Bronx Boy — A Novel (Part Ten): Benny and the “Bullet”

January 27, 2024January 27, 2024Leave a comment

1245 and 1255 Stratford Avenue, the South Bronx

Superintendents in the South Bronx had one tough job. In addition to overseeing the grounds, doing the maintenance and repair work, and striving to keep their cantankerous tenants in line and up to date with their rent, most New York City superintendents also took responsibility for their buildings’ security.

In fact, many of the superintendents, called “the super” by a majority of the residents, considered themselves to be the first line of any building’s defense. But there were always those who took their tasks as makeshift policemen a trifle too seriously, while others could not have given a day’s worth of crap if their buildings went to pot.

If some of the local troublemakers weren’t adding graffiti to their building’s outer walls, they were creating a nuisance by playing loud music at all hours of the day and night, and generally making the other tenants and neighbors resemble pawns in the nonstop turf wars that soon enveloped the South Bronx and other areas of blight in the city that never sleeps.

Taking out the trash, keeping vandals away and at bay from renters’ homes, changing burned out light bulbs, getting the elevators to run properly and efficiently on any given day, seeing to the upkeep of laundry facilities, and, worst of all, trying to control the ever-growing pest population – rats and roaches, as well as rival gangs, among the worst offenders – these were fulltime jobs for most “supers,” be they good or bad.

Speaking of which, the superintendent of 1245 and 1255 Stratford Avenues happened to be a dark-skinned, dark-haired native Puerto Rican from Guaynabo named Benjamin Cardona, whom everyone called “Benny” for short. By the foregoing description, anyone who glanced at Benny might have pegged him for a Mexican descendant. The young people, Sonny and Juanito among them, never called him by his real name. He and others like him were invariably referred to as “The Super.” If only they had lived up to their moniker! Things would have been a whole lot better, and life a whole lot easier for residents and their families, had that been the case. That’s not to say that Benjamin Cardona, or Benny, or The Super, wasn’t up to the task.

As with most such immigrant laborers, Benjamin Emanuel Cardona Lopez was a decent enough fellow, a hardworking individual in his late thirties (or maybe early forties – it was hard to tell by his looks alone), with several kids of his own to care for and a diligent working-class spouse who Sonny rarely got to see, and whose name he never got to know. “Mrs. Super”? That was as far as Sonny got with that.

If Benjamin Emanuel Cardona Lopez had his faults, it was that he gave people who didn’t know him personally the appearance of always being irritated with something or someone. He couldn’t help the fact that his thick, difficult-to-comb hair was jet-black in color; that he had a five o’clock shadow at 11:00 a.m. in the morning; that his darkly tanned facial features and heavily lined brow, chin, and forehead gave Benjamin the look of a reconstituted caveman come to life. What nature provided him in sour looks and disposition did not, by any means, extend to his height: the super barely clocked in at a heavy-set, five-feet and seven-inches.

“Dang, he’s one tough looking dude,” Sonny mumbled to himself upon seeing the busy superintendent leave his basement apartment. “He could’ve been a superhero, right Juanito?”

Juanito nodded. “Yeah. Superhero. This must be his day job!”

“Right on,” Sonny replied, giggling to himself. Even in his work clothes, Sonny gathered, the super gave off nothing but bad vibes. “He’s no Clark Kent.”

“You got that right,” Juanito chimed in. “That guy Kent was mild-mannered, and he worked for a newspaper.”

“Hah, yeah. But this guy… Man, I don’t think he can even write! What a joke!”

To both of the brothers, the dark-complexioned superintendent resembled a surly, no-nonsense, sour-tempered tough who took no crap from anybody and lacked a relatable sense of humor. Sonny pictured the super Benjamin as the incarnation of a Western villain, or maybe a Mexican bandit, the kind who sports a big black hat with thin black mustache, riding into town looking for trouble.

“You know who he reminds of?” Sonny said to his brother. “He’s like that fake Mexican bad guy played by Humphrey Bogart, you remember the guy… Uh, Morell, I think his name was. In that movie with Errol Flynn…”

“Yeah, Virginia City,” Juanito quickly answered.

“That’s it! Virginia City! Hah!”

Not one of Bogart’s better screen assumptions, Morell was a mix of half-breeds. Half Mexican, half American, part mangy mongrel, all phony baloney. And with a fake Mexican accent and that little black mustache to top it off, not to mention old Bogie’s growling, rabid-dog vocal mannerisms. An uproariously and obviously false movie portrayal, completely over-the-top and patently stereotypical.

