Pergolesi in the Pentagon: Life at the Front Lines of the Cultural Cold War

By Xlibris US

Drafted into the US Army in 1954, John S. Bowman was assigned to Frankfurt, Germany, where with other young Americans he produced a comic opera by the 18th-century Italian composer, Pergolesi. Its success led the Armys Special Services to sponsor their companys tour around US bases, and then to two more productions Mozarts Bastien und Bastienne and Bachs Coffee Cantata--and also to US Information Agency-sponsored performances before German audiences. Working on his memoir to recapture those adventures and to convey what millions of Americans had experienced while serving in West Germany (1945-1990), Bowman came to realize that he had been participating in the so-called cultural Cold War, so he placed his personal story into the context of the astounding amount of US government sponsored cultural activities aimed at thwarting the appeal of Soviet Communism in Europe Not intended as an expos, it is simply the most complete account of the incredible and sometimes hilarious arsenal of cultural weaponry deployed in the Cold Waran account that almost all Americans will find both amusing and astonishing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499038750

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Copyright © 2014 by John S. Bowman.

Library of Congress Control Number:               2014910996

ISBN:                   Hardcover                  978-1-4990-3876-7

                       Softcover                 978-1-4990-3877-4

                       eBook                    978-1-4990-3875-0

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Rev. date: 07/22/2014

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Chapter 1: Command Performance

Chapter 2: There’s No Business Like Special Services!

Chapter 3: Opera Buffa, Anyone?

Chapter 4: Theaters of War

Chapter 5: Opening Salvos

Chapter 6: War By Other Means

Chapter 7: Once More Unto the Breach!

Chapter 8: Standing Down

Chapter 9: Cast of Characters

Appendix A: The Music Master

Appendix B: The Coffee Cantata

Sources

The Cold War constantly strained the concept that culture and politics could be kept separate.

Frances Stoner Saunders

The Cultural Cold War

Acknowledgements

Obviously I am completely indebted to all my sources—the many books and articles and websites—that underlie and support at least half of this book. I am grateful to Arthur Burrows, whom you will meet as you read on, for his own recollections of various matters that had escaped my memory. I want to thank Paul McCubbin, who directed me to websites that allowed me to fill in the life of Bertram Harmon. Special thanks, too, to Paul Alpers and Alex Cohen, who put me on to obscure instances of my search. My appreciation, too, for the responses and advice of readers of early versions of the work—Paul Alpers, Alex Bowman, Tom Carhart, Alex Cohen, Karl Reisman, Kempton Webb, and most especially to Brian Turner, Jim Kaplan, and Sidney Landau, whose close readings saved me from various errors and forced me to several second thoughts. I would also like to thank Paula Pannoni of Paradise Copies in Northampton for the patience and expertise she applied to first putting this material into a professional format and then the staff at XLibris Books for all their good work in seeing this into a printed book. And as always, I am most indebted to my wife, Francesca, for working away upstairs on profitable assignments that allow me to work downstairs on personal projects like this.

CREDITS

The article on page 91 and the photograph on page 92: Used with permission. Copyright 1956, 2014 Stars and Stripes. The review on page 89 and the cartoon on age 90: Used with permission of The Ivy Leaves.

Foreword

A few words about this book—what it is intended to be and what it is not intended to be.

What it is not intended to be is an exposé—in either dimension of that term. I have not been motivated by some desire or notion of revealing some dark secrets, nor have I actually provided any hitherto hidden materials.

The fact is that –aside from my personal memoir about producing operas while in the army—everything I recount here is available in some medium accessible to the general public (books, articles, electronic/on-line texts, online archives, etc.). But—but although some of the material is generally known to people of a certain age and almost all of it can be sought out, only academics or those who have taken a special interest in these matters will know about most of what I describe. And I know of no other work that has gone to the trouble of tracking down all these often obscure or long-forgotten events, no single work recaps the histories of the various organizations and individuals and projects, no other work relates all these happenings to the theme as I have attempted to do. I do not claim to have utilized many primary sources but I have pursued every possible topic to basic sources.

