think all of them, maybe Ray Morgan is still alive, but they told the boba for Nicholas, but Salus the omidys, back in the late 90s, mid to late 90s, how she really didn’t have much interest in physical intimacy. She did she perform for the Germans? Well, she she performed for the Germans because the whole company was performing in front of the Germans. But she and Jackie never performed. I never, I don’t remember ever reading about her and Jackie singing together. Now, Jackie didn’t want to be an opera sing. That’s true. And to begin with, evangelio was trying to push Jackie into a career, but when Evan Jenny understood that Maria was the real singer, she kind of forgot all about Jackie’s abilities. Jackie, meanwhile, was doing perfectly fine, not perfectly fine. That’s badly put. Jackie was okay, relatively because she had hooked up with a guy called Milton empiricus, who really helped both Jackie and Maria and the whole family in terms of food provisions and supplies during the war. I don’t remember why, but he had some connections, so that helped so she didn’t have to go out and prostitute herself. And that’s that’s just a big fabrication that’s based on the fact that, yeah, at one point, Maria mentioned, my mother asked me to go out with a German Sultan, but not to, I don’t think even evangelio would have specified sleep with a German soldier. I don’t think she would have even said that. Um, so, I mean, there is an interesting moment from the period when the was the Greek, like, who was the Greek Air Force, or they were asked, yeah. Members of the Greek Air Force asked Evangelia and Jackie Henri, who all lived in the same apartment on petition Street, to hide two British members of the Air Force, John Atkinson and some man called Robert. And they did. And then at some point, when Italian soldiers barged in, they wanted to inspect the apartment, and in order to distract them, Maria sat down and played on the piano and started to sing to distract them from the search. So there were definitely really horrible moments. There were definitely close calls, but, and she did say, she did say they were very, very sad war years, and it was hard for her to talk to them, but she also said I was in no way harassed by the Germans. She said this in an interview to the German magazine de spigo in 1957 think 57 she said I was in no way harassed by the Germans, even though I had an American passport. And at another point she said, Well, it was hard, but hardship does one good. Now, of course, she went through very difficult times. She went through harder times during the civil war in Athens. Now, the Civil War was between homes. Get this wrong, the National Liberation Army, the National Liberation Front, sorry, the National Liberation Front and the Greek People’s Liberation Army. The National Liberation Front was a resistance group. The Greek People’s Liberation Army was a group of communists. So the Greek People’s Liberation Army were the communists known as the reds, the National Liberation Front, when they were known as the whites, and they were supported by the British, by the Allied Forces. She lived in the red zone, so the danger zone, and then she began work at the British headquarters, where she was in charge of distributing secret mail. And they were in the white zone, so she had to make this very dangerous journey every day to work to earn some money. Meanwhile, Jackie got a job translating film titles from Greek into English. I assume vice versa. So they were, they were very, very difficult years for them. But cars also continued performing. She sang Fidelio. Uh, in Greek. Isn’t Greek. I’m blanking here. It couldn’t have been in German, because she never sang in German. I’m pretty sure it was in Greek, um, and she sang Tosca. And at one point in July 43 she actually double booked herself, by accident. She had a concert, and then she had a Tosca. So she had, she sang arias from Han or Rossini and your son, Milan Chela, from Chile’s Adrian le COVID, at a theater on in the customers through she sang at the customers through theater. Then she ran through wartime Athens to clafuna square to enter as Tosca just in time for when Tosca enters opera. Boss, listening will know this, Mario, Mario, Mario. And she got there just in time. So not at the start of the opera, but at toss was entrance. So yes, they were very, very painful years. But I don’t think she suffered from childhood trauma from that. I think if anything, she felt obviously she was forever traumatized by the fact that her mother didn’t love her. That was horrible. And those problems persisted into her later life, she had troubles with her sister as well, and even her father let her down eventually. And this was all terrible, and that was why, you know, I mentioned at the start, I think, or earlier on, she married a man who was 28 years a senior. He was not attractive, he was quite overweight, he was bald. He didn’t like opera either. He actually fell asleep sitting at her studio recording of Norma in 1954 one of the most famous records ever, including her signature, Aria Casta Diva, which today, I think, is used, still used in the Jean Paul Gaultier ad and he fell asleep. But she needed a father figure, and in her pursuit of a career. Obviously, she had traveled, you know, she went from Athens back to New York and then to Italy. She didn’t know that many people. She didn’t have a best friend, her mother. She was still in touch with her mother when she came to Italy. She was still trying to, you know, trying to preserve that relationship, but she always had doubts about her mother’s love, and she marries this guy who ends up actually being terrible for her and terrible for her and terrible for her reputation

Dan LeFebvre  1:12:04

as well. Yeah. Well, speaking of her family, that we do see little bits and pieces with her family in the movie, with her mother, like I mentioned that flashback, we only really see her in the negative flashback. So the impression I get with Maria’s relationship with her mother was not a good one. I think there’s a line of dialog in the movie where she talks about remembering the day that she finally told her mother to off, but she’s still in contact with her sister, because we see her in the movie and then the only mention of her father. There’s a scene where she’s talking with JFK and her father, or JFK talks about the father she never had. Do you think the movie did a decent job portraying the relationship between Maria and her family.

Sophia Lambton  1:12:44

Well, first of all, I’d like to say that Maria Kellis would never tell anybody to f off, because she was a goody goody who actually couldn’t stand cursing. She couldn’t stand cursing. And when, when the director, Lucchino Visconti, would swear during the rehearsals, it turned her stomach, because that’s what Houseman menaghini said. And in this regard, I think this regard, I think he was, he was probably telling the truth. Also, Richard Burton mentioned in his diary how, because Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were friends with her, she was at their place, and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and his niece Caroline, were playing Gin Rummy, uh, Elizabeth Taylor said at one point and callous was aghast. And according to Richard Burton, she said, Oh no, I’ve never heard such words. Never heard such things. And he and Elizabeth Taylor were very surprised that she was so surprised herself. So I really dislike that, because she would have hated that. And you know, there’s been a lot of Fictional portrayals of her, there’s been, there have been a lot of inaccurate biographies, but very few have actually portrayed her as being somebody who curses. Because everyone, not everyone, of course, not everyone. But very many people know that that was not the case. So with Evangelia, there are three, obviously. Do you have three members of her nuclear family? You have Evangelia, her mother? Oh, Evangelia was a very difficult person. It wasn’t clear in the movie at all why there was a discordance between them. Um, so Evangelia, obviously, as I’ve said, really wanted to milk callous, also Jackie, but more, most of all, callus, because she was the one with the talent. Financially. Evangelio was an entrepreneurial woman. She wanted her daughter to be making lots of money, and she wanted her share of that money. Um, money. So they had difficulties, because evangelio would say, Oh, I have no money. Give me money. Carlos would give her money. And then Carl would find $1,000 under her mattress, which, at the time was a really huge amount of money. In 1950 you know, massive amounts of money, really. And not only that, it wasn’t just that evangelio was kind of black beating her. So she’d say, I’m going to tell you a secret about your father, because obviously Evangelia and George have even separated one very acromis terms. She was saying nasty things about George. She eventually wrote such a horrible letter that callus didn’t even want to share it with her husband, many Guinea. This was in about October 1950 when callous would have been 26 Greeks. She didn’t even want to share with Nagini. It was obviously written in Greek, and many Gini didn’t speak Greek or English, so he had that Greek letter translated into a talent, and she was so hurt by the many Guinea she couldn’t even reply. And many Gini replied. He wrote an Italian took his own letter to a Greek translator, and he said the letter was malicious, vindictive and offensive cannot be written. Those things cannot be written by good mother. So basically, she would just make really she would say really horrible things. I think the only thing in the movie, I believe this was said that actually was accurate, was that evangelist did at one point say, I brought you into the world to sustain me and your sister, so to financially maintain me and your sister, she did say something along those lines. At one point, callus just could not suffer that relationship, so she broke off contact. But she did actually financially support Evangelii and her sister Jackie, on and off until her death, because the because Evangelia was didn’t want to work when she did try working out, I need to try various things. She was trying to use the callous name as much as possible to make money. She went on the balls talk show, I think, talking about how, what an in grade her daughter was, she told lies to the press. And at one point, Keller said, at one point, the government, the New York, I think, Department of, I don’t remember what taxation now can be taxation, the New York Department of something, contacted Maria and said, your mother, you know, don’t have any money, so she had to send money over. But that was really painful. It was really painful relationship, because she understood quite not too early on, but she understood she was not particularly loved. Um, neither was Jackie, really. But going on to George for the moment, the father, who I don’t think was her father, mentioned in this fictional movie at all

Dan LeFebvre  1:17:01

the only, the only mention that I that I not by name, but JFK mentions a father who wasn’t there because he has all these CIA agents that found out about Maria. But that’s the only mention that I I remember in the movie. Totally

Sophia Lambton  1:17:15

bizarre, because Maria counts banning you. Met him. Met John F Kennedy once, and that was at the Madison Square Garden birthday celebration. Met him once publicly. It’s just an entirely fictional thing in this film. JFK would never have spoken on a personal level to Maria, not on that level. At least they barely knew

Dan LeFebvre  1:17:32

it seems, truly seems par for the course for this movie so far to make up fictional things.

Sophia Lambton  1:17:35

Yeah, but the going this far, I didn’t understand. I thought maybe it was trying to be a tongue in cheek thing or something. But why on earth John of Kent? Why on earth John F Kennedy, who had to be, to be to put in Marley, had bigger fish to fry, as we say in the UK, than concerning himself with Murray Callis life. But anyway, George the father was more kind of indolent and not really bothering. So he cared on some level for the girls, but he took long business trips, and he actually openly said that he preferred it that way, because he could be away from their mother. As I mentioned, evangelist took Maria and Jackie to Athens when Maria was 13, she wouldn’t see George until she would be 21 back in New York, and she did sustain a relationship with him. He came to see her sing several times in January, 1959 he saw her sing. He came to see him epidurals at the epidurals festival in August 1960 so they were on good terms. But then eventually he got ill, and she was happy to she was happy to foot his medical bills. But at some point his next wife, he married, he remarried. He remarried, a woman called Alexandra, Papa John and her family started bothering Rhea for money. And then Rhea started hearing from other people that George was going around Athens saying his daughter, his famous singer, daughter, was supporting him. And that really, really hurt her. So she cut herself from that. She cut herself off from that as well. There was just a lot of pain. I’m not saying maybe, maybe she could have made more than effort with her father, but having heard an issue with him, myself for the high Garden Show for NBC, high garden show from 1957 when he gets growth his daughter’s birthday is wrong. I don’t think you know being, I don’t think being on very good terms with him when he was demanding money as well, reminding Maria of her mother when she thought she could trust him, she actually ended up saying he has betrayed me even, perhaps even worse than my mother, because I think she was accustomed to who her mother was, but she’d been on such good terms with her father for years, he’d come to her performances, and Now it turns out he’s also bitching about her to other people. She was really hurt by that. Jackie is a bit her sister Jackie, that relationship is a bit more nebulous in that. The thing is, she tried to make contact with her sister Jackie, but Jackie was kind of on Evangelii side. And, you know, but we need money, and you’re making money. It’s. So she did sustain contact with her at a time when she wasn’t in contact with Jackie, the last time she sorry the other way, at a time when she wasn’t in contact with her mother, evangelio, she was still in contact with Jackie, on and off. The last time she ever saw her sister Jackie was in september 1960 so it was a long time before her death. It was 17 years before death. It is not entirely certain if it was september 1960 or 1961 because Jackie herself mistakenly referred to callous performances of Norma and Medea at Epidaurus taking place in the same summer, when they took place in different summers, 60 and 61 so I don’t know if it was September 60 or September 61 but it was one of those years, 16 to 17 years before her death, that was the last time they met face to face. She later no before that, she had way before that, November 1950 she had written to her godfather. As for my sister, I’ve tried to do my best, but that has only brought me insults. I don’t know what exactly she meant by that, but obviously it was difficult with Jackie as well. And then I get a very poor impression of Jackie from her own book, which is very nasty in that there’s a lot of bitterness about, you know, I wanted to be a singer too. If my life had been different, I would have been a great singer, like callous two. Jackie couldn’t, could sing a little bit she, there’s a recording of her, maybe still on YouTube. She gave an interview to a Marie callous fan club that was recorded in 1992 on videotape, and it was on YouTube. I don’t know if it still is. It probably is so and that during that interview, she played a recording herself singing in her youth. She did not have a great voice. She was never going to make a great, great career as an opera singer. She might have, if she had wanted, she might have made a bit of money singing at various, you know, restaurant venues, but this was not the voice of a great singer, so she had a lot of resentment against Maria. They were back in touch. After they were back in they came back into contact when George, the father, died in December 1972 so this would have been four years, nine months before Council’s death. And then they were on and off in contact, on the phone a little bit, and it is true that callus asked her to send mandrax pills from Athens because they were no longer in the mark on the market in France because she needed them to sleep. But there was nothing as dramatic as portrayed in the film. They never did meet up anytime after 60 or 61

Dan LeFebvre  1:22:17

okay, I’m sensing a kind of a trend with a lot of Maria’s relationships between her mother, who is saying things, you know, you mentioned going on a talk show and saying things about her, her father, even her first husband, you know, the manager who was saying things, did she have somebody that she could rely on throughout her life at all? It seems like everybody’s almost using her and trying to get money out of her, or whatever their purposes are, and then slandering her behind her back. Yeah,

Sophia Lambton  1:22:49

you make a really good point. Unfortunately, that really feels like the case. I haven’t even mentioned her longtime best friend, Joanna lomazzi, who wrote a series of articles in 1961 for an Italian magazine called La setsimana income about callous private life. Now, these articles are very useful to me because they came from the period, and I think she wasn’t lying, but she was outing the private life of her best friend for money. Wait, you know which was which was terrible. And then she was very surprised that after that, callus wasn’t much in contact with her, although she did actually write to her several years later. Yeah, so on one hand, callus was very unfortunate when it came to a lot of people, that’s true, but she had some good friends. They were just not, they were not part of her closest, most intimate circle. I mean, she had a lot of good colleagues. When I was interviewing various people, they said such lovely things. Janine Rice was just amazing. She was such a dear, dear woman. When I interviewed Fabrizio Milano, who is still an opera director, he was the assistant to her when she and Giuseppe Stefano stage ver dive siciliani in Turin in 1970 three. At the end, after I interviewed, when I was leaving, he said, I really hope you write your book Sophia, because she was just such a wonderful woman and and I said, I know, I know. So she did have people who cared about her, but in terms of her closest relationships, yeah, yeah, she had bad luck. I will say, though, Onassis, in this regard, was by far the best person she had in her life. Because let me tell you about the things Onassis didn’t do analysis, didn’t love about her to the press at all, and at one point he actually said, because they had, they had a lawsuit against someone else who unfortunately let them down, rather the other way. Their dear friend panagivgoti sued them from a misunderstanding because he and Onassis had had bought Ray callus, a freighter, a ship called the artemision in 1965 and he and Anastas had an argument over how many shares he owned, versus Onassis owned, versus callous owned a. Eventually he sued, callous analysis, and then they and then, I always get confused about this, because, to be honest, is such a boring story. But anyway, there was they won, that lost, or they sued. No sorry, they had to sue him because he wasn’t handing over his shares. And it was afraid, and it was, it was a sorry story. Uh, but analysis during this lawsuit in in a London court said madam callus is not a vehicle for me to drive. She has her own brakes and her own brains. Uh, it’s very sad that it’s very sad that the media has portrayed him as believing the opposite. Um, he I mean, they stayed friends until the end. They did. They did not resume. It’s been what, it’s been quite widely reported, that they resume the romantic relationship after he married Jack and Kennedy. That is not true. He tried with her, but she wasn’t having it. As I mentioned before, she was not a very sexual woman. So I and also, by that time, you know, she was 40, so Okay, she wasn’t that old. She was 40. She was 44 when they split up. Okay, but as I mentioned, she wasn’t a very sexual woman. I don’t think she was going to have a sexual relationship with Manassas when he was married to Japanese I think she was tired of that relationship. I think she said it herself, many attributes contempt, and she did it also say to Stella Scott topless, uh, my relationship with NASA. So my affair with the NASA was, you know, did not end well, but my friendship with him was a great success. So they were much better when they were on the phone to each other. And, you know, these very independent individuals. I would also like to mention, because this never gets mentioned, they did not live together, which means that about half of the year they were kind of in a long distance relationship. So you’re talking about two individuals very focused on their careers. It’s quite a boring relationship, to be honest. And I say this as someone who I I’m also a novelist. I have a lifelong absolute fascination in relationships. I’ve made it my mission to seek out the most fascinating romantic relationships out there. This is not one of them at all. So I, when I went into my research years and years ago, I thought it was more interesting. No, no. Anyway, he they were in contact until his death, even though she was with Giuseppe Stefano. So he was quite Yeah, okay, it is true, he did cheat on her. He had various flings during the relationship, but she knew about that, and she also, in retrospect, talked about, okay, well, that was the way he was. She was, you know, she did not get broken by this. She was not broken by that. What others did is was far worse than anything Onassis did to her. There’s,

Dan LeFebvre  1:27:43

there’s a point in the movie where she kind of mentioned, I think it’s on when Onassis is on his deathbed, he calls her in and she talks about how when he married Jackie Kennedy, that he she wasn’t heartbroken, but she had her pride hurt. Do you think the movie did a good job portraying the relationship between Maria and Onassis.