“You think he’s Mexican?” Juanito asked, turning to Sonny.

“Who, Bogart?”

“No, the super.”

“Nah, he’s Puerto Rican. Like us. Papi told me so.”

“When did he tell you that? I don’t remember.”

“It was a while ago, when he first came here.”

“Who, Papi?”

“No, man, the super! Benjamin, not Papi. You deaf or what? Wake up!” Sonny was getting irritated with his brother. The two of them had a difference of opinion as to where the superintendent Benjamin had come from. Juanito was sure that his looks and stature were more in line with a Mexican wetback than with your average Puerto Rican-type. But Sonny knew better, which is why he had asked Papi, who had some intimacy with the man, for clarification.

Humphrey Bogart as the bandit Morell in ‘Virginia City’ (Warner Bros., 1940)

The super had a son, Benjamin Cardona Junior, the firstborn of his father’s three children, the other two being a cute little girl and a tiny baby brother. Everyone knew the oldest as Benny. His mother always referred to him as “Junior,” which made Benny wince.

Benny was a real spoiled brat of a child, a tarnished chip off the old Puerto Rican block. A snotty, know-it-all, “I’m better than you are” type of fellow, roughly cousins Lucas and Linus’s age, which would have made him two or three years older than either Sonny or Juanito. And Benny knew he was a snot rag, too. He carried this chip on his right shoulder, for all the world to see. A twenty-four/seven, pain-in-the-rear-end kind of punkish bully who thought nothing of accosting anyone his age or younger and mercilessly pummeling them for the sheer sake of pummeling. He made any kid’s life pure hell on the block, which was why Benjamin Cardona Junior got into more street brawls and fistfights than any other similarly aged juvenile in their South Bronx neighborhood.

You learned quickly that if you didn’t get in the first blow – and make it count! – Benny would go at you with tooth and nail and anything else that was convenient or at his disposal. The mystery behind Benny’s perpetual sour mood was never resolved. It seemed odd, too, that such a good-looking young teenaged boy, as Benny appeared to be – with the same jet-black hair as his father, but much softer facial features, including a cleft chin and hazel-colored eyes that he obviously got from his highly attractive mother – would behave in such a perversely pugnacious manner. What was he afraid of?

“Bronx Boys,” or street toughs (ca. 1960s) (Photo by Stephen Shames / LensCulture)

That’s what bullies often are, Sonny learned from his Papi. “It’s the fear, mijo,” Papi would try hard to explain to him. “You see, they always afraid o’ somethin’.”

“What are they afraid of, Papi? What? They’re bigger and they’re stronger than me, and they’re tougher, too. Who’s gonna challenge them about anything?”

“Is not like that. That have a big fear, they afraid of losing the battle.”

“I don’t understand,” Sonny questioned, puzzled by Papi’s terse response.

“They fear they gonna lose their status as tough guys. If they go soft, for any reason, they think they lose the respect of everybody. So they always gotta be on the edge, you know? Always lookin’ to beat somebody up, to prove they are macho or whatever.”

“But you’re not like that, Papi. Why are they like that?”

Papi looked at his son and displayed a knowing half-smile as he answered him. “You young yet. And you smarter than that Benny. Much smarter. You don’ need to be ‘fraid o’ nothin’, you are your own person. You know who you are. You understan’?”

Sonny listened to Papi’s explanation and, after thinking about what he had said, realized that Benny was at a disadvantage when it came to facing up to or playing with the neighborhood kids. By virtue of his position as the superintendent’s son, in his mind Benny felt responsible for holding up his end as someone who could not be taken for a pushover. Which put him always on the edge. And because that was the case, el joven Benny had no choice but to be constantly on the lookout, to be belligerent and bellicose when he thought it served his purpose.

What a poor state to be in, Sonny felt with a tiny modicum of understanding. A young man, with enviable “matinee idol” good looks, had been forced to duke it out with the neighborhood toughs, just to prove to his old man that he could take care of himself – when that was uncalled for, except in the super’s kid’s mind. Once Benny Junior gave you that smoldering “evil eye” look, that “I’m gonna kick your freaking ass” stare, your hide was his, or so he thought. Because of his attitude about everything and everyone, Sonny and Juanito, along with the other neighborhood kids, avoided Benny at all costs. He would continue to spell trouble for them as long as his father was the superintendent. And that had to change.