So, no, it is not intended as some shocking exposé nor is it intended as an attack on any organization or individuals—least of all the US Army and its personnel. In fact, my goal from the outset has been quite the opposite: A relaxed series of revelations and discoveries and anecdotes and trivia and just good old-fashioned tales about a corner of our history that most Americans will not have been aware of. Oh yes, and along the way I toss in the occasional bit of historical background on subjects that I assume few readers would know about and might enjoy. I should explain why I do not footnote all the many facts and accounts that I clearly have taken from my reading (all identified as Sources at the end). I did not set out to write a scholarly book or a work of investigative non-fiction. I approached every-thing as a personal excavation, so all my findings are here in the spirit of my own discovery of these matters and intended to reveal much that I did not know was going on during my time in Germany. In that sense, everything is part of my memoir, which I wrote with a sense of having some fun with this material. I was not thinking, I’ll show ’em! when I came up with some long forgotten or obscure matter. It was always, Wow, readers should enjoy learning of this! Yes, here and there I convey some serious doubts about some people’s motives and above all the impact of various activities, and I would be happy if certain things I report give readers something to think about. But at the end, I declare where I stand on all this, and I leave it to readers to decide where they stand.

As for the librettos—I regard them as integral elements in the memoir and provide them on the chance (and hope) that someone might want to use one in a production.

To conclude, I hope that the reader is constantly surprised and enlightened, but I also hope the reader is continually amused.

Chapter 1

Command Performance

Bowman—show Private Dowaliby. The Captain in charge of our division’s Special Services tilted back in his chair behind his desk while Jim and I stood awkwardly in front of him. I’m not sure which of us was more embarrassed as I hesitated for a moment.

Go ahead, Bowman—show him what you described to me.

Well, Jim, it’s like I’ve been telling you—we wish you could bow more like this. With that, I extended my left leg and foot backward, and then with a great spiraling arc of my right arm, mimed the doffing and swooping of a large feathered hat, extending it almost to the floor as I bowed deeply forward—all this for what I, at least, regarded as a fluid and graceful approximation of a polished stage actor’s bow in an 18th-century Rococo comedy.

All right, Bowman, said the Captain—now show how Private Dowaliby does it. (Note—my name is pronounced bowe, not bough.)

Again, Jim and I stood there unable to make eye contact as I was being ordered to imitate his own much less fluid and less graceful attempts at such a movement. Just how far should I go in trying to imitate him? I really had never intended to embarrass Jim this way, yet I knew that I had to demonstrate some significant difference to this Captain, who had made it clear that he knew nothing about 18th-century comic operas, let alone such stylistic details. That was why he had sent for Jim—pulled him away from his duty station in the middle of the afternoon. My description of my problems with Jim in the role of the Impresario meant nothing to the Captain—he had to see a demonstration.

So I did my best to strike a compromise—imitating Jim’s rather stiff and restrained bowing and hat-doffing while exaggerating it just enough so that the Captain could see a clear difference with what I was asking for. What Jim must be thinking at that moment I could only imagine. He had volunteered to take on the role of the Impresario in Pergolesi’s The Music Master (well, attributed to him at that time—more on this later), was learning the unfamiliar words and music, was giving up his off-duty hours to rehearsals—and here he was, being humiliated in front of this officer. And of course I was now completely ashamed that I had gone to the Captain in the first place, to see if he would somehow find a way to get Jim assigned out of playing the role!

Because yes, there we were, in January 1956, at 4th Infantry Division Headquarters, Drake-Edwards Kaserne, in Frankfurt, Germany, preparing a production of Pergolesi’s seldom performed minor gem, Il Maestro di Musica, by this time under the aegis of Special Services. A few months earlier, my new army buddy, David Dekker, and I had discovered we both had this experience with producing operas—I in college, David at Central City Opera Festival in Colorado—and one thing had led to another when we came up with this idea of working up an opera in our off-duty hours. At the outset, it was really just to do something we both enjoyed, to distract us from the many evenings we were spending just sitting around and drinking wine.

I think it was David who somehow knew of the Pergolesi. Any case, we knew we should not take on some warhorse but something relatively short and light—above all, with a small cast. We also wanted to do something that would reflect our original handiwork. That’s why we settled on this rather obscure work with its only three characters. Once we settled on Il Maestro di Musica, locating a piano score with the libretto proved something of a challenge, but I was able to get a friend back in the States to send me a copy, and then we also unearthed another copy in the library of the University of Frankfurt (which we photographed and developed, page by page, in our base’s photo lab—this was before the days of photocopies!). We both knew enough Italian—or let’s say, could figure out the Italian with the aid of a dictionary—to translate the work. In a most unexpected but perhaps typical development, our Special Services Captain later insisted that we pass our libretto by him; he in turn circulated it among some of the Division Hq officers who actually initialed it to show their approval! I assume they were looking for something either sexual or subversive.

