Movie Review: Chappaquiddick, starring Jason Clarke and Kate Mara, directed by John Curran (2017)

Jason Clarke as Ted Kennedy and Kate Mara as Mary Jo Kopechne in Chappaquiddick, directed by John Curran.

Director John Curran’s film Chappaquiddick examines the 1969 car accident that took the life of Mary Jo Kopechne and derailed the Presidential aspirations of Ted Kennedy. Chappaquiddick is an excellent film that does not overly sensationalize its subject matter and does not present any far-fetched theory about what actually transpired. The Chappaquiddick incident has been the subject of other works of art as well, including Joyce Carol Oates’ 1992 novella Black Water, which I reviewed here. 

We will never know the truth of exactly what happened when Ted’s car went off of Dike Bridge, but Chappaquiddick presents us with a version of the story that feels true. As the film opens, Kennedy (superbly played by Jason Clarke) is leaving Washington, D.C. to race in the Edgartown Regatta that Friday afternoon. After the regatta, there will be a party at a cottage on Chappaquiddick Island for the “Boiler Room Girls,” a group of women who worked for Bobby Kennedy’s 1968 Presidential campaign. Among these women is the 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, portrayed by Kata Mara. Kopechne is single and serious about her political work. 

In the film, Ted and Mary Jo leave the party to talk—about Bobby, about politics, about Ted not trying to claim the Presidential nomination at the previous year’s Democratic Party Convention in Chicago. This conversation is speculation on the filmmaker’s part but it feels plausible. Then the crucial moment occurs. As Ted comes to a fork in the road, and is startled by a police car driven by an off-duty deputy sheriff, Mary Jo says, “We should go back to the party.” Ted replies, “We should go to the beach.” And then the accident happens, as Kennedy’s car goes off the bridge, flips over and lands on its roof in Poucha Pond. Somehow Kennedy was able to escape, but Mary Jo was not able to. 

The film shows Kennedy going back to the party and enlisting the aid of his friends Joe Gargan (Ed Helms) and Paul Markham (Jim Gaffigan). The three drive to the scene of the accident, and Gargan and Markham attempt to rescue Mary Jo from the car, but are unsuccessful. They tell Ted he must report the accident, and he promises to. However, when they encounter Ted the next morning as he is about to sit down to breakfast, he admits that he hasn’t reported the accident. Finally, as his car is being dragged out of the pond, he calls the police. 

Chappaquiddick then shows the damage control that went on, as Gargan shepherds everyone at the cottage out before the police realize that there was a party at which a dozen people were present. Kennedy is allowed to sit in the police station and write out a statement that left many questions unanswered. But the police chief doesn’t interrogate or arrest Ted. 

Throughout the movie, we observe how Ted’s status as a Senator, and as a Kennedy, protects him from the worst-case scenarios. He isn’t arrested, he isn’t charged with vehicular manslaughter, and when he pleads guilty to the crime of leaving the scene of an accident, he receives the minimum sentence, which is suspended, meaning that he won’t have to go to jail. One wonders how the authorities would have handled Kennedy’s case had it occurred in a state other than Massachusetts.

One of the most telling lines in the movie is when one of the Boiler Room Girls learns of the accident from Gargan and bluntly says “How can we help the Senator?” That shows how far people were willing to go to protect Kennedy from anything that might damage him. 

The film then shows us the discussions of the inner circle of Kennedy confidants, which included former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and longtime JFK speechwriter Ted Sorensen. There is much deliberation about what Ted should say publicly and much concern over how the story can be spun in the most beneficial way. There are moments of the movie that are darkly humorous, as when Ted wants to wear a neck brace to Kopechne’s funeral. Gargan tries to wrestle the brace off of Kennedy and shouts at him, “You are not a victim!” 

The biggest historical inaccuracy in Chappaquiddick is the portrayal of Joe Kennedy, Sr. Played by Bruce Dern, who has always done a great job of playing jerks, (see the 1974 version of The Great Gatsby) Joe is depicted as being very harsh to Ted. This is the filmmaker’s way of showing the intense familial obligations that Ted Kennedy was under—he had to live up to the legacy of all his brothers—Joe Jr., who died in WWII, and also Jack and Bobby. Even Jack had to live up to the legacy of Joe Jr., as it was assumed Joe Jr. would be the family politician—Jack was thinking about going into journalism before Joe Jr. was killed. The film shows Ted calling his father late at night after the accident, and Joe Sr. telling Ted just one word—“alibi.” That simply did not happen. Joe had suffered a severe stroke in 1961, which limited his ability to communicate. He certainly couldn’t say “alibi,” or tell Ted “I’ll never be proud of you,” as he does in the film. For all of Ted’s failings, after Bobby’s death he had become the de facto patriarch of the Kennedy family and Joe knew that. 