Sophia Lambton  1:28:04

Well, I couldn’t I know, because any, any movie that alleges Onassis forbade her to sing is already completely overturning the representation of that relationship. Also any movie that has a fictional Maria Callas saying I did not want to go on the cruise because I knew, I knew what would happen. You know, in that melodramatic soap opera, soap opera kind of worse than Douglas Sirk, kind of tone, that isn’t what happened. Because, actually, she didn’t want to go because she didn’t want to go on the cruise. Her husband wanted them to go on the cruise because he thought they would make advantageous business contacts on the cruise. It was all about, oh, yeah, we need to meet. People need to network. I mean, I don’t think the term networking wasn’t used back then, but that would have that was what he would have said today. This was a time when he was making her sing, even though she was ill. And yeah, on that cruise in July to August, 59 Carl, Foreman producer, came and wanted to do, wanted her to do guns and Navarre, and she didn’t want to do it. A German producer came and want, no, I didn’t think a German producer came. But many Guinea was considering an offer from a German producer, producer for her to start as the leading lady in the Prima Donna, a German film that was going to be distributed by some big distributor called Gloria FinFET. Her fee would be 200 million lira, which is around $320,000 then, so about 303,300,000 today, or something, he would tell her land, land is what matters. And she did not agree with him at the same time, yes, Onassis was flirting with her. Of course he was flirting with her. She was beautiful one. She’s a beautiful woman. He liked women. We know that. Yeah, he liked women. I don’t think he had a big plan to seduce her, to be honest, because I don’t think he really was the kind who fell desperately in love like that, at least that quickly. I. Um, he was flirting with her me. Probably he was hoping that she would she and her husband would separate, but she had no idea. And um, eventually they disembarked that cruise on the 11th of August, 1959 for two weeks, she tried to assuage many Guinea’s resentment, because he was now saying, You’re cheating on me, or she wasn’t, and he, but he was primarily really angry. What has, what has spurred his anger about that which was untrue, what had, what had strengthened his suspicion was the fact that she was saying, I want to be my own manager. I want to manage my career after she had discovered he had invested primarily her money, because he was only her manager at this point. So she was making the earnings. You know, he was a manager. She was making the money. He had abandoned his own business, which was a brick making factory that had 12 plants across Italy. He had abandoned that. He was a family business. He had left it to his brothers. He had 11 brothers, and he had abandoned that. It was 11 brothers, 11 siblings. So I’d always get it up anyway. He was one of 12, one of 12 siblings. He’d left it to his brothers to become her manager, and now she was saying, I want to be my manager. He was really pissed off at this. Really pissed off. And furthermore, he didn’t remember. He didn’t speak English, he didn’t speak Greek, he didn’t speak French, and NASA spoke all of those languages, plus some others. He didn’t know what marinas was saying. He could tell that the other guests on the ship, including Churchill and his daughter and his granddaughter, were gossiping, saying, oh, counselor NASA, you know, really getting on? Well, that really enraged him, and eventually he started a rumor that they were having an affair, and he actually created a fake diary. He took letterheaded paper from their apartment in Milan and just wrote random dates on it in pen. And, you know, as though it could be a diary writing total untruths on it. And in July, 1960 CALS wrote a letter to her legal separation lawyer Augusto Calis calcini, which I found. I should also add, the reason why I say legal separation lawyer is because Italy did not have divorce at that time, divorce would be illegal in Italy until the end of 1970 In fact, one of the very first divorces granted. In fact, I believe the first divorce granted in Brescia, in the region of Brescia, was Maria Callas divorce finally, long after she had dumped Onassis, she finally could get divorced from many Guinea up to that point, they were legally separated, which means that the assets were divided between them. She would always say, Oh, he he went. She would put it differently, so I’m not exactly sure what the arrangement was, but in one letter, she’d say, mengini got half of my money, and another one, she’d say he got two thirds of my money. So he obviously got more than he was entitled to. But yeah, I was saying in a letter, 31st of July, 1960 she writes to her legal separation lawyer Augusto Carlos, or Augusto calzi cascalchini, saying, can you tell me again? His lawyer BME to tell him to put a muzzle on and stop lying to the press with that made up story about Onassis. She underlines, made up in Italian itstoria, invent data. And she underlines invent data, meaning he is telling the press on NASA and I have were having an affair. Now by that by that time, she and analysis were in a relationship, but they hadn’t been having an affair back then, which is why she’s saying Madoff story about analysis. She says, If he doesn’t, next time I meet with him, I will take a tape recorder to the meeting to get proof that he is lying. So, you know, talk about having nothing to hide in that regard, I think that the Cal Sanas relationship was primarily founded on two very strong individuals, self made individuals of Greek descent. I don’t think that was very important for Maria, because Maria had been born in America. She ended up dying in France, and actually her her primary language changed throughout the years. So, you know, it was typically English. But then I think she found Italian easier by the time she lived in Italy for a while, and then when she was in France, French really became her first language. So she did not really relate that closely to her Greek roots. She didn’t even speak Greek well until she had been living in Atlas for a while. So I don’t think Evangelion George even spoke Greek that much to her and Jackie when they were growing up in their early years. But Onassis really admired mariekes. He loved hearing about how she had, you know, walked for miles to get cabbage leaves and tomatoes for her colleagues in wartime. He himself was a very, very tenacious, strong man. He had freed his father from a Turkish prison. I think that the year, I think, yeah, 1923 the Henri cows, was born before she was born, Onassis was a 16 year old man, uh, bribing a Turkish official so he could sneak into the prison where his father was imprisoned because Turkey had captured Smyrna, which is where Onassis was born. Smyrna is now is near in Turkey, but back then, I presume it belonged to Paris or Cyprus. Sorry, my history is not great, but anyway, his father was in Turkish prison. And he snuck him out. He freed his sisters. I don’t remember the political details, but he was a very tenacious, strong man. Um, they didn’t marry because she, first of all, was married. This isn’t really mentioned enough. She was married now in March 1966 she went to the Greek Embassy in Paris because Greece had passed a law invalidating all marriages of Greek citizens from 1945 onwards, and that would make her a single woman, According to Greek law, but if she wanted to return to Italy to perform or even for a rehearsal or for a meeting with a friend, yep, so let’s say if she’d married Onassis, she would still be charged with bigamy in Italy. So she could have married Onassis and risk and never, never turned to Italy again. That would have been very difficult, considering most of her career had taken place there. And even though she was in having a vocal decline, she was come to Italy quite frequently. Her dressmaker, Biki, lived in Italy. A lot of her friends lived in Italy. And I, and I presume she wanted and she would perform there again, actually in her concert tour, but actually only in a pub, in private little performance, because she was so scared of the Italian press. Um, but she also, she did consider marrying him. They do consider marriage, but they would have arguments, and eventually she ended up saying, well actually, during the relationship, she told a journalist, once you’re married, the man takes you for granted, and I do not want to be told what to do. My own instincts and conviction, my own instinct and convictions tell me what I should or should not do. These convictions may be right or wrong, but they are mine, and I have the courage to stand up for what I believe. So, yeah, they didn’t marry but I think that’s good. I don’t think they would have been a good married couple.

Dan LeFebvre  1:36:48

Well, it sounds like too I mean, like you were saying, since a lot of it was long distance and they were both focused on their careers, that maybe marriage just didn’t make sense. But they could still have, I mean, if she saw him as a still a good friend, then, you know, that’s what was important to her.

Sophia Lambton  1:37:10

Yeah. I mean, they were lovers for sure, during Yeah, you know, I don’t, obviously, I can’t tell you the first time I slept together, I, I don’t have that information, but I imagine it would have been about the spring of 1960 knowing how slow and and also something that I hope listeners, I hope Khalistan to understand. When menage, he dumped her, she was shocked beyond belief. She had been with him for 12 years. He had been the only really close person a lot. He had defended her when things were tough with her mother, he had defended her before all prepper house managers that were tough, you know, it’s true, but he had actually managed to soil her reputation, willingly or not, as a result of trying to drive up publicity. So the callous ticket sales would be higher prices, so callous would get a higher salary, so he would get his own car, you know. But, um, she saw him as the only person in her life, bringing with the end, close person. She was utterly horrified, and she’s wrote on the same day. She wrote that letter to Augusto goddess. Can she in search for July 1960 wrote to Herbert Weinstock, I think, yeah, who was a music critic and a friend of hers, saying, I have been, I have spent the time licking my wounds, not caused by any third party, meaning, you know, it’s not to do with on assets. I have been heard meaning by my husband. And she would write about that a lot to friends. She told her friends a lot about that. But no, they were eventually, of course, eventually, they were lovers for a time, but she dumped him, and the Jacqueline Kennedy marriage was a business thing for him, which, in return, in turn, to Jacqueline Kennedy, assured protection, obviously, financial resources, privacy, because there was a Christine of those Onassis Island, Scorpios, which she needed. So that was a business deal, basically not, I don’t know if you can call it a business deal, but it was a quid pro quo arrangement that was not founded on love.

Dan LeFebvre  1:39:09

That makes sense. I think there’s a in the movie Onassis says something like, you find yourself not doing anything one day and you get married, or something like that. When he talks about Jackie, which implied to me that it was not not for love the way it seemed to be between Maria and Onassis, like they seemed like they actually cared about each other.

Sophia Lambton  1:39:29

Oh, yeah. No, I will. I will, however, admit that Onassis had considered this marriage to Jack and Kenny for a while, probably, probably as early as during his relationship with Marie cows, but she did help dump him first. Okay, so we don’t know what would have happened if they had stayed together. I doubt he would have married Jack and Kennedy one day if they had been in a relationship. Okay? He knew what he was doing. It was very I guess it was quite arranged, pre arranged. It were premeditated things. So that’s, you know, the movie. Quote sounds like something more random. It wasn’t random. He had to further his interests his stock. I’m not a specialist in narcissist stock. I wanted to know what all of this was from Rick House’s perspective. You know what happened to his stock? I don’t know or care particularly, but I do know that obviously that marriage was a shock to her. She was hurt by it. She didn’t learn about it from the newspapers, or at least that’s not what her hairdresser, Frederic somoli later told a reporter years after her death, he said he was with her when she first heard about it on the radio. I think she may have used the term newspapers more loosely to apply to the media, or she may have heard about the newspapers before the radio, and then just burst into tears hearing it again. I don’t know, but she was the middle of, she was preparing for a photo shoot with her stylist, Frederic simoli, in Paris, when she heard about it, and, yeah, she also obviously devastated, and obviously she was being humiliated publicly because she was, you know, this is she was not living in an Instagram time. Even if she had been, I doubt she had. I doubt she would have been the kind of celebrity to post on Instagram. So, you know, Ari and I partiston, I parted ways yesterday. This is not who Mary was. So people did not know that she had dumped him, except for her friends. In fact, actually written. Burton wrote it in his diary, and his diaries have been published, and other friends knew, but the public did not know. So of course, the headline was, and unfortunately, the headline still is on NASA’s dumps callous for Jap and kemby, which was not true.

Dan LeFebvre  1:41:35

It sounds like going back to some of the media and the way they portrayed her, with her performances and her health and things like that, they were going they, I think you said it best, not clickbait back then, but same sort of, you know, titles and things like that to try to gain readership and stuff like that. And unfortunately, it seems like that was not in favor of the truth for what actually happened.

Sophia Lambton  1:41:59

I also wanted to mention I wasn’t able to find out. I’m not sure if anyone actually knows, sure if she did visit him on his deathbed. The hospital in this movie is so weird, because I know what it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to be the American Hospital in Noyes in Paris. And the hospital, as portrayed in this movie, it looks like some weird, fancy parking lot. I don’t know anything is very empty.

Dan LeFebvre  1:42:26

It does look like a parking garage.

Sophia Lambton  1:42:30

Yeah, bizarre. But anyway, I don’t know if they spoke to each other. When he was on his best deathbed. It was a huge risk for her to appear there, given that Jack and Kennedy was often there, the press were often there. I know she received reports about his condition from Vassar javezzi, who was a pianist with whom she was working at the time, on and off, and apparently ferocha, the butler. He didn’t remember having, I mean, I, I didn’t get to interview ferocho, because Fabio jedvozonia. He was a collective callous items who was on, who was in contact with filcher told me Firoz would not speak to anybody. Now, since then, firocha has actually published his own Little Book of Memories, but it’s very specific to his own relationship with callous. It’s not a biography of callous. It’s more this. These are things you would say to me, and you know, stuff like that. I don’t know if Fabio told me from ferocio that ferocio never mentioned driving her to the hospital to see on us. He was also her driver, her chauffeur. So I don’t know if she went that CNS. I do know that the last time they spoke, at least according to what she told stevios, Carlo topolos was quite a warm occasion. There was no bitterness there. Well, if we

Dan LeFebvre  1:43:45

go back to the movie, I found it interesting that the movie’s version of Maria Callas never listened to her own records. She says something about how it’s the records are too perfect. A song should never be perfect. It should be performed in that moment on stage. But then in the movie, during her final week, during the course of the movie, we see her listening to her own records, and even having her housemate Bruno recording her practicing so she can compare her voice to her earlier recordings. Is it true that Maria didn’t like to listen to her own recordings and then started to listening to them near the end of her life? That’s

Sophia Lambton  1:44:21

pretty much true, but not for the reasons the movie alleges. So first of all, Marie Carlos would never have found her recordings perfect ever. One of my favorite recordings of hers is manually score from september 1957 and she denied the release of it. She forbade the release of it because she thought it was so it was only released in 1959 um, whenever she had herself, she was she was always picking up on things she could have done better. There’s a really loving interview of hers with David Frost on the David Frost show on CBS from 1970 in which he plays her. I think it’s custom diva. It’s definitely from normo. It’s probably the custom diva um. From her first non recording from 1954 he asked, Well, did you sense mistakes? And that? She says, No, but it could have been better. That was always the case. But when she was at the peak of her career, I don’t think she particularly listened to recordings, but I will say she developed kind of an obsessive need to listen to them. When she started to lose her voice, or not started, but later on, by 1967 she was listening to recordings, definitely, maybe not six seven, but Peter Andre, who was who worked for Umi, remembering being, remembered being at her flat, at her apartment in early 1968 and she would play her recordings in front of people trying to figure out what was there, what had been lost. She especially was obsessed in her later years with her earlier recordings, trying to get back her early, more bestial, more out of control voice. But she was terribly self loathing. She said, in every artist, there’s a critic, there are always critics and creators. There’s the one who performs the instrument, the reflexes, and then there’s the other person in you who says, Well, that wasn’t good. That could have been better. So she taught herself to pieces, listening to recording. She would never have said anything was perfect, but yeah, she was listening to them, trying to get back something, trying to understand what she had been doing and what had gone

Dan LeFebvre  1:46:28

makes sense. Makes sense. Well, when we started our chat today, I mentioned the opening scene in the movie is also how it ends. So we’ll circle back to that. Now, as we start to wrap up our discussion and then the final scenes, we see Maria singing so loudly in her apartment that thanks to an open window, people are stopping in the streets to hear it then seems to sap the last ounce of energy that she has. Bruna and fruci went to go get groceries and take the dogs for the walk as well. They come back find her on the floor, even though it’s I’m assuming it’s not historically accurate, because that’s just not the way things happen in the real world. But I thought the movie’s ending was beautifully done. It had me in tears watching it, especially when the dogs come in, they start crying as they see her lying motionless on the floor. But how well did the movie do depicting the way that Maria Callas died?

Sophia Lambton  1:47:15

Well, obviously the moment about Maria Callas singing Republic, you know, the public coming that obviously didn’t happen. Rick House wouldn’t have sung like I mean, sometimes she did sing so loudly, practicing in her flat, the people or in a hotel room, for instance, that the neighbors heard. But not, not at that point when her voice was in tatters. She actually, by that point, she felt her voice was so bad she would, for instance, she would tell ferocho to leave the room when she practiced, all the doors would be closed and ferocious. Would remember that at one point she came out and saw him, said, What are you doing here? Because he wasn’t supposed to be there, you know, near the door, listening, kind of eavesdropping on her singing. She probably, you know, as I mentioned before, bro and chirocha was there when she died. It was quite a simple day. I don’t think. No, she didn’t have, she didn’t have occasion to sing, because she woke up at about 1pm um, prepared on some coffee and eggs. She went to go to go to the bathroom to get dressed. She had a sudden headache. I mentioned earlier she had been suffering from bad pain on her left side. A doctor had said it was flu and rheumatism, but she started having a heart attack. BRUNO offered her spoonfuls of coffee, while Firoz tried to call one of her doctors. Eventually, Fi called an ambulance. I’m not sure why he didn’t call an ambulance begin with, to be honest, but he was trying to reach one of her doctors, and and and she, and she died at about 2:15pm Paris time. Her poodles. She did have poodles. They were Jeddah and pixie. Pixie was smaller than her representation in this movie. Pixie was the white one. Jenna was the black one. I don’t know if they held when she died. They loved her very much. She tried to teach them to sing. There’s a recording of her trying to teach them to sing. And there, there’s a recording of them yapping, and she’s trying to get them to Yap melodically.