David was a trained tenor who had sung in various opera productions in California, Chicago and Colorado; just as crucial, he had worked on scenery at the Opera Festival of Central City, Colorado, and so he looked forward to doing the sets. I had experience producing operas with the Lowell House Music Society and working on various theatrical productions at Harvard and, although I had never staged an opera, I had participated in enough dramatic and opera productions that I was looking forward to trying my hand at directing one.

We had our own secret weapon: David’s wife, Lila, had a spectacularly lovely soprano voice, and although she had never sung classical opera, as a teenager she had been singing as a member of the permanent cast of Horace Heidt’s Youth Opportunity Program –a radio and TV talent show that toured widely. She went on to sing in musicals in California and New York, including the Broadway musical, Kismet. She had only months before given birth to their baby son, Ricky, but she was now back in full strength and was also looking forward to having something that was both a diversion from long hours at home alone and satisfying her love of singing and performing. In fact, to prepare for this new style of operatic singing, she was taking voice lessons with the noted German Wagnerian tenor, Franz Volker, then resident in Frankfurt.

So we had two of the roles— David as the music teacher, Lila as his student. All we needed was a baritone for the Impresario, a character in the tradition of the rather pompous, buffoonish, mildly lecherous older man. To be honest, I’ve forgotten exactly how we came upon Jim Dowaliby. I know that we had to limit our search to division headquarters to be sure that this individual would be available both in terms of location and schedule. As I recall, we simply started asking around, getting the word out -–in any case, Jim came forward. Like Lila, he had never sung in 18th century operas, but he had performed minor roles in productions of the Arundel Opera Theatre in Kennebunkport, Maine.

We had our opera and our cast but now we needed the music to accompany them—ideally an orchestra. As it happened, somewhere along the way, David had attended a concert by a small chamber orchestra in Frankfurt, directed by a young German, Willi Mailand, who—as we would discover later—carried on like some grand maestro (including a cape and an entourage). We tracked him down and proposed that he and his orchestra provide the music. He flatly dismissed the notion—clearly we were two sketchy young Americans who could not possibly know how to produce a credible 18th-century opera, much less one that he would want to be associated with.

Back at the Kaserne (the German term for a residential military installation and retained by the American forces) where we now got the word out that we were looking for a pianist—we had to abandon any idea of recruiting an orchestra. Don’t ask me how, but a fellow soldier there at division headquarters, Bert Harmon, came forward. An African-American, as it happened, and with a masterful command of the piano, Bert had grown up in Philadelphia with a mother who was a pianist as well as a singer, and he started playing the piano while still in kindergarten. He went on to study music at the University of Pennsylvania. As a non-musician myself, I can only stand by amazed when someone like Bert opens a score he has never seen, leans into it for a few seconds as though to make sure it’s composed in the language he understands, and then proceeds to just play it. Which Bert did, with the appropriate brio. What a find! What’s more, in signing on, Bert was agreeing not just to accompany a performance should there ever be one, he was agreeing to hours and hours of rehearsals with in fact no guarantee of that public performance. Basically he was signing on for David’s and my fantasy.

We had our accompanist, our music! David and I had pretty much finished our translations, having divided up the arias and recitative. David had sketched his designs for the scenery. In addition to staging the work, I was to be responsible for any other matters: all manner of arrangements with the headquarters command—a piano for rehearsals, space to make scenery, obtaining costumes, publicity when the time came, and all the little fussy things that must get done before a work proceeds from the page to the stage.

We had started our first rehearsals with the singers still reading from the scores, and that’s when we discovered that Jim just didn’t have a flair for this type of acting—the rather stylized, artificial movements of 18th-century comedic performances. Certainly not the requisite movements for the flamboyant Impresario Jim was portraying. And that was what had emboldened me to ask to see the Captain—perhaps persuade him to ask some other officer to require Jim’s presence and so make him unavailable for rehearsals.

Instead the Captain had insisted on trying to understand what my issue with Jim was, and that was when I said that it was all summed up in the florid, stagey bow his character should be making. At that, he asked me which office at division Hq Jim worked in, then picked up his phone, and called to order that Jim come up to his office. Immediately. That was how it came about that I was trapped in the absurd situation of demonstrating that bow—a demonstration, by the way, that in fact I had frequently performed for Jim in rehearsals but that he seemed unable to imitate.