In the Boston Globe, Jenna Russell points out this inaccuracy, and she writes of Joe Sr.’s real reaction to Chappaquiddick: “(In fact, Joe’s nurse Rita Dallas later said the patriarch — crippled by a stroke, and nearing death — took Ted’s hand and held it to his chest when he learned of the accident.)” (“How Much of Chappaquiddick is Actually True?” by Jenna Russell, April 4, 2018)

Ted considered resigning from the Senate, but ultimately ended up giving a nationally televised speech a week after the accident where he asked the people of Massachusetts if he should continue in office or not. It was a self-pitying speech, similar in some ways to Richard Nixon’s famous “Checkers” speech from 1952, in which Nixon, then the Republican candidate for Vice President, and facing a scandal over a campaign fund, urged the public to say if he should stay on the ticket or not. (Spoiler alert: Nixon stayed on the ticket.) 

In true Nixonian fashion, Ted said in the speech that he had been diagnosed with a concussion and was suffering from shock, but did not seek to use those medical issues as an excuse for his behavior. It’s a perfect rhetorical tactic, to mention a shortcoming and then say that you don’t want to use that shortcoming as an excuse. 

Ultimately, the voters of Massachusetts re-elected Kennedy in 1970. Kennedy’s percentage of the vote was down from the 74% that he won in 1964, but he still beat his opponent handily, 62% to 37%. Kennedy would serve in the Senate until his death in 2009. Ted eventually became a much more effective Senator than either Jack or Bobby had been. And while Ted’s career included many significant legislative accomplishments, Chappaquiddick will always cast a shadow over his life.

Book Review: A Nation of Immigrants, by John F. Kennedy (1959, updated editions published in 1964 and 2008)

Cover of the 2008 edition of A Nation of Immigrants, by John F. Kennedy.

President John F. Kennedy in Ireland, June 1963.

When he was a young man, John F. Kennedy had dreams of being a writer. The second son of Joe and Rose Kennedy, he was not the golden boy his older brother, Joe Jr., was. Joe Jr. was hale and robust, while Jack, as John was known to his friends and family, was frail and sickly, plagued by a bad back and constant stomach problems. After Jack wrote his senior thesis, his father helped him get it published in 1940. Titled Why England Slept, it was an examination of the policy of appeasement under Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s administration. Why England Slept became a surprise best-seller, and by the middle of 1941, sales totaled 80,000 copies. Not bad for a senior thesis.

After Joe Jr.’s death in a plane crash in 1944, Jack was thrust into the limelight. He picked up Joe Jr.’s nascent political career, running for the House of Representatives in 1946. But Jack still had literary ambitions. His second, and most famous book, Profiles in Courage, was released in 1956 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, which added to Kennedy’s prestige and his rising national profile. From the moment Profiles in Courage appeared there were allegations that Kennedy himself didn’t write the book, and it’s now widely accepted by most historians that the book was largely the work of Kennedy speechwriter Ted Sorensen.

Kennedy’s book A Nation of Immigrants is quite obscure compared to Profiles in Courage. I consider myself to be a fairly well-informed Kennedy buff, and I didn’t know about A Nation of Immigrants until just recently. I decided that 2017 seemed like an opportune time to read the book, given the current political climate.

A Nation of Immigrants was originally published by the Anti-Defamation League in 1959, when Kennedy was still a Senator. During his Presidency, Kennedy pushed for immigration reform, wanting to change the outdated quota system, and he also planned to expand and revise A Nation of Immigrants. He was assassinated before the revisions were completed, and the book was republished in 1964, with an introduction by Bobby Kennedy. The immigration reform bill that Kennedy had proposed to Congress in 1963 was eventually passed in 1965.