Dan LeFebvre  1:49:19

I’ve had dogs. I haven’t had poodles, but it would be a feat to try to get them to sing melodically.

Sophia Lambton  1:49:28

Yeah.

Dan LeFebvre  1:49:31

Something that Maria does mention throughout the movie is how she’s writing her autobiography, although we never see it published in the movie. There’s a line of dialog from her sister near the end, where she tells Maria not to write anything about her life, but if you do, be kind to yourself. And the impression I got from the movie was that she’s mostly hallucinating her life flashing before her eyes before the end. But did Maria Callas actually end up writing an autobiography?

Sophia Lambton  1:49:58

No, Maria clouds didn’t write an auto. Biography, but she was always interested in the idea of trying to set the record straight. The first time she did anything akin to that was when she she wrote a series of articles that were kind of her memoirs. So they were known as her memoirs for Oji magazine in Italy, using a ghost writer, Anita pensoti. So, so she kind of dictated to Anita pensoti That would have been in December 57 No, wait. No, no, December, 56 No, published in January 57 in six installments in orgy magazine in Italy. But she was considering an autobiography, as that is March 1960 when she wrote to her friend herb and Weinstock, the music critic. One day, rather soon, I will decide to write my book biography, but I need someone to make some research in Greece, of pictures, declarations, true in brackets and information that my memory can fail. You know how I’m precise in everything? At least I try my best to be later on. Should pick that up again. That the idea of a biography, an autobiography. But she was so funny. She said, I can’t talk about myself that would be lacking in modesty. So she started writing to her friends and colleagues. She wrote to the daughter of conductor Victor De Sabata, Eliana, who had been her friend in Milan, saying, Can you provide me some memories, because I don’t remember or something. And and wrote to dole Soria, who had worked she had founded Angel records together with her husband Dario. Maria would say there have been so many lies she told. In October 1971 she told Joan Crawford, who was kind of a cattle friend of hers, not not a close friend, but they were on Franny chance. She told Joan Crawford she was working on a biography. And she actually had the interest of an editor at Simon and Schuster in in New York, Peter schwed. And she continued writing. You know, she actually wrote to one of her old maids, meaning one of her former maids, not an old maid, but one of her former maids, Matilda sangioli, asking her again, can you supply some memories? Because I can’t talk about myself, I would be lacking in modesty. So there were there were discussions. She was always, you know, she wore her heart on her sleeve, and her letters are very expressive. They’re very expressive and they’re very open. So she would put for instance, I hope this letter makes sense because I was distracted listening to Wagner’s music on the turntable, and in another letter, in a letter to Irving colon and another music critic, she writes, PS, I hope this letter makes sense because I was interrupted 11 times whilst writing it, so she she really wore her heart on her sleeve. I I really hope that this this episode, and for those who are interested, my book dispels the idea that she was so mysterious, because actually, she really wasn’t mysterious. There have been many performing artists who are mysterious, who continue to be mysterious. Well, cast wasn’t particularly secretive, and she didn’t write hell to biography. She wasn’t a big writer. I don’t think she would have managed writing held a book. She would have found him boring. You know, talking about herself, she actually said in an interview, I don’t like talking about myself, I found me boring. I find me boring. So that wasn’t going to happen, but she did entertain the idea that

Dan LeFebvre  1:53:02

leads right into my final question for you, because you have a biography about Maria Callas in print, a centennial biography. I’ll make sure to add a link in the show notes for everyone to get their own copy right now to learn more about the RE real Maria Callas. But before I let you go, can you share one of your favorite stories that might surprise someone who has only seen the movie.

Sophia Lambton  1:53:23

Well, the first, first and foremost, what I want to tell someone who’s only seen the movie is that above and beyond all other false characterizations of Mary callous, above and beyond all other myths, I think what would have really gutted her was the idea that she could have been rude to a fan. She was never rude to a fan. I mean, all of the colleagues that were not, maybe not all, but the vast majority of people who worked with her talked about how generous and friendly she was. She was such a team player. I mean, she, she sent a message upon him. Kiku mufonio for a Royal Opera House audition. You know, she wrote to the opera house asking for an audition for her. She, when she was at Judah giving master classes, she got the Secretary, Lona Levant, basically she wrote, she sent a singer CB to Larry Kelly, who was a general manager of Dallas civic opera, even though the singer, Mario full score, was 13, nine years old. So you’d think the 39 year old could have done himself, but no, she’s doing it for him. But her public were like has her children, she would never have been rooted them, and she was in touch with her fans. At one point, a fan Dolores rivelino, who’d later become a chef, sneaked in, sneaked into her dressing room, as in kind of illicitly, and Maria offered her a swig from a big bottle of orange age she had been drinking. So she received fans in her dressing room at 3am and another example of how loving she was to her fans was during what was basically what I call the La Scala Cold War, which is when her husband, manegini kept I think it was his awkward, misguided way of getting a higher fee for his wife for her performances. He had spoken ill of the General Manager of La Scala, Antonio giangelli, to the press and giringhe never realized how much of this was coming from manegini and not from callus. So he was trying to get Marie callous to tell him her available dates for the fall. Look following seat in 1957 to 958, Oh, no. Sorry. No wait. No, no, sorry. 1958 to 959, and she would she would give him the dates, and he would say, but I can’t make decisions until I have your dates. And she would say, but here are my dates. And you’ll say, but I can’t make decisions I have this. It is such a silly exchange because it was dramatized in the press as this big few, but when you read the messages, it’s ridiculous. So was playing, or whether he was having some periodic illiteracy going on or something. But it ended badly, because eventually Marie Keller said, I cannot sustain this in genuine relationship, and she left La Scala, meaning she said, I’m no longer going to perform at La Scala. But before that, she was singing in Anna Bolena in april 1958 at La Scala. A month before she left the theater, things were really tense with giringelli. He would eventually, I don’t think it was this performance, but later on, oh, no, wait, I’m just trying to figure this out. No, no. Sorry. We’re not in April 58 we’re in May 58 she’s doing Pirata, her last performance at La Scala. For a long time, she’d return later on in polyuto. That would be in December 1960 but for now, she’s doing il Terada, Atlas column and gongue. It was so piss off at her. He had the big iron curtain, not just the red velvet curtain, but the Iron Curtain. Stage curtain fall down quite early after the performance, so she couldn’t get an ovation. She, you know, the audience couldn’t continue applauding. That was a signal, everybody must go home. And the fire marshal came out and said, you know, okay, clear the stage. Performance is over. And when Rhea came outside, there were all these fans who were huddled to say goodbye, and police officers, police officers, or I don’t know, security girls were there to restrain them. And she said, Leave them alone. These people are my friends. They are doing no harm, because that was her relationship with her public she had been banished from her dressing room. Usually, she would receive them in her dressing room, and sometimes stay up as late as 3am in the dressing room, signing autographs. But she had been kind of the feud had happened. She had left La Scala so during Kelly had ended the performance earlier, meaning they hadn’t given time for innovation or fan engagement, and she stood outside with them and stopped them from being banished by the strange guards who’ve been recruited to stand there.

Dan LeFebvre  1:57:35

Wow, yeah, that’s, I mean, that’s a very different, very Maria Callas than we see in the movie. So I really hope that everybody listening to this will pick up a copy of your book to learn more about the real Maria Callas. Thank you again. So much for your time, Sophia.

Sophia Lambton  1:57:50

Thank you so much, Dan.

March 29th, 1795. Vienna, Austria.

We’re in a very ornate room. The camera is angled so it’s shooting up, meaning we can see a huge, crystal chandelier hanging on the right side of the frame. It looks like it’s over the wooden piano that’s on the bottom right of the frame, although it’s obvious that’s just the way the camera angle makes it look. The chandelier is actually hanging in the room behind the piano.

On the left side of the frame is a young man, who is sitting up straight as he’s playing the piano.

With a closeup of his hands, we can see as they dance around the keyboard, making lovely music. He’s obviously a very accomplished musician.

The camera cuts to a woman running through a field with hedges and into woods nearby. In an unexpected move—at least, I didn’t expect it while I was watching for this episode—she takes off her dress as a man follows her into the woods and they embrace. The piano music continues as a backdrop as the scene cuts to a woman in a bath now as her voiceover explains that she was invited to a musical performance at Prince Lichnowsky’s palace, and Beethoven was going to be there.

Then, we’re back in the room with the man playing piano. That is the palace and Beethoven is the man playing the piano. He’s played by Gary Oldman in the movie.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Immortal Beloved.

That’s how the movie called Immortal Beloved portrays an event that might have happened this week in history. This is one of those scenes where the movie’s re-enactment makes it very hard to tell if it’s actually trying to be the event we’re talking about in this segment. That event, of course, is when Ludwig van Beethoven had his first-ever public performance as a pianist when he was 24 years old. That was on March 29^th, 1795. And it was in Vienna, Austria, just like the scene we see in the movie.

There’s also truth to the mention of Prince Lichnowsky, although that is a clue for why the performance we see might not have specifically been the first public performance in 1795.

You see, Beethoven’s first public performance as an adult took place at a charity concert in the Burgtheater in Vienna. It was a series of performances that was scheduled for March 29^th and 30^th, but then a third performance was added as a charity event put on by Mozart’s widow—he died at the end of 1791.

So, looking back on the event with a historical lens, it was on March 29^th that was the first public performance for an adult Beethoven performing one of his own pieces, Piano Concerto No. 2 in B♭, Op. 19, as it would become known later when it was published. Although, some have suggested it may have been Op. 15 in C.

One of the reasons we’re not entirely sure is because Beethoven himself didn’t seem to be so sure of what he was going to play.

According to one of his friends who was there, Beethoven wasn’t feeling so well and he was running late on writing the pieces for the concert. So, he kind of had to wing it and do some improvisation on day two. That friend, a man by the name of Franz Wegeler, said, “Not until the afternoon of the second day before the concert did he write the rondo, and then while suffering from a pretty severe colic which frequently afflicted him. I relieved him with simple remedies so far as I could. In the anteroom sat four copyists to whom he handed sheet after sheet as soon as it was finished.”

Records then suggest that on the second day of the charity event, on March 30^th, Beethoven did some improvisation.

On the 31^st, Beethoven performed again but as we just learned that last day was technically a different charity event organized by Mozart’s wife. So, Beethoven didn’t perform one of his own pieces, but rather played one of Mozart’s concertos.

As a fun little side note, since Beethoven was a child prodigy his first-ever public performance also happened this week in history, too! It was on March 26^th, 1778 when Beethoven was seven years old. He performed with another of his father’s students.

Back to the movie, though, the mention of Prince Lichnowsky still has some historical accuracy to it because in the true story, Prince Karl Lichnowsky was one of Beethoven’s earliest financiers. In fact, Beethoven lived with Lichnowsky in a room at his palace and many of his compositions were dedicated to Lichnowsky.

So, the scene we see in the movie is rooted in some truth.

If you want to watch Beethoven’s early performance recreated on screen this week, check out the 1994 movie Immortal Beloved and it starts at about the 18-minute mark.

 

March 29th, 1827. Vienna, Austria.

For our next story this week, we’ll be staying in the same movie.

We’re not in Prince Lichnowsky’s palace anymore. There’s a group of people standing outside. The first thing that’s noticeable about the group is they’re all wearing black. Behind them are lush green plants and four torches burn in the background, something also noticeable since it’s daytime.

Between the four torches, the camera angle frames Jeroen Krabbé’s character, Anton Schindler, as he explains Beethoven to the people gathered.

He says things like, “He was an artist,” and “The thorns of life wounded him deeply, so he stuck to his art.”

While Schindler’s voice continues, the scene cuts to four pallbearers wearing black suits and top hats as they carry a casket through a street filled with throngs of people.

Then the camera cuts back to the scene at the grave and now we can see the casket lying there. Behind the casket is a mausoleum with the initials “LvB.” There are somber looks on everyone’s faces as they listen to Schindler continue to talk about Beethoven’s life. There are more scenes of the procession as the casket makes its way through the street. It’s lined with soldiers now, and the casket is on a carriage pulled by a pair of beautiful, black horses.

Reaching its destination, soldiers help the casket off of the carriage so it’s back under the power of the four pallbearers. They carry it to a doorway where a V-shape formation of priests in white robes contrast everyone else wearing black clothing.

The music swells as the pallbearers walk inside to the richly decorated church interior. On either side of the aisle the casket is being carried down are pews filled with people. There doesn’t look to be an empty seat.

Everyone is wearing black as the camera cuts around to a few solemn-looking faces in attendance.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Immortal Beloved.

Just like our last event, this scene also comes from the 1994 movie called Immortal Beloved. Unlike the last event, however, this one is a little more obvious about its timing and it was this week in history that Ludwig van Beethoven was buried on March 29^th, 1827 in Vienna, Austria.

The movie’s portrayal of the event is very dramatized, but it does hit on some key truths. Probably the most accurate thing we see in the movie is the idea that Beethoven’s funeral procession was a big deal in Vienna.

According to accounts of the event, somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 people attended. So, the scene we see in the movie of streets lined with people to watch the casket being carried was true.

What’s not true about the movie is the prominent portrayal of the man who we see giving the speech at the funeral in the film. That’s Jeroen Krabbé’s character, Anton Schindler.

Schindler was a real person and he was a friend of Beethoven’s for many years, even working as Beethoven’s secretary for a time. After Beethoven’s death, Schindler was the one who owned most of Beethoven’s conversation books where he’d communicate with his friends. So, it stands to reason that Schindler would be the best person to write Beethoven’s biography.

And, he did. That was first published in 1840, 13 years after Beethoven’s death.

However, most historians now don’t believe many of the things in that biography. You see, Schindler made a lot of it up. For example, Schindler said he was very close to Beethoven for 11 or 12 years but further research into it revealed that number was more likely half that at five or six.

Since Schindler had the conversation books, we can assume he’d pull a lot from that, but over the years it became evident that Schindler also fabricated many of those and burned many of the pages to cover it up.

The first scholarly biographer came along in the form of Alexander Wheelock Thayer, who sailed to Germany from the United States in 1849 after realizing there were some discrepancies in Schindler’s biography. Thayer spent the first two years learning German so he could do the research required to write a truthful biography of Beethoven.

That was first published in 1866, with subsequent volumes being added in 1872 and 1879. That told Beethoven’s life up until 1816. Then in 1907 and 1908 the fourth and fifth volumes were published, which covered the remainder of Beethoven’s life and completed the overall work.

So, just as a recap, this week is a great one to listen to some Beethoven. If we go by order of the day and not the year, it was on March 26^th, 1778 that a seven-year-old Beethoven had his first public performance. And while we didn’t talk about this yet, it was exactly 49 years later on March 26^th, 1827, that Beethoven died at the age of 56.

On March 29^th, 1795, a 24-year-old Beethoven had his debut performance as a pianist, launching his career. And then it was precisely 32 years later on March 29^th, 1827 that Beethoven’s funeral attracted between 10,000 to 30,000 attendees.

That scene in the 1994 biopic about his life called Immortal Beloved starts at about 2 minutes into the film, but if there’s ever a week to watch a movie about Ludwig van Beethoven, this is the perfect time…so, I’d suggest just watching the whole thing!

And maybe throw some of his music on your playlist this week, too! If you’re looking for a recommendation to start with, I’d have to go with my favorite piece of his that’s probably his most common composition: Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor for solo piano. Or, as it’s more commonly known, Für Elise.

Oh, and as a fun little side note, Beethoven never knew how successful that would become because it wasn’t even published in his lifetime. Although Beethoven composed the piece in 1810, a man named Ludwig Nohl discovered the manuscript that he composed it on in 1867, 40 years after Beethoven died. Ludwig Nohl said the manuscript he found had the dedication of the piece as being “For Elise on April 27 in Memory by L. V. Bthvn.”

That’s why it’s called Für Elise. There have been a few suggestions as to who Elise might be, but because this was all done after Beethoven’s death, no one really knows for sure.

 

March 31^st, 1931. Kansas City, Kansas.

Our next movie is black and white. An airplane is flying in the sky. While I’m no aircraft expert, by the looks of it, this seems to be a Fokker F-10, a civilian passenger plane powered by three propeller engines. After flying for a few seconds, the movie fades to inside a building. Text on the screen tells us this is Kansas City, and we can see two men standing at a desk. One of the men writes something down on a pad of paper that he’s handing to a third man behind the desk. The sign behind the desk reads “Western Union”, leading me to believe the pad of paper is a message to be transmitted via telegraph.

The man says he’ll send it right away, and it’ll get there within half an hour.

The two men on the other side of the desk are both wearing hats. Since this is a black and white movie, it’s hard to know the color, but the one writing on the notepad is in a light hat while the other is in a dark hat.

Dark hat man tells the other a storm might be coming. Why don’t you wait for the next plane?

Nah, he can’t wait, says the light hat man. He has to be back in Florida by Monday. Then he laughs, besides, this is my vacation.