(To be continued)

Stream of Consciousness: Leonard Bernstein, an American Master “Revealed” in Bradley Cooper’s ‘Maestro’ (2023)

January 7, 2024January 29, 2024Leave a comment

Young Lenny Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) at his Carnegie Hall debut, in ‘Maestro’ (2023)

Conducting One’s Life in Public

What is this we’re watching? Lenny snorting cocaine? Lenny having affairs with young men? Lenny getting married, Lenny having children? The gala premieres, the boisterous nightlife, the concerts, the debuts, the banter, the repartee? Where’s the “radical chic”?

In the new film Maestro (2023), Bradley Cooper stars as the dearly beloved American-born conductor, composer, and lively raconteur Leonard Bernstein, first as a young prodigy (in appearance, not so much), then in middle age (better), and finally at age 70 (best!). The gray hairs and wrinkles complement the overall picture.

At the start, Bernstein gets a 9:00 a.m. wakeup call to take over the Boston Symphony later that day from an indisposed Bruno Walter at Carnegie Hall. He’s lying in bed with another man, so audiences are clued in right off the bat as to where this biopic is going: to Lenny’s intimate, indiscreet side.

Not to mistake Lenny for Lenny Bruce, the foul-mouthed standup comic interpreted by Dustin Hoffman in Bob Fosse’s 1974 film, the title of which has already been used. But “Lenny” as in Leonard (born Louis) Bernstein, our titular maestro. This Lenny made classical music history in Carnegie Hall, leading the orchestra in Robert Schumann’s “Manfred” Overture.

In the next section he’s with choreographer Jerome (“Jerry”) Robbins working on their ballet Fancy Free, about three sailors on shore leave in New York City. The two of them are laboring over the score, spouting rapid-fire dialogue analogous to the work’s free-flowing dance movements. So far, so good.

Bradley Cooper, who also directed, cowrote and coproduced the film, gets the manic nature of the man down pat, that visceral, ever-vacillating disposition, and his high voltage personality; a veritable ball of fire, restless, urbane, full of pent-up energy and vigor. Lenny, his dynamic as well as his bombastic sides – all present and accounted for in his best scores.

As Cooper envisions, Bernstein is a man possessed, one who pours every ounce of resources into his music and into his conducting duties, which blossomed after his history-making debut. Early on, lyricists Betty Comden (Mallory Portnoy) and Adolph Green (Nick Blaemire) are pictured entertaining the gang at a dinner party for theater folk.

Into this urban setting comes the lovely Felicia Montealegre (vulnerable Carrie Mulligan, well cast and richly deserving of an Oscar) of Chilean-Costa Rican-Jewish descent. Bernstein’s talkative sister Shirley (a marvelously loquacious Sarah Silverman) is there, too. She introduces Felicia to big brother Lenny. An equally incessant and lively chatterer, Lenny and Felicia are shown chain-smoking and making small talk. They’re the life of any party.

Felicia Montealegre (Carrie Mulligan) with Lenny (Bradley Cooper) in the park

Scenes depicting Lenny and Felicia’s lives whizz by in haphazard fashion, the early portions of which are captured in high-contrast black and white, while subsequent episodes are imbued with a richer color palette. We witness the couple’s first kiss and their manic reactions to one another. But already we feel the manifest tension present, the clash of iron wills: Bernstein trying to analyze Felicia and getting the basis for her lack of theatrical success all wrong. It’s not “fear of success,” as Lenny hints to her, but an unfortunate lack of luck.

Well, no, it’s not that either. Lenny compares his situation to that of fellow conductor Artur Rodziński moving in and Bruno Walter falling out of favor. Surely fate, one gathers, must have had a hand in Bernstein’s success. But it hadn’t rubbed off on Felicia. Still, both he and Felicia fall deeply in love and get deserved ovations for their respective performances. Inevitably, Lenny misses his wife’s last minute Broadway stage appearance which leads to increased friction between them.

In Cooper’s vision, Bernstein is comparable to an electric light bulb gone wrong: You can’t turn him off, since he’s always turned on. He needs to be at the center of everyone’s attention. For instance, we see Lenny together with composer Aaron Copland (Brian Klugman), a fellow closeted gay man, who develop a lifelong friendship. But where are Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti? Oh, look, there’s Serge Koussevitsky (Yasen Peyankov) giving some advice. One situation leads to another, when suddenly we’re whisked off to where Fancy Free is being rehearsed. “Not serious music,” is someone’s critical assessment.