A Nation of Immigrants is a slim volume; there are just 51 pages of text by Kennedy, plus a generous photo section and a chronology of American immigration bringing it up to 85 pages in the updated 2008 edition. However, the book still makes an impact, as it is very clear that immigration was an issue of great importance to John F. Kennedy.

This is one of my favorite passages in the book:

“Another way of indicating the importance of immigration to America is to point out that every American who ever lived, with the exception of one group, was either an immigrant himself or a descendant of immigrants.” (p.2) This simple truth bears repeating, especially at this time in our history.

In Kennedy’s proposal to liberalize immigration status, he said, “Our investments in new citizens has always been a valuable source of our strength.” (p.81) This is quite true, as new groups add richness to the texture of America.

Another of my favorite quotes came from a Chattanooga Times editorial, written just after Kennedy’s proposal was announced in 1963: “The time to worry about immigration is when people stop wanting to come to this country.” (p.85) My thoughts exactly.

A Nation of Immigrants is not often discussed by Kennedy scholars. Robert Dallek’s 2003 biography of Kennedy, An Unfinished Life, doesn’t even mention the book at all. However, Thurston Clarke, in his 2013 book JFK’s Last Hundred Days, writes of A Nation of Immigrants “it is possibly the most passionate, bitter, and controversial book ever written by a serious presidential candidate.” (p.156) That judgement might need to be revised in the age of Donald Trump. I don’t know enough about all of the books written by presidents, or presidential candidates, to pass perfect judgement on Clarke’s claim. But certainly A Nation of Immigrants took a bold stance on an issue that was not always popular in Kennedy’s time, and is still a volatile issue in politics today.

Movie Review: Frank Sinatra: All or Nothing at All, directed by Alex Gibney (2015)

Poster for Frank Sinatra: All or Nothing at All, directed by Alex Gibney, 2015. I love that photo of Frank.

Frank Sinatra, circa 1961. Frank wore hats better than anyone.

An intense Frank Sinatra in the studio.

Frank Sinatra, 1970's. Note his trademark orange pocket square-orange was his favorite color.

Frank Sinatra is one of the major figures in 20^th century American entertainment. Few figures before or since have held the public’s imagination for as long as Sinatra did. Sinatra was a cultural touchstone for multiple generations, from the time he emerged as a singer with the Tommy Dorsey band in the early 1940’s until his death in 1998. 2015 is the centennial of Sinatra’s birth, and nearly twenty years after his death Sinatra remains firmly entrenched in American pop culture. 

The 2015 HBO documentary Frank Sinatra: All or Nothing at All offers a four-hour glimpse into Sinatra’s life. The documentary takes its structure from the set list of Sinatra’s 1971 retirement concert. (Sinatra came out of retirement in 1973.) The film’s premise is that the songs Sinatra chose for his retirement concert reflected an overview of his career. I agree with that premise, and the idea behind that premise makes the documentary more than just a “and then he did this” film. 

I’ve written about Frank Sinatra before, covering his years on the Columbia Records label from 1943-1952, my 10 favorite Sinatra albums, and a piece covering the best Sinatra compilation albums. I’m a huge admirer of Sinatra’s amazing talent. 

All or Nothing at All is directed by Alex Gibney, who also directed the superb documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief for HBO. All or Nothing at All is wonderfully made; it’s a great example of documentary making at its finest. The research into Sinatra’s life is deep, and Gibney and his team have unearthed superb video and audio recordings of Sinatra talking candidly about his life and career. There’s a lot of wonderful material on Sinatra’s early life in Hoboken, and his rise to fame signing with the Tommy Dorsey band. Early film clips show how revolutionary Sinatra’s singing style was. Sinatra’s voice was extremely intimate, as he seduces the listener through his ballad singing. It’s easy to see why women went nuts for him. 

The first two hours of All or Nothing at All take us through Sinatra’s rise in the 1940’s to his decline in the early 1950’s, when he was battling vocal problems, more competition from singers like Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Vic Damone, Johnnie Ray, and Eddie Fisher, and a relationship with Ava Gardner best described as tempestuous and doomed. By the end of 1952 Sinatra had been dumped by his record label and MGM had dropped his movie contract. It seemed as though he was headed for the has-been pile. 