From behind them, an announcement is made: “Passengers for Los Angeles. Plane on field, ready for loading!”

The two men grab their bags and head toward the plane. They walk out onto the runway where the plane is ready for them to get in. At the back of the plane, the man with the light hat gets in. Behind him, the dark hat man wishes a happy trip. “Soft landing, Rock,” he says. The light hat man, who we can identify now as Pat O’Brien’s character, Knute Rockne, turns around to his friend. “You mean happy landing, don’t you?” says Rockne. He shakes the man’s hand.

That man, by the way, is simply cast as “Doc – Knute’s Friend at Kansas City Airport.” He’s played by the actor Edgar Dearing.

Knute and Doc shake hands, then Knute gets on the plane as Doc backs away to let the attendant close the plane’s door. As the plane taxis away, we can see this is the plane we saw flying earlier. Crowds of people wave goodbye to the passengers as the plane takes off to begin its journey.

On the plane, Knute Rockne looks out of the window at the land below. The movie cuts to a scene of a woman and four children opening a message. She mentions it’s from daddy, so I’m assuming this is the message Knute Rockne sent from Western Union a moment ago. Reading it must be his wife, Bonnie Rockne, as well as their children. She reads the message which says he’s practically there and he’ll wire again from Los Angeles. Love to all.

One of the boys says, if he’s practically there, why did he write? Bonnie replies happily, saying, because he knew we’d be worried, darling! Then, she turns and looks off camera. She shivers slightly, saying it seems to have gotten cold all of a sudden.

Back on the airplane, we can see the propellers turning as the plane continues its flight.

That scene fades away quickly and changes to a man plowing an empty field being pulled by two horses. The plane flies on, and the farmer looks up as we hear its engines roar over the field. Just then, as he’s looking up…we can hear what sounds like an explosion. He pulls on the reigns of his horses, causing them to stop as he watches in disbelief. His eye line goes from in the air where the plane used to be flying overhead to ground level as we hear a loud crash.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Knute Rockne: All American

That portrayal comes from the classic 1940 film called Knute Rockne: All American. The event it’s portraying is when Knute Rockne’s plane crashed, which happened this week in history on March 31^st, 1931.

While the movie’s depiction is heavily dramatized, as movies from the 1940s often are, it does get some key plot points correct.

For example, it is true that Knute Rockne was flying from Kansas City to Los Angeles on a Fokker F-10 aircraft owned by TWA. While we don’t see the crash itself in the movie, perhaps one of the reasons for that is because we don’t know for sure exactly what happened to it. By the time investigators got to the crash site, many people had taken pieces of the plane as souvenirs.

The movie’s mention of a storm is a possibility, and that really is one of the proposed causes of the crash. But, there’s no record of a storm in the area that day. The most likely scenario is that, over time, water got into the wing. Over an unknown period of time, that moisture had softened the glue that bonded the wing to the structure. The turbulence of the flight, then, just happened to be enough to cause a wing spar to fail and the wing separated from the aircraft while it was in the air.

All six passengers and two crew on board were killed.

The most popular of these was, as the movie shows, Knute Rockne. At the time of his death, Rockne was just 43 years old, but he had already secured a name for himself as one of the greatest coaches in the history of college football. He was the head coach at Notre Dame from 1918 until 1930 where he coached players such as George Gipp, Red Grange, and Jim Thorpe. In those years, Notre Dame racked up a record of 105 wins, 12 losses, five ties, and three national championships: 1924, 1929, and 1930, respectively. Both the 1929 and 1930 teams were undefeated in their successful quest for the championship, which only added to Rockne’s popularity when he died the following year.

That popularity was a big reason why there were a number of new additions to aircraft security to ensure it didn’t happen again. In fact, it was partly because of that crash that the Fokker Aircraft Corporation of America decided to discontinue the F-10—the American public simply didn’t trust the airplane anymore, and understandably so.

If you want to watch how the movie portrays this event, check out the 1940 film called Knute Rockne: All American. The crash event happens about an hour and 29 minutes into the movie.

January 31, 1865. Washington DC

Our first movie gives us some text on screen to tell us it’s the morning of the vote.

Tommy Lee Jones’ character, Thaddeus Stevens, sits down in the empty room. It’s quiet. The calm before the storm.

The camera cuts to the upper balcony. There are more people in the room now. It’s filled with people. Two rows of Black men and women enter the upper balcony and find their seats. All the men below are quiet as they watch them enter. One of the men greets them, “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, first in the history of this people’s chamber…to your House.”

A round of applause.

David Costabile’s version of James Ashley starts to speak, and we learn why this occasion is so important.

Today we are here for regarding the matter of adding a 13^th amendment to the constitution. This amendment was passed by the Senate last year, says Mr. Ashley. We’ve debated for the past several weeks. Today we vote.

They are to have final statements before the vote.

The first causes a ruckus as Peter McRobbie’s version of George Pendleton from Ohio says he’s received confirmation that there is a delegation from the Confederacy in Washington DC bearing an offer of immediate cessation of the war. He proposes they postpone the vote until they hear from the President himself.

Seeing this, James Spader’s version of W.N. Bilbo and a couple others rush a note from the Capitol building to the White House where President Lincoln is waiting to hear the result of the vote. After Lincoln reads the note, he writes something down and hands it to Joseph Cross’ character, John Hay, to give to Mr. Ashley. At first, Hay questions this saying there is a delegation and making a false representation to Congress is impeachable. Lincoln says he hasn’t made a false representation, then he hands the note to Bilbo and tells him to deliver it to Mr. Ashley.

Bilbo does.

Mr. Ashley reads the note aloud to the House: “So far as I know there are no peace commissioners in the city nor are there likely to be.”

Despite some ongoing disagreements, the motion to postpone is tabled. They’re going to vote.

And, they do. Representatives are called by name and each one gives their “Yea” or “Nay” on the amendment. People are tallying the votes, counting down how many it will take to win. 15. 8. 6.

Finally, Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax wishes to cast an “Aye” vote because, as he puts it, this isn’t usual—it’s history.

Speaker Colfax reads the final vote:

8 absent or not voting.

56 votes against.

119 votes for.

With a margin of two votes…

The camera cuts to President Lincoln in the White House. Church bells can be heard in the distance. Cannons are blasting. In the House of Representatives, there’s cheering and celebrating. Outside, throngs of people are cheering and singing. The 13^th amendment passed!

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Lincoln

That sequence comes from the 2012 movie called Lincoln. The event it’s depicting is when United States House of Representatives voted to pass the 13^th Amendment of the Constitution, which officially abolished slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime. That happened this week in history on January 31^st, 1865.

This was a momentous event in history because even though President Lincoln had passed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1^st, 1863, that proclamation made all the slaves in Confederate states free. Since the Civil War was still raging, though, it’s not like the Union could uphold the proclamation the Confederate states. It was not the end of slavery in the United States, but it can be considered the beginning of the end.

That process started in the same year when James Ashley from Ohio introduced an amendment to ban slavery on December 14^th, 1863.

As battles raged across the United States during the American Civil War, political battles raged in Washington DC as lawmakers on either of the aisle debated the amendment that would end slavery.

On April 8^th, 1864, the Senate passed the amendment by a vote of 38-6. That’s eight votes over the required amount to pass.

Then the amendment went to the House of Representatives. It was first debated there on June 14^th, 1864 and failed to pass in a vote on the following day. That vote was 93 in favor, 65 against and 23 not voting. Since a two-thirds majority is needed to pass an amendment to the Constitution, the 13^th Amendment failed.

The 13^th Amendment was brought back up by President Lincoln on December 6^th, 1864, who urged a reconsideration of it.

More debates followed at the beginning of 1865.

January 6^th, 7^th, 9^th, 10^th, 11^th, 12^th, 13^th, 28^th were filled with debates in the House of Representatives about the 13^th Amendment.

Then, just like the movie shows, on January 31^st, 1865, the House of Representatives voted on the 13^th Amendment again. This is a quote from The Congressional Globe, a document in the Library of Congress about that event:

Mr. DAWSON called for the yeas and nays. The yeas and nays were ordered. The question was taken, and it was decided in the affirmative—yeas 119, nays 56, not voting 8; as follows…

…and then the document lists each of the members of the House of Representatives who voted “yea”, who voted “nay” and who decided not to vote. I won’t read each name here. It then continues…

So, the two thirds required by the Constitution of the United States having voted in favor thereof, the joint resolution was passed.

During the roll-call, on Mr. English and Mr. Ganson voting “ay,” there was considerable applause by members on the Republican side of the House.

The SPEAKER called repeatedly to order, and asked that members should set a better example to spectators in the gallery.

Mr. KALBFLEISCH and other Democratic members remarked that the applause came, not from the spectators in the gallery, but from members on the floor.

The SPEAKER. Members will take their seats and observe order.

The SPEAKER directed the Clerk to call his name as a member of the House.

The Clerk called the name of SCHUYLER COLFAX, of Indiana, and Mr. Colfax voted “ay.” [This incident was greeted with renewed applause.]

The SPEAKER. The constitutional majority of two thirds having voted in the affirmative, the joint resolution is passed.

[The announcement was received by the House and by the spectators with an outburst of enthusiasm. The members on the Republican side of the House instantly sprung to their feet, and, regardless of parliamentary rules, applauded with cheers and clapping of hands. The example was followed by the male spectators in the galleries, which were croweded to excess, who waved their hats and cheered loud and long, while the ladies, hundreds of whom were present, rose in their seats and waved their handkerchiefs, participating in and adding to the general excitement and intense interest of the scene. This lasted for several minutes.]

You’ll notice that event we saw in the movie where the Speaker asked for his own name to be called mentioned—it really did happen. After this, the House voted on a motion to adjourn, which also passed, so at 4:20 PM the House adjourned for the day.

If you want to read more about that event, you can find the document on the Library of Congress’ website. Look for A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774 – 1875 and the events of January 31^st, 1865, are on page 531.

If you want to watch this event in the 2012 movie Lincoln, you’ll find the morning of the vote starting at 1h 47m and 23s.

And if you want to take a deeper dive into the true story behind the movie, including about that delegation from the Confederacy in DC at the time of the vote, check out episode number #170 of Based on a True Story to learn about the historical accuracy of the movie from Lincoln scholar Dr. Brian Dirck.

 

January 31, 1929. Germany.

It’s quiet. A fox sleeps, the baby sniffing around busily…From overhead, we can see dead soldiers lying on the frozen ground.

A spattering of gunshots sound, followed by dirt being kicked up as they hit around the soldiers. But everyone is dead already, so there’s no movement. The camera dollies in closer to the ground. Still no movement other than random gunshots, explosions here and there.

Then the camera cuts to the German trenches. A machine gun spits out shots while soldiers run this way and that in the trench.

Soldiers go to the ladders at the order of their commanding officer.

“Heinrich! Get out there!” is the order we hear when we see someone climb the ladder to the top of the trench.

The moment he’s at the top, a bullet hits him in the head and he falls back into the trench. Dead. Orders continue, “All of you, go!” Heinrich goes to tend to his fallen colleague, but the officer stops him. “Heinrich, get out there! Attack!” and Heinrich climbs the ladder his now-deceased friend just took to his death. Heinrich and plenty of other Germans make it up, though. And the camera follows them as they rush forward…charging toward an enemy we can’t see.

None of the soldiers shoot, they just run. They’re being shot at all the time. Men fall. Heinrich keeps going, panting as he drops down behind a fallen tree for some cover. Another soldier calls his name, “Heinrich!” but just as Heinrich gets to him…the soldier is shot and killed. Heinrich goes back to behind the log. Explosions kick dirt onto him. Another soldier falls next to him—blood covering his face as he lies there dead. Heinrich pants as he cocks his rifle and points it rather shakily over the cover. He shoots. Cock again. Fire. He’s not looking at where he’s shooting. He leaves the rifle now and pulls out his ax and runs straight ahead. Seeing an enemy soldier, he screams as he sticks the blade of the ax in the man’s chest.

Halfway through the scream, the scene cuts to black with the title of the movie: All Quiet on the Western Front.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie All Quiet on the Western Front

That sequence comes from the 2022 movie called All Quiet on the Western Front. And to be fair, the event that I just described in the movie isn’t anything to do with what happened this week in history…but, instead, it was this week in history that Erich Maria Remarque first published his novel that would be the basis for the movie. That was on January 31^st, 1929.

Well, sort of.

You see, the story was published from November 10^th to December 9^th in 1928 in a serial form. The book form was published on January 31^st, 1929, though.

The reception wasn’t entirely great at first. While plenty of readers loved the realism of the story and how eloquent Remarque’s words were, there were a lot of people in Germany who looked at his book as slandering a German war effort.

Because even though World War I was over, a new war was about to begin.

The book was banned by many countries because of its anti-war message. Austria banned their soldiers from reading it the same year it was published, 1929. Czechoslovakia the same and in 1933, Italy joined the ban. That year, 1933, All Quiet on the Western Front was one of the first books to be denounced and publicly burned by the Nazi Party.

However, many anti-war movements used the book as a way of helping to spread their own message against the evils of war. So, its popularity continued to spread.

In April of 1930, the book was adapted into a movie for the first time. That only helped spread the popularity of the book.  Then, of course, in 2022 there was the latest on-screen adaptation of the book.

If you want to learn more about the historical accuracy of the 2022 movie, check out episode #218 of Based on a True Story with Dr. Christopher Warren from The National World War I Museum and Memorial.

 

February 2, 1959. Clear Lake, Iowa.

There are little drifts of snow piled up along the street corners.

A tow truck drives by pulling a big bus with a sign on it that says, “Winter Party ’59.”

As it passes by a big building, the camera shifts angles to show a better look at the large, stone building. People are bundled up in warm coats as they make their way out of the cold night air and up the steps to the front doors. Above the steps in the entryway reads a big sign that says: “WIOA Radio Presents Winter Party, ‘59”

Then, above that obviously temporary sign is the name of the building: “Clearlake Auditorium.”

The marquee on the auditorium mentions the date: “February 3.”

Also mentioned are the musicians playing tonight’s concert: “Dion & the Belmonts, Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens” and at the top of the marquee is the headliner: “Buddy Holly.”

Inside, we see Big Bopper performing.

Backstage, Gary Busey’s version of Buddy Holly makes a long-distance call to New York City. A woman in bed answers the phone. She gets excited to hear Buddy’s voice. He addresses her as Maria. Buddy mentions something about how they just got there because their bus broke down so they’re going to have to rent a plane tonight.

That must be the bus we saw a moment ago with the “Winter Party ‘59” sign on it as it was being towed away.

Maria tells Buddy they’re both doing fine. She kicked me this morning, and Buddy gets excited to hear it. She must be pregnant with their child.

As Big Bopper wraps up, Buddy tells Maria he has to go. He’ll call tomorrow. Love you, bye!

He hangs up the phone.

Just then, two guys enter Maria’s apartment. They seem to be friends of Buddy’s and they tell her they weren’t sure if he’d want to get back together. She says he’d love to, they say they were going to fly to Iowa to surprise Buddy and they want to know where the show goes next. Maria looks it up. Tomorrow he’ll be in Moorhead, Minnesota, 8 PM.

Back on stage, the crowd goes crazy as Big Bopper introduces who he calls a fellow Texan, Mr. Buddy Holly.

We see a decent amount of the set in the movie. It starts off with a slow song called True Love Ways before getting more upbeat with a medley of Buddy Holly’s classic rock songs like That’ll Be the Day, Oh Boy and Peggy Sue among others. Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens joining Buddy Holly on stage to perform the big finale at the concert.

Then, just as Buddy says “We love you, Clearlake! We’ll see you next year!” to end the concert, the music and roaring crowd fade away.

Text on the screen tells us that Buddy Holly died later that night along with J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson and Ritchie Valens in a crash of a private airplane just outside of Clearlake…and the rest is rock ‘n roll.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie The Buddy Holly Story

That sequence comes from the 1978 movie called The Buddy Holly Story. And right away you might’ve noticed a discrepancy. When we started this event, I gave the date of February 2^nd, 1959, while the date on the marquee sign of the Clearlake Auditorium said February 3^rd.

The true story is that the final performance for Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper and Buddy Holly was at the Surf Ballroom in Clearlake, Iowa on the evening of February 2^nd, 1959. The plane crash that took the lives of all three musicians was in the early morning hours of February 3^rd.  

While the movie is correct to mention the tour bus breaking down as the reason why the musicians took a plane, there’s more to the story that we don’t see in the movie.

On February 1^st, J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, Dion DiMucci from Dion & the Belmonts, Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly and other musicians on the tour were driving from their last concert in Duluth, Minnesota. It was in the early morning hours of the 1^st when, near Hurley, Wisconsin, the tour bus threw a piston.

Without heat on the bus, the musicians had to burn newspapers in the aisle of the bus for hours to battle the freezing cold. Temperatures that night were around -30° Fahrenheit, or about -34° Celsius.

They managed to find another bus which they boarded near Green Bay, Wisconsin. They were headed to the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, where their next show was. That’s about 350 miles, or 560 kilometers away.