Next, we see “Three Dance Variations” performed in a dream sequence that, if Cooper had viewed the Coen Brothers’ farcical Hail, Caesar! (2016), would ring a bell with anyone over its “gay” thematic. Did this sequence actually occur? Not likely. But even if it did, what does it have to say about Leonard Bernstein the maestro, the first great American conductor of a major American orchestra; the never-at-a-loss for words, vivacious and ubiquitous homegrown talent, the concert and television personality?

Dance sequence from ‘Fancy Free’ in Bradley Cooper’s ‘Maestro’ (2023)

We hear the song “New York, New York,” and indeed it is a wonderful town. Yes, we get it. Life and art will mesh, no doubt about it. They complement each other and ultimately blend together (as songwriter Cole Porter’s song “Friendship” once informed us) until one becomes inseparable from the other.

This leads viewers back to our couple, who decides to give marriage a whirl, even if Felicia confesses to Lenny that “she knows exactly who he is.” Meaning: She’s on to his closeted lifestyle. Later, Lenny and Felicia, along with Jamie and Alexander Bernstein, their children, are interviewed by Edward R. Murrow at their apartment in Manhattan. There’s talk of his turning Romeo and Juliet into a musical (the inevitable West Side Story), a film score for On the Waterfront, and the early TV program Omnibus, but also precious little context or insight into any of these productions. Where are the televised Young People’s Concerts? Where is Bernstein’s rabbinical obsession with having to explain everything to everyone? You’ll have to look elsewhere for them.

The film’s formula is this: Bernstein as composer/creator versus Bernstein the performing artist. As a conductor = the public life; as a creative force = sitting alone in one’s room. Viewers are treated to Lenny’s intimate inner life instead of his much grander outer one. With his ever-present lighted cigarette in hand, puffing away at every opportunity, Lenny’s life it seems goes up in smoke.

Now, about that “prosthetic nose” controversy: It’s not as large or prominent an issue as the press has made it out to be. In fact, Bernstein’s most evident physical characteristics, in this author’s view, were his unusually large earlobes. As far as Bradley Cooper’s interpretation is concerned, it both “is” and “isn’t” Lenny. He does a better job of conveying the crustiness of the conductor’s 70-year-old persona than he does with the younger, flashier dynamo.

As for Felicia, Ms. Mulligan depicts her as sacrificing her professional life for a dual role as dutiful wife and mother to the maestro and their children. There’s lots of talk between them, some of it involving namedropping, most of it nonstop, fast-paced, rapid-fire staccato, furiously delivered – verbal hemorrhaging as my friend Gerald Thomas once put it. In fact, the best scene in the picture concerns the couple’s Thanksgiving Day quarrel, hurled at top speed in a stream of consciousness give-and-take of allegations, charges and countercharges, all at a literate level far above your standard husband-and-wife banter. The intellectual heft is breathtaking, to say the least.

We’re also privy to bits and pieces of music associated with the maestro, i.e., the Adagietto from Mahler’s 5^th Symphony; there’s Bernstein’s friendship with his mentors Copland and Koussevitsky; and Lenny’s gushing pride in his wife and young son.

Carrie Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre in ‘Maestro’ (2023)

In the Mahler piece, we see Felicia’s superimposed image, tiny in comparison and overshadowed (as it were) by Lenny’s larger form. The thought is that she is losing her husband to his profession. That her own career was dwarfed by his more towering one. About a third of the way in, we’re treated to glorious color, the light and dark giving way to and replaced by luscious greens, yellows, blues, gold, aqua, and okra.

Cookie Cutter Boys

Bernstein struggles with concert appearances, and doing recordings when he should be composing. Whoops, there goes the sex life again! At this stage, Bernstein’s dalliances with handsome young males get to be a bit much, even for Felicia’s endless patience. Interviews, discussions about his lack of creativity, one-on-ones with an author wanting to write a book about him or getting Lenny to write one – it’s a losing battle.

Yet, where is the genius behind all this activity? It’s all on the surface, the substance of which gets buried in an avalanche of words, words, and more words that struggle to connect with viewers yet do little to help illustrate the conducting and compositional bent of the genius that was Leonard Bernstein.

Lenny’s compulsive work ethic is there, in spurts and in separate or related scenes, jumbled together and in between his encounters with interviewers and such – sort of a “file association” technique which must have been how the real-life Bernstein operated, in competition with the movie version.

Part of his struggle to be a composer of merit was his overwhelming love for individuals, for being around and with them; his loathing of being left alone, forgotten and tossed to the side. But where was Bernstein’s connection to Judaism and his Jewish heritage, his passion for Israel, his work with the New York Philharmonic, and his support of liberal causes, among them his controversial association with the Black Panther movement? Besides the above activities, what we are missing in Maestro is the context.