The second part of the documentary covers Sinatra’s career from his remarkable comeback in 1953 to his retirement concert in 1971. 1953 was a pivotal year for Sinatra, as he signed a contract with Capitol Records, where he met the arranger Nelson Riddle and created the classic songs and albums that have made him a legend. 1953 was also the year that Sinatra played the role of Maggio in From Here to Eternity, one of his finest acting performances, which deservedly won him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. I wish that All or Nothing at All focused a little more on Sinatra’s films. Sinatra was a truly talented actor who delivered a number of excellent performances in films like From Here to Eternity, Suddenly, The Man with the Golden Arm, Guys and Dolls, Pal Joey, Some Came Running, and The Manchurian Candidate. But that’s a small quibble.

All or Nothing at All focuses on many of Sinatra’s personal relationships, and there are excellent interviews with Frank’s first wife Nancy, the mother of his three children. The treatment of Sinatra’s other wives was a little more problematic for me. I found Gina Gershon’s voiceover narration of Ava Gardner’s writings to be terribly overdone, and there was just way too much about Mia Farrow, which got boring for me pretty quickly. There’s also just one cursory mention of Sinatra’s fourth wife, Barbara Marx, whose marriage to Frank lasted longer than his other three marriages combined. 

The documentary doesn’t shy away from controversy, covering Sinatra’s famous feud with gossip columnist Lee Mortimer, whom Sinatra knocked out in 1947, after Mortimer had called Sinatra a Communist in his column. Sinatra’s dislike of columnist Dorothy Kilgallen isn’t mentioned, but you can hear him express his feelings towards her in live recordings in the 1950’s and 1960’s. (He was fond of calling her “The Chinless Wonder.”) The film also covers Sinatra’s associations with the Mafia, and his acquaintance with Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana. Sinatra’s children say point blank that Giancana and the Mob tipped the 1960 election to John F. Kennedy by making sure that Illinois ended up in the Kennedy column. What no one ever mentions about the 1960 election is that Kennedy had enough electoral votes to win the election even if he had lost Illinois. Sinatra was very close to JFK, and organized his official Inaugural gala. Eventually Sinatra fell out with JFK after Bobby Kennedy warned his brother to steer clear of Sinatra due to his Mob connections. JFK then canceled a planned trip to stay with Sinatra in Palm Springs, and stayed with Bing Crosby (a Republican!) instead. 

All or Nothing at All does a superb job of focusing on Sinatra’s politics, and his personal beliefs. Sinatra was a staunch Democrat in the 1940’s, who campaigned tirelessly for FDR’s fourth term in 1944, and was an unstinting champion of civil rights for African-Americans long before it was fashionable. The FBI investigated Sinatra for decades, not only because of his Mafia connections, but also because he was regarded as a liberal who might be a Communist. Sinatra gradually grew more conservative, eventually supporting Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984. The movie makes a little too much of Sinatra’s political switch, hinting that his support of Republican candidates was linked to his rejection by the Kennedys. I disagree with that. Sinatra worked very hard for Hubert Humphrey in 1968, appearing at a rally at the Houston Astrodome with Humphrey just two days before the election, and filming a TV ad in support of Humphrey. Sinatra endorsed his friend Ronald Reagan in 1970 when Reagan was running for re-election as Governor of California. In the documentary, Sinatra says that he has been friends with Reagan since 1943. Sinatra was no fan of the hippie culture, and that combined with his personal friendship with Reagan likely started his drift rightward. Sinatra endorsed Richard Nixon’s re-election bid in 1972, but due to Democratic nominee George McGovern’s unpopularity, there was a very large “Democrats for Nixon” group that year, so Sinatra’s support of Nixon wasn’t that unusual. I think Sinatra did get more conservative as he got older, but I also think his shift to the right was greatly influenced by his friendship with Ronald Reagan. 

What amazes me about the richness of Frank Sinatra’s life is that All or Nothing at All is a four hour documentary, and yet there’s still so much more of his life that could be covered. Granted, I’m a huge Sinatraphile, and I understand that four hours might be plenty for most people. But there are gaps, as All or Nothing at All offers only a cursory glance at Sinatra’s career post-1971. That isn’t the biggest loss, since Sinatra’s cultural impact was greatest during the 1940’s, 1950’s, and 1960’s, but still, Sinatra lived for another 27 years. 