That bus didn’t have much luck against the frigid temperatures, either. Just before they made it to Clear Lake, the heaters on the bus failed. From my research, I couldn’t find anything to suggest the bus itself was broken down, but the heater not working was enough. The bus had to be repaired.

But, they managed to make it to the Surf Ballroom in time for their 8 PM concert.

But, because of their bad luck with buses, Buddy Holly had decided he didn’t want to get on a bus for the next stretch of the road. The bus breaking down and just barely making it to Clear Lake in time for the show meant they were all tired and dirty—not like they’d done laundry in a while.

The movie was correct to mention their next show was in Moorhead, Minnesota. And if you remember I just mentioned they were in Minnesota before going to Iowa, so you’re probably wondering why they were doing that…well, you’re not alone. The whole tour was rather poorly planned out so the musicians had to crisscross a lot, and added on the bus breakdowns, Buddy was looking forward to a few extra hours of relaxation time that flying would give him before everyone else arrived on the bus.

Buddy asked the manager at the Surf Ballroom to look into getting a flight to their next show. They were flying into Fargo, North Dakota, which is right along the state border and about a mile away from their next show in Moorhead, Minnesota.

While the manager found a flight, the musicians had a show to do.

Tickets that night were $1.25 and over 1,200 people showed up—pretty good numbers considering the town of Clear Lake had a population of around 8,000. Lots of people coming in from out of town, no doubt.

Oh, and that $1.25 ticket in 1959 is about the same as $12.75 today.

The concert itself went off without a hitch.

And the manager was able to find a plane. It was a Beechcraft Bonanza airplane, which seats four people. One of those seats was for the pilot, a man named Roger Peterson. So that left three for the musicians…but there were more musicians than that, which means they had to figure out who would fly and who would end up taking a bus anyway.

Buddy was the one who wanted to fly, so he was one of them. Ritchie Valens and another in the band, Tommy Allsup, both wanted one of the seats. They flipped a coin for it. Valens called heads and it came down heads, so he won the seat. The last seat was going to another band member, Waylon Jennings, but he offered to let Big Bopper take the seat instead because Big Bopper had come down with the flu so the extra time in Moorhead would give him some extra time to recuperate before the rest of the musicians arrived for the show by bus.

And if you’re a fan of country music, yes it was that Waylon Jennings.

And so it was that Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly and pilot Roger Peterson got into the plane. They took off just before 1:00 AM on Tuesday, February 3^rd, 1959.

They made it six miles before the plane crashed. All four on board were killed. The cause of the crash was determined to be because the pilot, Roger Peterson, was only qualified to fly using visuals and not only using instruments. Since the weather was so bad, they couldn’t see well enough to fly visually and, on top of that, there’s been speculation that he wasn’t familiar with the instruments in the Beechcraft Bonanza plane he was flying.

Today, February 3^rd is known as “the day the music died” because singer-songwriter Don McLean referred to it in his popular song American Pie.

While the crash itself isn’t shown, the movie that I was describing to start this segment is the 1978 biopic simply called The Buddy Holly Story. It does show Buddy’s last concert in Clear Lake, Iowa, and that starts at an hour and 37 minutes into the movie.

Oh! And as a fun little bit of trivia, my best friend is Buddy Holly’s cousin! So, as you can imagine, her family knows quite a bit about the real Buddy Holly—she told me his last name originally was spelled Holley—but his wife or mom, they’re not really sure which, convinced him to change the spelling to Holly because it’s easier.

January 9^th, 1978. San Francisco, California.

The movie fades up from a black screen with the year “1978” written across it to show a crowd of people walking in slow motion. It looks like they’re walking in the middle of San Francisco, and since it’s the 1970s, they’ve got the appropriate attire for what you’d expect ordinary people to be wearing in the 1970s.

We can hear the voiceover from someone saying the words, “I, Harvey Milk, do solemnly swear.”

Then, we can hear a different voice repeating the phrase: “I, Harvey Milk, do solemnly swear.”

The first voice continues with the next line, “That I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Harvey’s voice repeats the next line, “That I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

It sounds like someone is being sworn into office.

The scene on screen is still the people walking in slow motion. And now that the movie is fully faded up from the black screen, we can clearly identify two of the men walking. One of the men is the person whose voiceover we heard being sworn in, Harvey Milk, and he’s being played by Sean Penn in the movie. Harvey is wearing a suit with a blue shirt and striped tie as he’s smiling and continuing to walk in slow motion with his arm around the other readily identifiable person in this scene, Diego Luna’s character, Jack Lira.

We can hear the next line in the swearing in, “During which time that I hold the office of Supervisor, City and County of San Francisco.”

The movie cuts away from Harvey and Jack walking in the crowd to Harvey, still wearing the same suit with a striped tie that he was in the last shot. This time, though, he’s standing in front of a white building with an American flag. Jack is behind him along with a crowd of people who are watching the swearing in ceremony.

With Harvey’s right hand raised, we are seeing the visual for what we were hearing before as Harvey repeat the line we just heard, “During which time that I hold the office of Supervisor, City and County of San Francisco.”

The movie then gives us the text on screen to establish what this event is: “Supervisor Inaugurations. January 9^th, 1978.”

The first voice we’ve been hearing is identified now as he finishes the inauguration by congratulating Harvey and shaking his hand. In reply, Harvey says, “Thank you, Mayor.” And just like that we know the other man is the Mayor of San Francisco, George Moscone. He’s played by Victor Garber in the movie. After the hand shake, the crowd behind Harvey starts cheering and clapping as the Mayor and Harvey turn to the flashes of reporter’s cameras documenting the historic event.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Milk

That sequence comes from the 2008 film named after Harvey’s surname: Milk.  The event it’s depicting is when Harvey Milk was inaugurated as the San Francisco City-County Supervisor this week in history on January 9^th, 1978.

The movie’s portrayal of this event is a pretty good re-enactment but, of course, there’s not much to the event itself so that’s probably not too surprising. The reason why it’s historic has more to do with the context around it, rather than the event itself.

You see, when Harvey Milk was inaugurated this week in history, it marks one of the first times in United States history that an openly gay candidate won a public election.

As you can probably guess, Harvey’s road to winning the election as an openly gay candidate wasn’t an easy one. He served in the U.S. Navy as a diving instructor until 1955 when questions started to rise about him being gay. After that, he held a variety of jobs from working on Broadway musicals to the stock market to a school teacher. All the while, he faced criticism for his sexual orientation.

His path into politics started after the U.S. entered into the Vietnam War and like many people did in the 1970s, he started to protest the war. After he moved to San Francisco in 1972, Harvey opened a camera store and he started to become popular in the gay community. Then, he announced his first run for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1973.

He lost that election, but continued gaining in popularity as he started organizing other LGBT business owners. He ran again in 1975, and again he lost. And again, he was growing in popularity as a voice for the gay community—which was also growing in size in San Francisco.

That brings us to one of the other characters we see in the sequence I described. I’ll briefly mention Diego Luna’s character, Jack Lira, simply because he really was one of Harvey Milk’s lovers in the 1970s. But a bigger player into Harvey’s political career was the other character that I mentioned, Victor Garber’s character, Mayor George Moscone. He was a good friend of Harvey’s, and after Harvey lost his election in 1975, Mayor Moscone appointed Harvey to San Francisco’s Board of Permit Appeals.

It wasn’t an elected position, but it still made Harvey the first openly gay city commissioner in the U.S. Two years later, in 1977, Harvey ran again and this time he won the position of San Francisco City-County Supervisor. That led to his being inaugurated in January of 1978, and made history as well as international headlines for Harvey Milk.

And while it didn’t happen this week in history, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Harvey’s story ended in tragedy when, on November 27^th, 1978, a former Supervisor for San Francisco named Dan White snuck into City Hall and begged Mayor Moscone for his job back. He refused, so White shot the Mayor four times, including twice in the head. Then, he reloaded his gun and walked to Harvey Milk’s office down the hall where he shot Harvey five times, including twice in the head at point blank range.

If you want to see Harvey’s story as it’s told in the movies, check out the 2008 movie simply called Milk. We started our segment today at about 56 minutes into the movie.

 

January 10^th, 49 BCE. Italy.

Sun streams through the trees, casting rays of light on the lush, green grass below. The sounds of rushing water can be heard. A lone man can be seen wearing the military uniform of the Roman Empire.

Walking with heavy steps, he makes his way to the edge of the river. He slows to a stop, looking at the water with a concerned look on his face.

The river is a small one and not deep enough to cover the numerous rocks that can be seen poking up out of the water. It’s the kind of small river or stream you can easily cross on foot.

But he doesn’t cross it. Instead, he paces up and down the river with that same concerned look on his face as he stares at the water. As he nears the camera, we see him clenching his jaw as the gears turn inside his mind.

In the next shot, we see a line of Roman soldiers. Most of them are on foot, although there are some cavalry there as well. In the foreground is the river. The soldiers aren’t moving, they’re just standing there in front of the river .

The man from earlier is on a horse now. He looks back at the soldiers. Then, slowly, he coaxes his horse forward to cross the river.

The soldiers fall in behind their leader, crossing the river as well.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the miniseries Roman Empire

That sequence comes from the Netflix docudrama miniseries simply called Roman Empire. The event it’s depicting is when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, which happened this week in history on January 10^th, 49 BCE.

In the series, Julius Caesar, is played by Ditch Davey, and the Rubicon is the name of the river we see them crossing.

While it’s true that it wasn’t a physically difficult river to cross as far as the terrain is concerned, it was a huge deal for Caesar to cross the river with his army.

You see, the Rubicon River was the border between Rome and Gaul.

As a little side note, Gaul was a region in Western Europe that covered lands in modern-day France, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and some parts of Italy.

For a few years prior to the event that happened this week in history, Caesar had been conquering Gaul for the Romans—something that earned him a lot of fame in Rome. It also earned him some enemies, who didn’t like how popular Caesar was getting. One of them, in particular, was Pompey, who convinced the Roman Senate to order Caesar to return to Rome where they wanted him to resign his post.

There’s some debate over exactly what the Senate wanted to do to Caesar because their plans never came to fruition.

Caesar did return to Rome, but the reason crossing the Rubicon River with his army was such a big deal was because it meant Caesar was entering Roman lands at the head of his army. According to Roman law, only elected magistrates could lead their armies in Roman territory.

Breaking this law would immediately brand both the leader and the soldiers as outlaws and condemn them to death. So, normally, a Roman general would disband their army before entering Roman lands.

When Caesar crossed the Rubicon at the head of his army, he was basically declaring war on Rome. It was a point of no return. This act is seen as the start of a civil war that ended up with Pompey fleeing Rome and Julius Caesar as dictator of Rome.

Probably the biggest thing to mention about the accuracy of how the series depicts the crossing of the Rubicon is to simply point out that we just don’t know a lot about what the actual event looked like.

For example, I know I started this segment by saying it happened on January 10^th, but we don’t even know that for sure…most historians say it probably happened on the night of January 10^th or early morning hours of January 11^th. That’s more of an educated guess than a known fact though.

If you want to watch the event this week, check out season 2, episode 3 of Netflix’s docudrama series simply called Roman Empire. Crossing the river itself is at about the 20-minute mark, although the entire episode is called Crossing the Rubicon and does a great job of setting up the event.

 

January 13^th, 1968. Folsom, California.

We’re at a prison.

As the camera shows us different locations around the prison, we can see there are uniformed guards but no prisoners in sight.

Even inside the prison, we can see empty cells. No prisoners. The muffled sound of music can be heard throughout the halls of the prison. That’s odd.

Then we can see it.

All the prisoners are in a single room, cheering, clapping and stomping their feet to the beat. The musicians on stage are playing the same riff over and over.

As the musicians are playing, the guitarist looks rather nervously at a door behind the stage. Behind the door, Joaquin Phoenix’s version of Johnny Cash seems deep in thought.

After this, the movie jumps to Arkansas in 1944…but later in the movie we see more of the same event, and we see Joaquin Phoenix’s version of Johnny Cash chat with the prisoners a little bit before singing his song called Cocaine Blues.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Walk the Line

That sequence comes from 2005 movie called Walk the Line. The event it’s depicting is when Johnny Cash performed live at Folsom Prison, which happened this week in history on January 13^th, 1968.

There were some differences between what we see happening in the movie and the true story. For example, the real Johnny Cash didn’t start off the performance with the song called Cocaine Blues.

In fact, Johnny Cash actually played two live performances at Folsom State Prison that day and both performances started off with his song named after the prison called Folsom Prison Blues.

The first performance started at 9:40 AM and the second was at 12:40 PM. Part of the reason for two performances was because, just like we see mentioned in the movie, they were recorded live. Cash wasn’t sure how that would turn out, so the second performance was a backup of sorts.

Except that backfired a bit, because after playing 19 songs at the first concert the musicians were all pretty tired. But they went right back to work, playing another 16 songs—17 if you count the repeat of Greystone Chapel at the end of the 12:40 PM performance.

Something else the movie doesn’t focus on is that Johnny Cash wasn’t the only one to perform at the prison that day.

Carl Perkins and the Statler Brothers were also there, each performing a song or two before Johnny Cash took the stage.

If you want to watch a depiction of the event this week, check out 2005’s Walk the Line. It opens with the prison performance, but then we actually see more of it later in the movie a little after the 2-hour mark.

September 4, 1886. Skeleton Canyon, Arizona.

This scene in the movie starts with a beautiful landscape of a desert canyon. Not a single person can be seen, but it doesn’t take long for Matt Damon’s voiceover to tell us the date of September 4^th, 1886, as well as the significance of the date.

Damon’s character in the movie, 2^nd Lt. Britton Davis, says that’s the date that Geronimo and 34 Chiricahua men, women, and children surrendered to General Nelson Miles.

The scene in the movie changes to Kevin Tighe’s character, Brigadier General Nelson A. Miles, riding a horse in front of those men, women, and children walking by foot along the canyon.

We can see some other U.S. soldiers in uniform riding horses in the background, too, but the camera’s focus is on Miles.

The voiceover continues, saying that as Geronimo handed over his weapons, he simply said, “Once I moved about like the wind. Now I surrender, and that is all.”

One of the soldiers there is 2^nd Lt. Davis—a very young Matt Damon.

The camera cuts to another scene of this whole column of men, women, and children walking by foot alongside the soldiers on horseback.

That scene comes from the 1993 movie called Geronimo: An American Legend, and the movie is correct to give us the date of September 4^th, 1886, as the time that Geronimo surrendered for the final time—he had actually surrendered multiple times before, but life on a reservation wasn’t kind to those who were used to a nomadic lifestyle like the Apache people were.

That quote is something often attributed to Geronimo, too:

“Once I moved about like the wind. Now I surrender to you and that is all.”

What’s tricky about verifying the quote, or really many things about the nature of Geronimo’s actual surrender is that his story of what happened and the story of what happened from the U.S. soldiers who accepted his surrender are different.

According to the U.S. Army’s account, Geronimo’s surrender was unconditional. Not so, according to Geronimo’s own memoirs. He insisted to his dying day that he and his people had been misled and the surrender was conditional.

Maybe that’s why the movie doesn’t show the actual surrender itself but describe it through voiceover.

But, the movie was also correct to mention Geronimo’s weapons in that voiceover. He had three weapons on him at the time of surrender: A Winchester rifle, a Colt pistol, and a Bowie knife.

Today, the rifle is on display at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, while the pistol and knife are at a museum in Fort Sill, Oklahoma—where Geronimo died in 1909, decades after his surrender.

If you want to watch the scene from the movie we talked about this week, check out the 1993 movie called Geronimo: An American Legend.

The scene we talked about this week starts at about an hour, 40 minutes, and 29 seconds into the movie.

September 7, 1876. Northfield, Minnesota.

The water trough in the foreground of the shot is filled almost to the top. There’s a carriage just on the other side of it, and in the background, we can see buildings along the road. Picture if you will, a typical Western town—and this is basically what that looks like.

Except in most Western movies, the dirt road is all dusty. This one is muddy because it’s raining out. Someone carrying an umbrella races along the road as they try to keep from getting wet.

A couple women rush along the sidewalk, too, seemingly trying to stay dry. Not everyone cares about the rain, though, as we can see a man on a horse meandering slowly along the road. The camera focuses in on him as he continues along the road and now we can start to see some of the signs for buildings along the way.

The signs for the stores are very self-explanatory: That one just says “Furniture” and next to it is “Manning’s Stoves & Hardware.”

There’s not much of a surprise about what you’ll be able to get there.

The camera shifts focus now and instead of following the lone rider on the horse, it cuts to three men on horses coming the other direction. Oh, there’s more than three—there’s another guy who seems to be a part of the same crew.

It looks like it’s raining harder now, too, as the camera angle changes. The four men get off their horses and as they’re moving, we can see at least one of them has a rifle. They walk up to the sidewalk, looking around as if they’re seeing who is noticing them arrive. No one else seems to notice…or, at least, if they do it’s not apparent from the movie.

Inside one of the buildings, there’s a man writing something down. There’s a noise behind him, and he turns around just in time to get hit over the head with a shovel. He slumps over, unconscious. The window blinds are closed so no one from the outside can see what’s about to happen inside.

