George Clooney makes a powerful Broadway debut in 'Good Night, and Good Luck

 

At the end of Good Night, and Good Luck, after all the well-deserved applause had finally died down in the Winter Garden Theatre I was filled with gratitude and turned to my friend Michele and said, “Weren’t we lucky to get to see this?”  My feeling wasn’t just for the opportunity to see the show’s star, George Clooney, up close, although that certainly was nice.  It was primarily for the portrayal of my beloved profession, journalism, at its bravest best.

When I was walking home, however, my mood shifted to one of fear, deep fear.  Our times are frightfully like those portrayed when another elected official, Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, was using his power to intimidate and strip people of their Constitutional rights just as our president is doing now.  The Wisconsin senator stirred up fears of Communist infiltration in our government just as DT (I don’t use his name) is stirring up hatred of those in the LGBTQ+ community, all immigrants, legal and non, and everyone not white.  And, as in McCarthy’s time, his tactics are working. 

That’s what made me so afraid, and still does, after my initial appreciation because I want to know where are our Edward R. Murrows, the broadcast journalist Clooney portrays who bravely spoke out about McCarthy’s abuses, leading to his eventual fall from power?  We have Rachel Maddow, the smartest and bravest of today’s broadcast journalists, but she is watched by a liberal audience that needs no convincing.  Murrow in the 1950s, before cable and the internet, had the eyes and ears of the public with his popular show “See It Now” in the days when we had only three networks, his own CBS and NBC and ABC.  That was how Americans, liberal and conservative, got their TV news. 

In addition to making his Broadway debut at 63, Clooney co-wrote the play with Grant Heslov, adapting it from their 2005 movie in which he played producer Fred Friendly, now played by Glenn Fleshler, because he felt, at 42, he was too young to represent the gravitas of Murrow. David Cromer directs the play, which is 100 minutes with no intermission.  I was bored by the first two thirds of the movie but the play is involving from start to finish.

Murrow earned his stature through his eyewitness radio accounts amid the blitz in London during World War II.  Because of that, and his fact-based commentaries, he was able to expose McCarthy for the fear-monger he was.

The build-up to this involves intense newsroom discussions, especially between CBS’s chairman, William S. Paley (Paul Gross), and Murrow over the bedrock of journalism.

“I think the other side’s been represented rather well for the last couple of years,” Murrow says.

“So, you want to forego the standards that you’ve stuck to for 15 years – both sides – no commentary,” Paley asks.

“We all editorialize, Bill,” Murrow replies.  “It’s just to what degree.”

After further newsroom discussion, Murrow stands his ground.

“If none of us ever read a book that was ‘dangerous,’ had a friend who was ‘different,’ or joined an organization that advanced ‘change,’ we would all be just the kind of people Joe McCarthy wants.”  He pauses, then pushes forward.  “We’re gonna go with the story because the terror is right here in the room.”

Following this exchange Ella (Georgia Heers), a jazz singer who performs sporadically throughout just as the great Dianne Reeves did in the movie, appropriately sings “Trouble Ahead.”

Seemingly unafraid, Murrow delivers an indictment against McCarthy that holds nothing back.

“Earlier the Senator asked, ‘Upon what meat does this our Caesar feed?’ Had he looked three lines earlier in Shakespeare’s Caesar he would have found this line which is not altogether inappropriate, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.’

“No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful.  It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly.  We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.

“We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.  We will not walk in fear of one another.  We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep into our history and our doctrine to remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend the causes that were for the moment unpopular.

“We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.  The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay and given considerable comfort to our enemies.

“And whose fault is that?  Not really his.  He didn’t create this situation of fear, he merely exploited it, and rather successfully.  Cassius was right.  ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.’  Good night.  And good luck.”

Clooney had every bit of the gravitas needed to give Murrow’s reproach the punch it deserved.

Everyone involved is working to perfection.  Set designer Scott Pask has recreated a 1954 cigarette smoke-filled TV studio newsroom.  When delivering his broadcast, Murrow sits at a desk toward the back of the stage facing sideways, looking directly into a large television camera while his black and white image is shown on TV screens, one on top of the other going up the sides of the stage.  McCarthy appears in archival clips that often are hard to understand.  When Murrow delivers a particularly strong commentary Clooney appears on a large screen in the center of the stage (projections by David Bengali).  Heather Gilbert’s lighting creates an effective grey atmosphere.

Never in my lifetime have crusading journalists been more needed.  With Republicans controlling the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government the Fourth Estate, as we are known, must fill the void left by the spineless Republicans and powerless Democrats.  Good journalists have never been afraid to speak truth to power.  More of them should start practicing that responsibility now and stop letting DT silence them the way he has law firms with his threats to sue.

Besides bringing this important show to Broadway at this time I also would like to thank Clooney for his courage in writing his New York Times op-ed last summer stating what was perfectly clear to most of us, that Joe Biden was not capable of governing for a second term and should be replaced.  Nobody else of his stature was willing to be so bold.