There’s a scene of his rehearsing a chorus for Candide’s “Make Our Garden Grow,” a wonderful choice. Felicia looks on admiringly. Lenny, too, is carried away, pouring his whole fiber into the piece, done a cappella. There’s the Prelude to West Side Story, played over a scene of Felicia in the park (in Massachusetts where the couple had their summer residence), with Lenny driving up in his pale blue convertible (and with R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World” heard on the car’s radio) with another lover. Lenny waves to Felicia and embraces his youngest daughter by the poolside. But the perspective is off, the angle is all wrong, a non sequitur.

Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) leading the chorus in “Make Our Garden Grow” from ‘Candide’

Felicia tries to get him to clear up the rumors to his daughter Jamie of his seeing other men. Lenny, for his part, is willing to spill the beans about his sexual proclivities, but Felicia insists he keep it to himself. “Don’t you dare tell her the truth!” she emphasizes. And so, he doesn’t. He is most convincing in his denials. Again, what is the connection to the main storyline? It’s all random dialogue, arbitrary and without sufficient justification. But isn’t life that way? One has to wonder.

In most films, music is used as a means to unify the action, to add clarity or substance to a given work. But here, it beggars confusion amid silent shrugs of the shoulders, leaving audiences clueless as to what association a particular piece of music has to the action onscreen. Even to those familiar with Bernstein’s life and accomplishments, the film seems wanting, the emotions left at sea to cast about for explanations where, to be perfectly honest, none exist. This is all to Maestro’s deficit – and it’s a major one, next to the wandering screenplay (worked on by both Cooper and John Singer) that takes the viewer every which way except the path of coherence.

Lenny and Felicia continue to argue about his bringing the young man Thomas to their summer home to meet the kids. Should Lenny have done that? And why is this important in telling Bernstein’s overall story? Is this what Cooper and Singer labored so valiantly to bring to the screen? Could Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese have done a better job of it, or taken a different path? Both ended up as executive producers on the project, and both had been penciled in to lead it, prior to giving up the reins to Cooper.

Cooper, for his part, has released a major motion picture that morphed into a passion project. Seeing Cooper on the CBS Sunday Morning program with the three surviving Bernstein children, Jamie, Alexander and Nina, one grasps the simple fact that he was emotionally attached and committed to capturing Lenny’s intense but troubled relationship with Felicia, along with the conductor’s family dynamic. You can see and feel the rapport he had with the adult siblings, it is that palpable.

Bernstein leading the orchestra and chorus in the conclusion to Mahler’s Symphony No. 2

Given all the above, there’s decidedly too much of the “man” and not nearly enough of the “artist.” For instance, Mass was one of Bernstein’s most accessible “serious” works and is given prominence later on, but audiences are left wondering as to the point of it all. As is the climax to Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, subtitled the “Resurrection,” the reenactment of which captures much of its inner fire and spiritual heft, but lacks the framework needed to provide clarity as to why this specific sequence matters for today’s audiences. Yes, it’s a magnificent effort but to what end?

Gustav Mahler, an Austro-Bohemian Jew who converted to Catholicism later in life, lived in difficult times and experienced similar issues (as Bernstein surely had) between his art and his religion, his troubled marriage to the lovely Alma Mahler, and his pursuit of a conducting career contrasted with his composing works of unimaginable emotional breadth and purpose. He could be the model for our modern-day Mahler, that is, our own Leonard Bernstein. Then why not do a film about Mahler? Well, one reason is that Ken Russell had done it before in 1974 (and none too successfully).

The last third of Cooper’s film is taken up with Felicia’s bout with and treatment of cancer, leading to her poignant passing (based on the surviving siblings’ account). This segues briefly into Bernstein’s teaching conducting classes to young aspirants, with his impulsive unruliness moderated somewhat for that final frame. For indeed, the remaining few minutes of Maestro return Leonard Bernstein to the beginning of the end, where he is being interviewed about his life and work.

The older Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) in ‘Maestro’ (2023)

With that characteristic gleam and twinkle in his eyes and that wrinkled, wizened expression we know so well from his many television and concert appearances, a slightly irritated and prematurely older Lenny turns directly to the camera (but not to the audience) and asks, quizzically: “Any questions?”

Oh, yes! About several dozen or more! Only, we will never get the chance to ask them. One must look elsewhere for the answers.