The other guys in the crew who were still outside in the rain calmly walk inside, and we can see there’s a sign on the outside that says this is a bank. More violence ensues as the men force the workers inside to, as one of the men says, “make a withdrawal.”

Except…I don’t think this is a legitimate withdrawal since it’s happening at gunpoint.

And that is how the 1972 movie called The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid depicts the start of an event from this week in history when the James-Younger Gang participated in what many have called one of their most infamous holdups.

As you can imagine, since the whole movie is about that event, there’s more to the sequence in the movie.

It’s the big climax at the end.

As the name of the movie says straight up, this raid really did happen in the town of Northfield, Minnesota. Well, the movie calls it a raid. It was a bank robbery. For a bit of geographical context, Northfield, Minnesota is about 36 miles, or 58 kilometers, to the south of Minneapolis.

And the First National Bank of Northfield had about $15,000 in its safe at the time. In 1876, that’s about the same as $423,000 today.

And while the segment of the movie we just heard described doesn’t give any indication about who is who, in the true story, one of the reasons why the robbery at the Northfield bank has gone down in history is because it was the beginning of the end for the notorious outlaw Jesse James.

The James-Younger Gang got their name from two sets of brothers: Frank and Jesse James as well as Cole and Bob Younger. They weren’t the only ones in the gang, of course, but they were the leaders and generally considered the most notorious of the outlaws.

Around 2 o’clock in the afternoon on September 7^th, 1876, the James-Younger gang rode into Northfield, Minnesota with a plan to rob the bank. I couldn’t find anything to suggest it was raining like we see in the movie, but the weather didn’t really matter for the plans.

Three members of the gang took up position down the street near a bridge as lookouts. Two more stayed outside the bank. Frank James, Bob Younger, and another of the gang, Charlie Pitts, were the members of the gang to enter the bank. While it didn’t necessarily happen exactly like we see in the movie with the shovel knocking one of the men unconscious, the robbers did demand the bank employees open the safe.

One thing the movie got wrong was how the town was alerted to the bank being robbed. We didn’t talk about this in the scene of the film we covered, but a little bit later there’s someone outside the bank who gets shot by someone in the gang. That is what makes everyone get alerted to what’s going on.

In the true story, it should have been included in the segment we talked about earlier because there was someone leaving the bank right as some of the gang went in to rob it. That person, a man named J.S. Allen, recognized the bank was being robbed almost immediately. He didn’t know who the robbers were, but he knew what was happening and he called out for help. Some townspeople nearby heard the call for help and grabbed their guns to investigate the bank.

The robbers outside the bank guarding the door didn’t help with the curiosity of the armed townspeople investigating.

A shootout started.

In the chaos, two of the James-Younger Gang were killed and left behind as they fled with only about $26.70 instead of the $15,000 in the safe.

A militia was formed to find the gang that had just tried to rob the bank. When they caught up to them, Charlie Pitts was killed by the militia in a shootout that saw the Younger Brothers captured. The only ones to get away from the attempted robbery at the Northfield bank was Jesse and Frank James, who had split off from the rest of the gang to flee back home to Missouri.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history as it’s depicted on screen, check out the 1972 film called The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid.

The gang rides into town to start the bank robbery sequence at about an hour and two minutes into the film.

And while we don’t have an episode covering that movie, if you want to learn more about the true story I’ll include a link in the show notes for this episode to a fantastic article from the Minnesota Digital Library that includes photographs of the places and people involved.

September 7, 1996. Las Vegas, Nevada.

A group of friends are standing outside the Luxor hotel and casino. There’s a black BMW there under the lights, and after a round of handshakes goodbye, two of the guys get into the car. We find out from the dialog the guy behind the wheel is Suge.

The camera cuts to the car driving down the street in Vegas. Bright lights from casinos around them shine in the night.

The two guys in the car are listening to rap, turning it up loud. The guy in the passenger seat remarks how good these guys are—meaning the rappers they’re listening to in the car.

At a stop light, an SUV pulls up next to them. The driver looks over and calls out to the guy in the passenger seat of the BMW. “Yo Pac, what up?”

Then he raises something up and points it at Demetrius Shipp Jr’s version of Tupac. A flash. The driver of the SUV took a photo of the two in the car. Then he compliments Tupac, “You’re looking good!”

Tupac replies that he’s feeling good. Be safe, man. The SUV driver pulls away, and Suge and Tupac continue driving in their BMW. Tupac changes the cassette tape to something else, and we can see they’re driving by Flamingo Road.

Tupac sings along with the R&B song, much to the chagrin of Suge.

They stop at a red light on Koval Lane. Another car pulls up next to the BMW. This time it’s a white sedan. Two women inside notice Tupac in the car next to them and call out for him. Suge and Tupac tell the girls which club they’re going to and suggest the girls follow them.

Behind Tupac, we can see another car pulling up to the red light on the other side of the BMW. Tupac turns around and looks at the other car.

The screen goes black.

After a moment, the movie returns and we can see a gun shooting out of the other car into Tupac’s side of the BMW. Multiple shots. Then, the car with the shooter accelerates and drives off.

That sequence is how the 2017 movie All Eyez on Me depicts an event that happened this week in history when the rapper Tupac Shakur was shot multiple times in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada on September 7^th, 1996.

The true story of what happened that day is still shrouded in some mystery. We don’t really know who pulled the trigger. So, it makes sense why the movie doesn’t show who is behind the murder because we just don’t know.

What we do know, though, is that Tupac was leaving a boxing match in Las Vegas on September 7^th, 1996. That boxing match was between Mike Tyson and Bruce Seldon at the MGM Grand—Tupac and his entourage were staying at the Luxor hotel like we see in the movie, but they had gone to the fight at the MGM Grand.

And while the movie doesn’t really show this, there was an altercation as Tupac left the Grand. Some people think that’s what cost him his life, although it’s never been proven.

The movie was correct to show Tupac being in the BMW with Suge Knight, though. Although the scene in the movie we talked about this week doesn’t tell us who Suge was, he was the Death Row Records CEO—basically, Tupac’s boss on his record label. Death Row was associated with a gang in LA known as the Bloods and they had a rivalry with the Crips. Remember that altercation that happened at the MGM Grand? That was with a member of the Crips, and later there would be security footage that showed some people with Tupac kicking the Crips member on the floor of the casino.

The movie was also correct to show the photograph being taken of Tupac while he was in the car with Suge. That photo was taken by a man named Leonard Jefferson, who snapped a photo of Tupac at an intersection…little did he know that would be the last photo of Tupac alive.

According to Jefferson, it was a chance meeting when he just happened to notice Tupac and Suge in the car. He said exactly what we see him saying in the movie, “Yo, what up Pac!”

There was a brief conversation and Jefferson took a now-famous photo of Tupac. I’ll add a link to it in the show notes for this episode, as well as a great article by Brendan Klinkenberg over at the website Complex that outlines Leonard Jefferson’s version of events that night.

A few minutes after Jefferson took the photo, the sound of gunshots rang out.

Witnesses said were two or three men inside the white Cadillac that pulled up next to Tupac and Suge’s car and started shooting.

According to the police report, there were either 13 or 14 shots fired. All of them into the passenger side of the car where Tupac was sitting, just like we see in the movie. The police would later say they’re confident Tupac was the target of the attack.

Although it’s also worth noting that witnesses weren’t too forthcoming with the police, so that’s a big reason why we don’t officially know the truth of what happened. This isn’t shown in the movie at all, but many years later, one of the first police officers on the scene said that when he asked Tupac who shot him—Tupac only said “Fuck you” before going unconscious. He died six days later on September 13, 1996.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history, though, check out the 2017 biopic about Tupac’s life called All Eyez On Me. We started our segment today at about two hours, eight minutes and 30 seconds into the movie.

August 21, 1961. Nashville, Tennessee.

There’s a band playing music. We’re in a recording studio with four men and one woman. Almost immediately, there’s an oddity as the woman is holding herself up with a crutch.

No one is playing their instruments, but we can hear music playing…it must be something playing over the speakers in the studio. She hobbles over to the pianist, who is busy jotting down some notes.

She rests her crutch on the piano as the man keeps singing the song in the background, “I’m crazy for feeling so blue…”

She waves to the guys in the sound booth to cut the song.

She shakes her head.

“I don’t care how many times you play that, I can’t sing this man’s song.”

One of the men in the sound booth replies that no one wants her to—take it away from him. The pianist closest to her reaffirms this. To hell with the demo, steal it!

Cigarette in hand, she shakes her head again. “How am I supposed to do this song?”

The man in the studio replies, “Just like you always do, Patsy—your way!”

This is how the 1985 movie Sweet Dreams depicts an event that happened this week in history when Patsy Cline recorded her now-famous song “Crazy” in the studio.

That man on the demo? Another singer who was famous in his own right: Willie Nelson.

Of course, at the time, Nelson wasn’t famous. Quite the opposite. According to Nelson’s autobiography, part of the idea that inspired him to write the song “Crazy” had to do with how he felt during a time of his life when he was trying to support his family with unstable work.

In the movie, while Jessica Lange’s version of Patsy Cline is recording the song we hear her talking to one of the men in the control room named Bradley.

He’s played by Jerry Haynes in the movie, and there is a level of historical accuracy there because Owen Bradley really was Patsy Cline’s producer. In fact, it was Bradley who suggested the song for Patsy Cline after he heard it from one of Willie Nelson’s friends and colleagues, another song writer named Hank Cochran.

He’s not in the movie at all, but then again neither is Willie Nelson.

Patsy Cline recorded her version of “Crazy” starting on August 24^th, 1961, and the recording process took about a month: It wrapped up on September 15^th. Then, it was released in October of the same year and it was an immediate hit.

Since Patsy Cline had just released another hit single earlier in the year called “I Fall Into Pieces,” after “Crazy” was released to such success, Billboard named Patsy Cline their Favorite Female Country Artist of 1961.

If you want to watch the recording process as it’s portrayed in the movie, check out the 1985 biopic about Patsy Cline’s life called Sweet Dreams. The recording of “Crazy” starts at about an hour and 21 minutes into the film.

And if you want to dig into Patsy’s life and tragic death just two years after the recording of “Crazy”, we covered that movie back in episode #95 at basedonatruestorypodcast.com/95.

August 24, 79. Italy.

Two men are sword fighting in an arena. While this part of the movie doesn’t tell us who they are, we can tell from the actors that the two men are played by Sasha Roiz’s character, Proculus, and Kit Harington’s character, Milo.

The sword fighting intensifies and every so often we can hear the crowd cheering as one of the two men gets a hit in on the other.

The camera cuts to Kiefer Sutherland’s character, Corvus, as he’s watching…all of a sudden, the building starts to rumble. Corvus looks around, trying to figure out what’s going on.

In the arena, Proculus knocks Milo down to the ground before he realizes everything is shaking. The cheers of the crowd change into screams as people start looking around at each other. We can hear the sound of cracking, although there doesn’t seem to be any visual damage yet.

Oh wait, I spoke too soon.

The camera pans up from the ground level of the arena and we can see pieces of the whole building start to collapse into piles of dust and debris. People are fleeing for the exits. The camera keeps panning up and in the distance behind the arena is a massive mountain. At the top of the mountain, there’s a burst as scores of smoke and ash spew into the sky.

This is how the 2014 movie Pompeii depicts an event that happened this week in history when the volcano Mount Vesuvius erupted on August 24^th in the year 79 AD.

Well, not really.

The characters and storyline in the movie are fictional, so the movie overall isn’t supposed to be telling an entirely true story—it’s more about transporting us to Pompeii to see how things might have happened for people who were there.

Because the truth is that we don’t know exactly what it was like. After all, it was almost 2,000 years ago.

1,944 years, as of this recording in 2023.

With that said, although the movie’s timeline focuses on the eruption in 79 AD, that’s not really where the true story begins.

There was a massive earthquake about 16 years earlier, in 63 AD, that caused a lot of damage to many of the buildings near Vesuvius. Today, most scientists and historians believe the earthquake was a bit of a warning sign. But, it’s not likely the local residents knew it to be a warning sign of something worse to come, and Romans loved the beautiful views along the shores of the Bay of Naples that Pompeii provided.

By the time the year 79 AD rolled around, there was around 20,000 people who lived in Pompeii. And while it doesn’t get as much attention, there was another town nearby called Herculaneum.

As a fun little fact, Herculaneum was actually rediscovered before Pompeii—in 1709, while Pompeii was discovered decades later in 1748.

Herculaneum was a smaller town with only about 5,000 residents at the time of the eruption, but most believe it was a vacation town for Roman elites and, by extension, a wealthier town than Pompeii.

Perhaps that’s why we’ve heard of Pompeii more, because there were a lot less human remains found in Herculaneum than Pompeii. Is that simply because there were fewer people in Herculaneum? Maybe.

Or maybe it’s because, even today, most of Herculaneum has yet to be uncovered—you see, part of the city lies underneath the modern-day city of Ercolano.

Or maybe it’s because Herculaneum consisted of more Roman elites than Pompeii, so they were able to flee while leaving less fortunate people behind.

Those are all speculations that people have had over the centuries but, of course, they’re purely speculation.

What’s not speculation is that Vesuvius’ eruption killed about 16,000 people in the region, with 2,000 of them being in Pompeii. And I’m sure you’ve seen photos of Pompeii—the manner in which many people who were killed by the ash tells a unique story in history, even if the destruction of an erupting volcano is not.

March 29, 1795. Vienna, Austria.

We’re in a very ornate room. The camera is angled so it’s shooting up, meaning we can see a huge, crystal chandelier hanging on the right side of the frame. It looks like it’s over the wooden piano that’s on the bottom right of the frame, although it’s obvious that’s just the way the camera angle makes it look. The chandelier is actually hanging in the room behind the piano.

On the left side of the frame is a young man, who is sitting up straight as he’s playing the piano.

With a closeup of his hands, we can see as they dance around the keyboard, making lovely music. He’s obviously a very accomplished musician.

The camera cuts to a woman running through a field with hedges and into woods nearby. In an unexpected move—at least, I didn’t expect it while I was watching for this episode—she takes off her dress as a man follows her into the woods and they embrace. The piano music continues as a backdrop as the scene cuts to a woman in a bath now as her voiceover explains that she was invited to a musical performance at Prince Lichnowsky’s palace, and Beethoven was going to be there.

Then, we’re back in the room with the man playing piano. That is the palace and Beethoven is the man playing the piano. He’s played by Gary Oldman in the movie.

This scene comes from the 1994 movie called Immortal Beloved, and…well, to be honest, the movie is quite vague about the timeline here so there’s a good chance this isn’t actually depicting an event that happened this week in history. But, it might be!

Haha!

What we do know from history, though, is that it was during this week in history, on March 29^th, 1795 when Ludwig van Beethoven had his first-ever public performance as a pianist when he was 24 years old. And it was in Vienna, Austria, just like the scene we see in the movie.

There’s also truth to the mention of Prince Lichnowsky, although that is a clue for why the performance we see might not have specifically been the first public performance in 1795.

You see, Beethoven’s first public performance as an adult took place at a charity concert in the Burgtheater in Vienna. It was a series of performances that was scheduled for March 29^th and 30^th, but then a third performance was added as a charity event put on by Mozart’s widow—he died at the end of 1791.

So, looking back on the event with a historical lens, it was on March 29^th that was the first public performance for an adult Beethoven performing one of his own pieces, Piano Concerto No. 2 in B♭, Op. 19, as it would become known later when it was published. Although, some have suggested it may have been Op. 15 in C.

One of the reasons we’re not entirely sure is because Beethoven himself didn’t seem to be so sure of what he was going to play.

According to one of his friends who was there, Beethoven wasn’t feeling so well and he was running late on writing the pieces for the concert. So, he kind of had to wing it and do some improvisation on day two. That friend, a man by the name of Franz Wegeler, said, “Not until the afternoon of the second day before the concert did he write the rondo, and then while suffering from a pretty severe colic which frequently afflicted him. I relieved him with simple remedies so far as I could. In the anteroom sat four copyists to whom he handed sheet after sheet as soon as it was finished.”

Records then suggest that on the second day of the charity event, on March 30^th,  Beethoven did some improvisation.

On the 31^st, Beethoven performed again but as we just learned that last day was technically a different charity event organized by Mozart’s wife. So, Beethoven didn’t perform one of his own pieces, but rather played one of Mozart’s concertos.

As a fun little side note, since Beethoven was a child prodigy his first-ever public performance almost happened this week in history, too! It was on March 26^th, 1778 when Beethoven was seven years old. He performed with another of his father’s students.

Back to the movie, though, the mention of Prince Lichnowsky still has some historical accuracy to it because in the true story, Prince Karl Lichnowsky was one of Beethoven’s earliest financiers. In fact, Beethoven lived with Lichnowsky in a room at his palace and many of his compositions were dedicated to Lichnowsky.

So, the scene we see in the movie is rooted in some truth.

If you want to watch Beethoven’s early performance recreated on screen this week, check out the 1994 movie Immortal Beloved and it starts at about the 18-minute mark.

 

March 29, 1827. Vienna, Austria.

For our next story this week, we’ll be staying in the same movie.