I think that the people interviewed for All or Nothing at All did an excellent job of articulating Sinatra’s importance, but there were three Sinatra experts I wish had been a part of the project. I’m a huge fan of Michael Feinstein’s singing and his tireless advocacy for the music of the Great American Songbook. There’s no one who knows more about the songs of that era that Michael Feinstein, and he was a terrific commentator on this year’s American Masters documentary on Bing Crosby. I think Feinstein would have been a great addition to All or Nothing at All. I was also annoyed that two of the best authors about Sinatra’s music weren’t interviewed. Will Friedwald, who wrote the excellent book Sinatra! The Song is You: A Singer’s Art, and Charles Granata, who wrote the superb Sessions with Sinatra: Frank Sinatra and the Art of Recording, were nowhere to be found in the documentary. Who knows, maybe Granata and Friedwald didn’t want to be part of All or Nothing at All, but I would have enjoyed a little bit more content about Sinatra’s singing style and his phrasing. 

Something that struck me while watching film clips of Sinatra sing is how much charisma the man had. You simply cannot take your eyes off of him. It’s only in film clips that you can really see how strikingly blue his eyes were, photos don’t seem to quite capture the color. Even as he aged, Sinatra remained an extremely handsome man, always dapper, with his usual orange pocket square. (Orange was Sinatra’s favorite color.)

Quibbles aside, All or Nothing at All is a fascinating look at one of the most interesting artists of the 20^th century, and a man whose contribution to singing will be deeply felt in centuries to come.

Ted Kennedy, 1932-2009

I know it's a little late for a tribute to Ted Kennedy, but I've been struggling to figure out what more I could add about him. Well, I'll add a little bit more, but I make no claim that what I have to add is anything brilliant. The Kennedy brothers have long been political heroes to me. Their public service added so much to the life of this country. Say what you will about Joe Kennedy, the father, but he instilled in all the members of his family the need to give something back, to not just make more money. He made the money so his children could do something of worth. And they did.

Ted was not as easy to stereotype as his brothers. There was pragmatic Jack and idealistic Bobby, so where did Ted fit in? He was really a mixture of them. He stayed true to his ideals, and yet was able to work well with those he differed with. Ted seems to have been less remote and easier to know than either of his brothers.

Ted obviously had personal failings, which were well-documented. To understand the man, you have to dig deeper into his biography and see that there was more to Ted than just his mistakes and bad decisions, something Ted-haters will never do. Ted was more than just the catalogue of his failings. That being said, he made grave errors in judgement in dealing with the accident at Chappaquiddick. There are still unanswered questions about that night, and we will probably never know if Ted's version of the story was the truth. I think it's very likely that he was simply incredibly drunk, and maybe his friends told him to sleep it off before summoning help. For whatever reason, his delay in reporting the accident to the police was inexcusable.

Ted Kennedy had patience, something Jack and Bobby both lacked. It's as if Teddy knew from an early age that he would be granted the time that Jack and Bobby did not have. Sometime after Bobby joined Ted in the Senate in 1965, they were listening to an interminable speech and Bobby looked over at Ted and said, "Do we have to sit here and listen to this?" "Yes," Ted replied. Patience served Ted well in the Senate, and he became a great legislator, something that Jack and Bobby could never claim. Ted was more effective in the Senate than they were. Ted lost his best friend, his brother Bobby, in June of 1968, and Bobby's death devastated Ted, just as Jack's death had devastated Bobby. In the dark days of the summer of 1968, Ted seriously considered withdrawing from public life, and who could blame him had he done so? He had every right to step back from public life. But Teddy came back, and kept going to work in the Senate. I think that says a lot about the man, that he was willing to take the chance that staying in public life might endanger his safety.

Ted's personal life finally got happier after his 1992 marriage to Vicki Reggie, and he continued to be the leading liberal voice in the Senate until his death. To learn more about Teddy, two great books I would highly recommend are Adam Clymer's 1999 biography and Burton Hersh's "The Shadow President: Ted Kennedy in Opposition." Hersh's book chronicles Kennedy's Senate career from 1980 until the mid-1990's, and it drives home the fact that Ted was really one of the only people who stood up to Ronald Reagan during the 80's, as Reagan tried to dismantle the federal government. All in all, Ted Kennedy will be remembered not just as the last Kennedy brother, but as one of the most effective Senators in United States history.