We’re not in Prince Lichnowsky’s palace anymore. There’s a group of people standing outside. The first thing that’s noticeable about the group is they’re all wearing black. Behind them are lush green plants and four torches burn in the background, something also noticeable since it’s daytime.

Between the four torches, the camera angle frames Jeroen Krabbé’s character, Anton Schindler, as he explains Beethoven to the people gathered.

He says things like, “He was an artist,” and “The thorns of life wounded him deeply, so he stuck to his art.”

While Schindler’s voice continues, the scene cuts to four pallbearers wearing black suits and top hats as they carry a casket through a street filled with throngs of people.

Then the camera cuts back to the scene at the grave and now we can see the casket lying there. Behind the casket is a mausoleum with the initials “LvB.” There are somber looks on everyone’s faces as they listen to Schindler continue to talk about Beethoven’s life. There are more scenes of the procession as the casket makes its way through the street. It’s lined with soldiers now, and the casket is on a carriage pulled by a pair of beautiful, black horses.

Reaching its destination, soldiers help the casket off of the carriage so it’s back under the power of the four pallbearers. They carry it to a doorway where a V-shape formation of priests in white robes contrast everyone else wearing black clothing.

The music swells as the pallbearers walk inside to the richly decorated church interior. On either side of the aisle the casket is being carried down are pews filled with people. There doesn’t look to be an empty seat.

Everyone is wearing black as the camera cuts around to a few solemn-looking faces in attendance.

Just like our last event, this scene also comes from the 1994 movie called Immortal Beloved. Unlike the last event, however, this one is a little more obvious about its timing and it was this week in history that Ludwig van Beethoven was buried on March 29^th, 1827 in Vienna, Austria.

The movie’s portrayal of the event is very dramatized, but it does hit on some key truths. Probably the most accurate thing we see in the movie is the idea that Beethoven’s funeral procession was a big deal in Vienna.

According to accounts of the event, somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 people attended. So, the scene we see in the movie of streets lined with people to watch the casket being carried was true.

What’s not true about the movie is the prominent portrayal of the man who we see giving the speech at the funeral in the film. That’s Jeroen Krabbé’s character, Anton Schindler.

Schindler was a real person and he was a friend of Beethoven’s for many years, even working as Beethoven’s secretary for a time. After Beethoven’s death, Schindler was the one who owned most of Beethoven’s conversation books where he’d communicate with his friends. So, it stands to reason that Schindler would be the best person to write Beethoven’s biography.

And, he did. That was first published in 1840, 13 years after Beethoven’s death.

However, most historians now don’t believe many of the things in that biography. You see, Schindler made a lot of it up. For example, Schindler said he was very close to Beethoven for 11 or 12 years but further research into it revealed that number was more likely half that at five or six.

Since Schindler had the conversation books, we can assume he’d pull a lot from that, but over the years it became evident that Schindler also fabricated many of those and burned many of the pages to cover it up.

The first scholarly biographer came along in the form of Alexander Wheelock Thayer, who sailed to Germany from the United States in 1849 after realizing there were some discrepancies in Schindler’s biography. Thayer spent the first two years learning German so he could do the research required to write a truthful biography of Beethoven.

That was first published in 1866, with subsequent volumes being added in 1872 and 1879. That told Beethoven’s life up until 1816. Then in 1907 and 1908 the fourth and fifth volumes were published, which covered the remainder of Beethoven’s life and completed the overall work.

So, just as a recap, this week is a great one to listen to some Beethoven as it was on March 26^th, 1778 that a seven-year-old Beethoven had his first public performance. And while we didn’t talk about this yet, it was exactly 49 years later on March 26^th, 1827, that Beethoven died at the age of 56.

On March 29^th, 1795, a 24-year-old Beethoven had his debut performance as a pianist, launching his career. And then it was precisely 32 years later on March 29^th, 1827 that Beethoven’s funeral attracted between 10,000 to 30,000 attendees.

That scene in the 1994 biopic about his life called Immortal Beloved starts at about 2 minutes into the film, but if there’s ever a week to watch a movie about Ludwig van Beethoven, this is the perfect time…so, I’d suggest just watching the whole thing!

And maybe throw some of his music on your playlist this week, too! If you’re looking for a recommendation to start with, I’d have to go with my favorite piece of his that’s probably his most common composition: Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor for solo piano. Or, as it’s more commonly known, Für Elise.

Oh, and as a fun little side note, Beethoven never knew how successful that would become because it wasn’t even published in his lifetime. Although Beethoven composed the piece in 1810, a man named Ludwig Nohl discovered the manuscript that he composed it on in 1867, 40 years after Beethoven died. Ludwig Nohl said the manuscript he found had the dedication of the piece as being “For Elise on April 27 in Memory by L. V. Bthvn.”

That’s why it’s called Für Elise. There have been a few suggestions as to who Elise might be, but because this was all done after Beethoven’s death, no one really knows for sure.

 

April 1, 1934. Grapevine, Texas.

There’s a white stone building that’s been stained and discolored by years of farm use. Two cows stick their noses out of the open windows as a man in overalls emerges from the open doorway. The windows don’t have any glass, just like the doorway doesn’t seem to have a door to it.

On the left side of the frame is a fenced-in pasture covered in mud and hoof prints, no doubt made by the cows in the window and plenty more.

The man is wearing well-used pair of blue overalls and sporting a beard with gray hair that’s sprinkled with white. He’s carrying a white pail as he exits the building, going about what we can only assume are his morning chores.

As he walks further out of the building, the camera pans around him and we can see there’s also a horse in the pasture behind the building. The man continues on his way, walking past the building he just came out of and to the pasture on the other side of it. That side has more green grass than it does mud.

The man stops in his tracks.

On the dirt road in the distance, just beyond the pasture, he can see a car. It’s stopped. In front of the car, facing the opposite direction, are two motorcycles. No one is on the motorcycles, though, but instead there are two uniformed policemen walking from their parked motorcycles toward the stopped car.

The farmer watches from a distance as the door of the car opens.

We can hear one of the police officers ask if the people in the car are all right.

Just then, gunfire erupts. Smoke can be seen in the distance as the farmer in the foreground of the camera angle instinctively ducks for cover. He drops the pail, spilling the milk inside, but he doesn’t run. He drops to his knees as he watches the event unfold in front of him.

The camera looks a little closer now and we can see two figures beside the parked car. One is a man dressed in a suit, the other a woman in a red dress.

On the ground between the car and the motorcycles are two bodies lying still—the police officers who were approaching the car. The woman in the red dress walks up to one of the policemen on the ground, points her shotgun at the man’s face and without hesitation, from the farmer’s perspective we can hear the sound and see the smoke from the gun blast.

This scene comes from the 2019’s The Highwaymen and it depicts a very real event that happened this week in history when Bonnie and Clyde murdered two Grapevine police officers on April 1^st, 1934.

And the movie was correct to show the two officers were approaching a stopped vehicle. It was also correct to show there was a witness, although the movie leaves out the farmer’s two daughters who were also there that Easter morning.

William Schieffer was doing his normal Sunday morning chores around the farm just like we see in the movie when he saw two people driving by in a car very slowly—they appeared to be looking at the grass as if they were searching for something. He recalled later it was a young man and a young woman, she had a white rabbit in her lap.

Schieffer’s daughters, Isabella Schieffer and Elaine Adams, came outside to help their dad at about the same time as the sound of motorcycles could be heard. There were two of them, and they stopped near the now parked car that the young couple had been driving.

They didn’t know it at the time, but looking at this from a historical lens most believe the two patrolmen thought the stopped Ford had broken down, so they were going to help out the young couple inside. After all, it was 1934, and it’s not like cell phones or even telephones, in general, were popular in rural Texas.

This all took place on Dove Road just off Highway 114 in what’s now Southlake, Texas.

While we only see one person watching, in truth it was three onlookers, who stood some 100 yards or so away as the two patrolmen walked up the car. Before they could get close, the sound of a gun rang and one of the patrolmen, Edward Wheeler, fell to the ground. He was killed instantly. The other, Holloway Murphy, wasn’t killed. He fell to his side on the ground.

And that’s when, just like we see in the movie, Bonnie walked up to the man and shot him at point-blank range.

Or maybe it was both Bonnie and Clyde who walked up, there are some conflicting reports of Schieffer and his daughters’ account, but most agree it was Bonnie who pulled the trigger killing the other patrolman.

We don’t see it in the movie, but there were other witnesses to the event as well. Although the Schieffers were the best witnesses since it was near their farm. But Jack Cook, another resident who lived nearby, happened to see the young couple just before the shootings. Then shortly after, another couple—Mr. and Mrs. Giggals—were on a Sunday morning drive on Highway 114 and had just passed Dove Road when they heard the shots. They turned around to see what happened and, according to them, the shooters saw them, got in their car and sped away.

In the aftermath of the event, Texas law enforcement reached out to Frank Hamer, a former Texas Ranger who, as it turned out, was already on the hunt for Bonnie and Clyde.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history, check out the 2019 movie The Highwaymen. The Grapevine killings are at about 45 minutes and 20 seconds into the film. And if you want to learn more about the true story behind the hunt for Bonnie and Clyde, check out episode #178 of Based on a True Story.

January 31, 1865. Washington DC

Our first movie gives us some text on screen to tell us it’s the morning of the vote.

Tommy Lee Jones’ character, Thaddeus Stevens, sits down in the empty room. It’s quiet. The calm before the storm.

The camera cuts to the upper balcony. There are more people in the room now. It’s filled with people. Two rows of Black men and women enter the upper balcony and find their seats. All the men below are quiet as they watch them enter. One of the men greets them, “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, first in the history of this people’s chamber…to your House.”

A round of applause.

David Costabile’s version of James Ashley starts to speak and we learn why this occasion is so important.

Today we are here for regarding the matter of adding a 13^th amendment to the constitution. This amendment was passed by the Senate last year, says Mr. Ashley. We’ve debated for the past several weeks. Today we vote.

They are to have final statements before the vote.

The first causes a ruckus as Peter McRobbie’s version of George Pendleton from Ohio says he’s received confirmation that there is a delegation from the Confederacy in Washington DC bearing an offer of immediate cessation of the war. He proposes they postpone the vote until they hear from the President himself.

Seeing this, James Spader’s version of W.N. Bilbo and a couple others rush a note from the Capitol building to the White House where President Lincoln is waiting to hear the result of the vote. After Lincoln reads the note, he writes something down and hands it to Joseph Cross’ character, John Hay, to give to Mr. Ashley. At first, Hay questions this saying there is a delegation and making a false representation to Congress is impeachable. Lincoln says he hasn’t made a false representation, then he hands the note to Bilbo and tells him to deliver it to Mr. Ashley.

Bilbo does.

Mr. Ashley reads the note aloud to the House: “So far as I know there are no peace commissioners in the city nor are there likely to be.”

Despite some ongoing disagreements, the motion to postpone is tabled. They’re going to vote.

And, they do. Representatives are called by name and each one gives their “Yea” or “Nay” on the amendment. People are tallying the votes, counting down how many it will take to win. 15. 8. 6.

Finally, Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax wishes to cast an “Aye” vote because, as he puts it, this isn’t usual—it’s history.

Speaker Colfax reads the final vote:

8 absent or not voting.

56 votes against.

119 votes for.

With a margin of two votes…

The camera cuts to President Lincoln in the White House. Church bells can be heard in the distance. Cannons are blasting. In the House of Representatives, there’s cheering and celebrating. Outside, throngs of people are cheering and singing. The 13^th amendment passed!

The depiction of this week’s event comes from the 2012 movie simply called Lincoln.

While we don’t know the specifics of things like that note the movie shows from President Lincoln, it is true that on January 31^st, 1865, the United States House of Representatives voted to pass the 13^th Amendment of the Constitution, abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime.

This was a momentous event in history because even though President Lincoln had passed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1^st, 1863, that proclamation made all the slaves in Confederate states free. Since the Civil War was still raging, though, it’s not like the Union could uphold the proclamation the Confederate states. It was not the end of slavery in the United States, but it can be considered the beginning of the end.

That process started in the same year when James Ashley from Ohio introduced an amendment to ban slavery on December 14^th, 1863.

As battles raged across the United States during the American Civil War, political battles raged in Washington DC as lawmakers on either of the aisle debated the amendment that would end slavery.

On April 8^th, 1864, the Senate passed the amendment by a vote of 38-6. That’s eight votes over the required amount to pass.

Then the amendment went to the House of Representatives. It was first debated there on June 14^th, 1864 and failed to pass in a vote on the following day. That vote was 93 in favor, 65 against and 23 not voting. Since a two-thirds majority is needed to pass an amendment to the Constitution, the 13^th Amendment failed.

The 13^th Amendment was brought back up by President Lincoln on December 6^th, 1864, who urged a reconsideration of it.

More debates followed at the beginning of 1865.

January 6^th, 7^th, 9^th, 10^th, 11^th, 12^th, 13^th, 28^th were filled with debates in the House of Representatives about the 13^th Amendment.

Then, just like the movie shows, on January 31^st, 1865, the House of Representatives voted on the 13^th Amendment again. This is a quote from The Congressional Globe, a document in the Library of Congress about that event:

Mr. DAWSON called for the yeas and nays. The yeas and nays were ordered. The question was taken, and it was decided in the affirmative—yeas 119, nays 56, not voting 8; as follows

…and then the document lists each of the members of the House of Representatives who voted “yea”, who voted “nay” and who decided not to vote. I won’t read each name here. It then continues…

So, the two thirds required by the Constitution of the United States having voted in favor thereof, the joint resolution was passed.

During the roll-call, on Mr. English and Mr. Ganson voting “ay,” there was considerable applause by members on the Republican side of the House.

The SPEAKER called repeatedly to order, and asked that members should set a better example to spectators in the gallery.

Mr. KALBFLEISCH and other Democratic members remarked that the applause came, not from the spectators in the gallery, but from members on the floor.

The SPEAKER. Members will take their seats and observe order.

The SPEAKER directed the Clerk to call his name as a member of the House.

The Clerk called the name of SCHUYLER COLFAX, of Indiana, and Mr. Colfax voted “ay.” [This incident was greeted with renewed applause.]

The SPEAKER. The constitutional majority of two thirds having voted in the affirmative, the joint resolution is passed.

[The announcement was received by the House and by the spectators with an outburst of enthusiasm. The members on the Republican side of the House instantly sprung to their feet, and, regardless of parliamentary rules, applauded with cheers and clapping of hands. The example was followed by the male spectators in the galleries, which were croweded to excess, who waved their hats and cheered loud and long, while the ladies, hundreds of whom were present, rose in their seats and waved their handkerchiefs, participating in and adding to the general excitement and intense interest of the scene. This lasted for several minutes.]

 

You’ll notice that event we saw in the movie where the Speaker asked for his own name to be called mentioned—it really did happen. After this, the House voted on a motion to adjourn, which also passed, so at 4:20 PM the House adjourned for the day.

If you want to read more about that event, you can find the document on the Library of Congress’ website. Look for A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774 – 1875 and the events of January 31^st, 1865 are on page 531.

If you want to watch this event in the 2012 movie Lincoln, you’ll find the morning of the vote starting at 1h 47m and 23s.

And if you want to take a deeper dive into the true story behind the movie, including about that delegation from the Confederacy in DC at the time of the vote, check out episode number #170 of Based on a True Story to learn about the historical accuracy of the movie from Lincoln scholar Dr. Brian Dirck.

 

January 31, 1929. Germany.

It’s quiet. A fox sleeps, the baby sniffing around busily…From overhead, we can see dead soldiers lying on the frozen ground.

A spattering of gunshots sound, followed by dirt being kicked up as they hit around the soldiers. But everyone is dead already, so there’s no movement. The camera dollies in closer to the ground. Still no movement other than random gunshots, explosions here and there.

Then the camera cuts to the German trenches. A machine gun spits out shots while soldiers run this way and that in the trench.

Soldiers go to the ladders at the order of their commanding officer.

“Heinrich! Get out there!” is the order we hear when we see someone climb the ladder to the top of the trench.

The moment he’s at the top, a bullet hits him in the head and he falls back into the trench. Dead. Orders continue, “All of you, go!” Heinrich goes to tend to his fallen colleague, but the officer stops him. “Heinrich, get out there! Attack!” and Heinrich climbs the ladder his now-deceased friend just took to his death. Heinrich and plenty of other Germans make it up, though. And the camera follows them as they rush forward…charging toward an enemy we can’t see.

None of the soldiers shoot, they just run. They’re being shot at all the time. Men fall. Heinrich keeps going, panting as he drops down behind a fallen tree for some cover. Another soldier calls his name, “Heinrich!” but just as Heinrich gets to him…the soldier is shot and killed. Heinrich goes back to behind the log. Explosions kick dirt onto him. Another soldier falls next to him—blood covering his face as he lies there dead. Heinrich pants as he cocks his rifle and points it rather shakily over the cover. He shoots. Cock again. Fire. He’s not looking at where he’s shooting. He leaves the rifle now and pulls out his ax and runs straight ahead. Seeing an enemy soldier, he screams as he sticks the blade of the ax in the man’s chest.

Halfway through the scream, the scene cuts to black with the title of the movie: All Quiet on the Western Front.

Okay, so here I’m cheating a little when it comes to the historical event because if you listened to the Based on a True Story episode #218 where we covered the movie All Quiet on the Western Front we learned the movie is based on a novel. So, it’s not really supposed to be based on a true story in the sense of the term we’re used to.

But, the event this week that is of significance was on January 31^st, 1929, and that is when Erich Maria Remarque first published the novel in Germany.

Well, sort of.

You see, the story was published from November 10^th to December 9^th in 1928 in a serial form. The book form was published on January 31^st, 1929 though.

The reception wasn’t entirely great at first. While plenty of readers loved the realism of the story and how eloquent Remarque’s words were, there were a lot of people in Germany who looked at his book as slandering a German war effort.

Because even though World War I was over, a new war was about to begin.

The book was banned by many countries because of its anti-war message. Austria banned their soldiers from reading it the same year it was published, 1929. Czechoslovakia the same and in 1933, Italy joined the ban. That year, 1933, All Quiet on the Western Front was one of the first books to be denounced and publicly burned by the Nazi Party.

However, many anti-war movements used the book as a way of helping to spread their own message against the evils of war. So, its popularity continued to spread.

In April of 1930, the book was adapted into a movie for the first time. That only helped spread the popularity of the book.  Then, of course, in 2022 there was the latest on-screen adaptation of the book.

If you want to learn more about the historical accuracy of the 2022 movie, check out episode #218 of Based on a True Story with Dr. Christopher Warren from The National World War I Museum and Memorial.

 

February 2, 1959. Clear Lake, Iowa.

There are little drifts of snow piled up along the street corners.

A tow truck drives by pulling a big bus with a sign on it that says “Winter Party ’59.”

As it passes by a big building, the camera shifts angles to show a better look at the large, stone building. People are bundled up in warm coats as they make their way out of the cold night air and up the steps to the front doors. Above the steps in the entryway reads a big sign that says: “WIOA Radio Presents Winter Party, ‘59”

Then, above that obviously temporary sign is the name of the building: “Clearlake Auditorium.”

The marquee on the auditorium mentions the date: “February 3.”

Also mentioned are the musicians playing tonight’s concert: “Dion & the Belmonts, Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens” and at the top of the marquee is the headliner: “Buddy Holly.”

Inside, we see Big Bopper performing.

Backstage, Gary Busey’s version of Buddy Holly makes a long-distance call to New York City. A woman in bed answers the phone. She gets excited to hear Buddy’s voice. He addresses her as Maria. Buddy mentions something about how they just got there because their bus broke down so they’re going to have to rent a plane tonight.

That must be the bus we saw a moment ago with the “Winter Party ‘59” sign on it as it was being towed away.

Maria tells Buddy they’re both doing fine. She kicked me this morning, and Buddy gets excited to hear it. She must be pregnant with their child.

As Big Bopper wraps up, Buddy tells Maria he has to go. He’ll call tomorrow. Love you, bye!

He hangs up the phone.

Just then, two guys enter Maria’s apartment. They seem to be friends of Buddy’s and they tell her they weren’t sure if he’d want to get back together. She says he’d love to, they say they were going to fly to Iowa to surprise Buddy and they want to know where the show goes next. Maria looks it up. Tomorrow he’ll be in Moorhead, Minnesota, 8 PM.

Back on stage, the crowd goes crazy as Big Bopper introduces who he calls a fellow Texan, Mr. Buddy Holly.

We see a decent amount of the set in the movie. It starts off with a slow song called True Love Ways before getting more upbeat with a medley of Buddy Holly’s classic rock songs like That’ll Be the Day, Oh Boy and Peggy Sue among others. Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens joining Buddy Holly on stage to perform the big finale at the concert.

Then, just as Buddy says “We love you, Clearlake! We’ll see you next year!” to end the concert, the music and roaring crowd fade away.

Text on the screen tells us that Buddy Holly died later that night along with J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson and Ritchie Valens in a crash of a private airplane just outside of Clearlake…and the rest is rock ‘n roll.

This depiction comes from the 1978 movie called The Buddy Holly Story.

Right away you might’ve noticed a discrepancy. When we started this event, I gave the date of February 2^nd, 1959 while the date on the marquee sign of the Clearlake Auditorium said February 3^rd.

The true story is that the final performance for Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper and Buddy Holly was at the Surf Ballroom in Clearlake, Iowa on the evening of February 2^nd, 1959. The plane crash that took the lives of all three musicians was in the early morning hours of February 3^rd.  

While the movie is correct to mention the tour bus breaking down as the reason why the musicians took a plane, there’s more to the story that we don’t see in the movie.

On February 1^st, J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, Dion DiMucci from Dion & the Belmonts, Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly and other musicians on the tour were driving from their last concert in Duluth, Minnesota. It was in the early morning hours of the 1^st when, near Hurley, Wisconsin, the tour bus threw a piston.

Without heat on the bus, the musicians had to burn newspapers in the aisle of the bus for hours to battle the freezing cold. Temperatures that night were around -30° Fahrenheit, or about -34° Celsius.

They managed to find another bus which they boarded near Green Bay, Wisconsin. They were headed to the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, where their next show was. That’s about 350 miles, or 560 kilometers away.

That bus didn’t have much luck against the frigid temperatures, either. Just before they made it to Clear Lake, the heaters on the bus failed. From my research, I couldn’t find anything to suggest the bus itself was broken down, but the heater not working was enough. The bus had to be repaired.

But, they managed to make it to the Surf Ballroom in time for their 8 PM concert.

But, because of their bad luck with buses, Buddy Holly had decided he didn’t want to get on a bus for the next stretch of the road. The bus breaking down and just barely making it to Clear Lake in time for the show meant they were all tired and dirty—not like they’d done laundry in a while.

The movie was correct to mention their next show was in Moorhead, Minnesota. And if you remember I just mentioned they were in Minnesota before going to Iowa, so you’re probably wondering why they were doing that…well, you’re not alone. The whole tour was rather poorly planned out so the musicians had to crisscross a lot, and added on the bus breakdowns, Buddy was looking forward to a few extra hours of relaxation time that flying would give him before everyone else arrived on the bus.

Buddy asked the manager at the Surf Ballroom to look into getting a flight to their next show. They were flying into Fargo, North Dakota, which is right along the state border and about a mile away from their next show in Moorhead, Minnesota.

While the manager found a flight, the musicians had a show to do.

Tickets that night were $1.25 and over 1,200 people showed up—pretty good numbers considering the town of Clear Lake had a population of around 8,000. Lots of people coming in from out of town, no doubt.

Oh, and that $1.25 ticket in 1959 is about the same as $12.75 today.

The concert itself went off without a hitch.

And the manager was able to find a plane. It was a Beechcraft Bonanza airplane, which seats four people. One of those seats was for the pilot, a man named Roger Peterson. So that left three for the musicians…but there were more musicians than that, which means they had to figure out who would fly and who would end up taking a bus anyway.

Buddy was the one who wanted to fly, so he was one of them. Ritchie Valens and another in the band, Tommy Allsup, both wanted one of the seats. They flipped a coin for it. Valens called heads and it came down heads, so he won the seat. The last seat was going to another band member, Waylon Jennings, but he offered to let Big Bopper take the seat instead because Big Bopper had come down with the flu so the extra time in Moorhead would give him some extra time to recuperate before the rest of the musicians arrived for the show by bus.

And if you’re a fan of country music, yes it was that Waylon Jennings.

And so it was that Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly and pilot Roger Peterson got into the plane. They took off just before 1:00 AM on Tuesday, February 3^rd, 1959.

They made it six miles before the plane crashed. All four on board were killed. The cause of the crash was determined to be because the pilot, Roger Peterson, was only qualified to fly using visuals and not only using instruments. Since the weather was so bad, they couldn’t see well enough to fly visually and, on top of that, there’s been speculation that he wasn’t familiar with the instruments in the Beechcraft Bonanza plane he was flying.

Today, February 3^rd is known as “the day the music died” because singer-songwriter Don McLean referred to it in his popular song American Pie.

While the crash itself isn’t shown, the movie that I was describing to start this segment is the 1978 biopic simply called The Buddy Holly Story. It does show Buddy’s last concert in Clear Lake, Iowa, and that starts at an hour and 37 minutes into the movie.

Oh! And as a fun little bit of trivia, my best friend is Buddy Holly’s cousin! So, as you can imagine, her family knows quite a bit about the real Buddy Holly—she told me his last name originally was spelled Holley—but his wife or mom, they’re not really sure which, convinced him to change the spelling to Holly because it’s easier.

January 10^th, 49 BCE. Italy.

Sun streams through the trees, casting rays of light on the lush, green grass below. The sounds of rushing water can be heard. A lone man can be seen wearing the military uniform of the Roman Empire.

Walking with heavy steps, he makes his way to the edge of the river. He slows to a stop, looking at the water with a concerned look on his face.

The river is a small one and not deep enough to cover the numerous rocks that can be seen poking up out of the water. It’s the kind of small river or stream you can easily cross on foot.

But he doesn’t cross it. Instead, he paces up and down the river with that same concerned look on his face as he stares at the water. As he nears the camera, we see him clenching his jaw as the gears turn inside his mind.

In the next shot, we see a line of Roman soldiers. Most of them are on foot, although there are some cavalry there as well. In the foreground is the river. The soldiers aren’t moving, they’re just standing there in front of the river .

The man from earlier is on a horse now. He looks back at the soldiers. Then, slowly, he coaxes his horse forward to cross the river.

The soldiers fall in behind their leader, crossing the river as well.

This was from the Netflix miniseries simply called Roman Empire and what it’s depicting really did happen. The man leading his army across the river is Julius Caesar, who is played by Ditch Davey in the series.

The name of the river is the Rubicon and while it’s true that it wasn’t a physically difficult river to cross as far as the terrain is concerned, it was a huge deal for Caesar to cross the river with his army.

You see, the Rubicon River was the border between Rome and Gaul.

As a little side note, Gaul was a region in Western Europe that covered lands in modern-day France, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and some parts of Italy.

For a few years prior to the event that happened this week in history, Caesar had been conquering Gaul for the Romans—something that earned him a lot of fame in Rome. It also earned him some enemies, who didn’t like how popular Caesar was getting. One of them, in particular, was Pompey, who convinced the Roman Senate to order Caesar to return to Rome where they wanted him to resign his post.

There’s some debate over exactly what the Senate wanted to do to Caesar because their plans never came to fruition.

Caesar did return to Rome, but the reason crossing the Rubicon River with his army was such a big deal was because it meant Caesar was entering Roman lands at the head of his army. According to Roman law, only elected magistrates could lead their armies in Roman territory.

Breaking this law would immediately brand both the leader and the soldiers as outlaws and condemn them to death. So, normally, a Roman general would disband their army before entering Roman lands.

When Caesar crossed the Rubicon at the head of his army, he was basically declaring war on Rome. It was a point of no return. This act is seen as the start of a civil war that ended up with Pompey fleeing Rome and Julius Caesar as dictator of Rome.

Probably the biggest thing to mention about the accuracy of how the series depicts the crossing of the Rubicon is to simply point out that we just don’t know a lot about what the actual event looked like.

For example, I know I started this segment by saying it happened on January 10^th, but we don’t even know that for sure…most historians say it probably happened on the night of January 10^th or early morning hours of January 11^th. That’s more of an educated guess than a known fact though.

If you want to watch the event this week, check out season 2, episode 3 of Netflix’s docudrama series simply called Roman Empire. Crossing the river itself is at about the 20-minute mark, although the entire episode is called Crossing the Rubicon and does a great job of setting up the event.

January 13^th, 1968. Folsom, California.

We’re at a prison.

As the camera shows us different locations around the prison, we can see there are uniformed guards but no prisoners in sight.

Even inside the prison, we can see empty cells. No prisoners. The muffled sound of music can be heard throughout the halls of the prison. That’s odd.

Then we can see it.

All the prisoners are in a single room, cheering, clapping and stomping their feet to the beat. The musicians on stage are playing the same riff over and over.

As the musicians are playing, the guitarist looks rather nervously at a door behind the stage. Behind the door, Joaquin Phoenix’s version of Johnny Cash seems deep in thought.

After this, the movie jumps to Arkansas in 1944…but later in the movie we see more of the same event, and we see Joaquin Phoenix’s version of Johnny Cash chat with the prisoners a little bit before singing his song called Cocaine Blues.

That event really did happen, but the real Johnny Cash didn’t start off the performance with Cocaine Blues.

Johnny Cash actually played two live performances at Folsom State Prison on January 13^th, 1968, and both performances started off with his song named after the prison called Folsom Prison Blues.

The first performance started at 9:40 AM while the second was at 12:40 PM. Part of the reason for two performances was because, just like we see mentioned in the movie, they were recorded live. Cash wasn’t sure how that would turn out, so the second performance was a backup of sorts.

Except that backfired a bit, because after playing 19 songs at the first concert the musicians were all pretty tired. But they went right back to work, playing another 16 songs—17 if you count the repeat of Greystone Chapel at the end of the 12:40 PM performance.

Something else the movie doesn’t focus on is that Johnny Cash wasn’t the only one to perform at the prison that day.

Carl Perkins and the Statler Brothers were also there, each performing a song or two before Johnny Cash took the stage.

If you want to watch a depiction of the event this week, check out 2005’s Walk the Line. It opens with the prison performance, but then we actually see more of it later in the movie a little after the 2-hour mark.

 

January 15^th, 2009. New York City.

There’s one word you don’t want to hear coming from the cockpit of an airplane.

“Mayday, mayday,” Tom Hanks’ version of Captain Chesley Sullenberger exclaims. He goes on to explain over the radio to air traffic control that they’ve lost both engines.

Aaron Eckhart’s version of First Officer Jeff Skiles is pushing controls but he says there’s no re-light on engine 1 or 2. From outside, we can see the plane they’re flying is a huge passenger jet.

Sully tells the controller he thinks they can get back to LaGuardia, talking about one of the airports in New York City.

Again seeing the plane from the outside, we can see the engines seem to be spitting out fire in an inconsistent manner. The plane is slowly losing altitude.

As the plane turns, the camera angle gives us a better look at the ground and the massive city sprawling out beneath the plane. Who knows how many people will be killed should the huge plane crash into the heavily populated city.

Sully and Skiles are piloting what essentially amounts to a glider at this point, and the buildings of New York City are dangerously close.

Smoke streams from the engines as the airplane passes by buildings that are tall enough to be hit. Inside, passengers are screaming. They’re understandably terrified of what they’re going through. It’s getting rough, they’re bouncing around as the plane’s altitude creeps lower and lower.

Sully mutters, “Lorrie, I love you,” under his breath talking about his wife, who is played by Laura Linney in the movie. Finally, the plane crashes into the side of a building in a huge ball of flame.

Just then, Sully wakes up in a cold sweat. It was all a dream.

This is how the 2016 movie simply called Sully opens, with a dream version of a very real event that took place this week. And the real event didn’t end the way we see it happen in the opening of the movie—but the movie also admits to it being a dream, but since it pulled that bait and switch, I thought I would do the same here.

In the true story, Chelsey Sullenberger and Jeff Skiles were piloting an Airbus A320 aircraft. It was US Airways flight 1549 going from New York’s LaGuardia airport bound for Charlotte, North Carolina and then onto Seattle, Washington.

At 3:24:56 PM, the flight was cleared for takeoff. Less than a minute later, it was airborne. Everything seemed normal, it was a clear day with some scattered clouds in the sky.

Then, at 3:27:11 PM, while the plane was still climbing from its initial takeoff, the plane hit a flock of Canada geese. At this point they had traveled 4.5 miles and less than 3,000 feet above the ground. Passengers reported hearing loud bangs, fire flying out of the engines and then…silence.

The air smelled of fuel.

Because the plane was climbing at the moment of impact, it kept going up for a little while but it only went just above 3,000 feet before it started to go back down. Sully took the controls while Skiles tried to restart the engines, but to no avail.

At 3:27:33, Sully radioed in the mayday and said he was going to try to go back to LaGuardia. He was told he had permission to return to Runway 31. Meanwhile, LaGuardia halted all other flights to clear the air for flight 1549.

A moment later, Sully realized he wasn’t going to make it back to LaGuardia and asked for other options. There was an airport in New Jersey nearby, and air traffic control gave them permission to land there. That was the plan for a fleeting moment until Sully realized they couldn’t do that either.

He told air traffic control they’re going to land in the Hudson river. Passing less than a thousand feet above the George Washington Bridge that spans the Hudson, Sully told everyone on board to brace for impact.

90 seconds later, at 3:31 PM on January 15^th, 2019, flight 1549 splashed down—a hard landing.

Everyone on board survived.

And since the FAA has released the cockpit recording to the public domain, here is the actual recording from that day where you’ll hear conversations between air traffic control and flight 1549 with the call sign cactus 1549.

If you want to see the depiction this week, check out the 2016 movie Sully…but the actual depiction is not the dream at the beginning of the movie but rather it’s closer to the end at about an hour and 18 minutes into the film.