As we stood there, I anticipated that the Captain would now ask Jim to perform such a bow and, maybe, just maybe, realize Jim’s inadequacy for the role. Even so, I now dreaded the possibility of Jim’s humiliation in front of this obviously uninformed officer—and after all, why should he be expected to know about 18th century stage traditions? Instead, in his own way–the army’s way—the Captain cut the Gordian knot: All right, Dowaliby. You’ve seen what Private Bowman requires. Now just do it his way. Then without missing a beat and suddenly bouncing up from his chair, the Captain turned to me. And Bowman—don’t bother me with any more of these problems. You’re lucky we’re letting you and your buddy Dekker even do this opera of yours. Both of you—dismissed!

Jim and I gave rather sloppy salutes, and half backing up, retreated from the Captain’s office. Once outside, I apologized profusely, lying to Jim as to how this situation ever arose—never hinting that I had intended to get him fired, claiming that I had gone to the Captain to ask for some money for our stage sets and somehow the issue of his bowing had come up. But Jim knew that I had been making a big deal over his stage movements during rehearsals, so I don’t think he believed me for a moment. In any case, there was no way now that I could expect to replace Jim, and although our relations cooled slightly from that point on, he did stay with the production and do a serviceable acting job.

Have you been following all this up to now? If so, has not something begun to bother you—or at least make you wonder? It is 1956, with the Cold War heating up (block that metaphor) and you are being asked to believe that low-ranking American army personnel in an infantry division stationed in Germany, a division assigned there to hold back the Russian tanks when they come streaming across from East Germany—these guys are spending their time preparing a production of a comic opera attributed to Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736). Not only are they doing this, they evidently have the support of the division’s Special Services, whose top officer is willing to spend his time comparing theatrical bows. And not only that. Following the performances of The Music Master, Dekker and I will be re-assigned to fulltime duty with the Special Services at V Corps, the superior unit of the 4th Infantry Division, and supported in productions of works by Mozart and Bach.

What on earth was the US Army thinking of, with the Russians at their doorstep?

Believe me— most Americans didn’t know the half of it. Myself included.

Chapter 2

There’s No Business Like Special Services!

Even those who spent time with the US military in Germany between 1945 and, say, 1990—and by my calculations, there have been as many as 10 million of us (including dependents)—I suspect that relatively few were or are aware of much that I am about to disclose. I certainly was not until I began to look into these matters as context for my own experience. But to understand how Dekker and I were actually supported—more than that, encouraged, even subsidized by the U.S. Army—while engaged in these clearly non-military operations, we really should pause for a bit of a history lesson. And bear with me, those who know about some of this. I suspect, however, that unless you are over, say, 70, or a true history buff, you’ll be a bit dim about even the basic background.

At the end of World War II in Europe, it was clear that the United States was going to have to keep a fairly large army in Germany, and not just because the defeated enemy would need overseeing. Although not referred to as the Cold War in the first months after the surrender of Germany, the split between the Soviet Union and its other wartime allies—specifically, the USA, Britain and France—was evident from the outset. The Soviet Union had moved quickly to consolidate its hold over a large part of eastern Germany and also to impose its surrogate governments in the several nations that made up Eastern Europe. Germany itself was broken up into four Occupation Zones—assigned to the USA, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union—and the border of the Soviet Union’s zone soon became one of the most zealously guarded in the world. That border was what Winston Churchill had in mind when he referred to an iron curtain—originally in private telegrams to President Roosevelt in May 1945; however, not until Churchill’s speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, in March 1946 did it come into wide usage. As for the term Cold War, the British writer George Orwell had used it in an article in October 1945, but again, it was after a speech—this one in April 1947 by Bernard Baruch, the American elder statesman—that it came into general usage.

About that American Occupation Zone. Basically it covered most of southwestern Germany, specifically the Germans states (Länder) of Bavaria and Hesse and the northern part of Baden-Württemberg. It also included the large northern city of Bremen and its port town, Bremerhaven, because the United States military insisted that it must have direct access to the sea. (Of course Berlin was originally also divided into three occupation zones, [the French did not participate here] but I have chosen not to include Berlin in my memoir—as I really knew and know little about how the cultural war was waged there.) The British Zone covered the area to the north of the American Zone while the French Zone was a relatively small region to the west—the three zones together covering about two-thirds the area of pre-war Germany. In 1947 the USA and Great Britain combined their zones to form what became known as Bizonia; France joined its zone to it in 1949. By the time I arrived in 1955, the original three zones had been allowed to form the Federal Republic of Germany but each nation still maintained its bases and forces in their respective zones. The Soviet Occupation Zone covered the eastern third of Germany and in 1949 had become formally organized as the Democratic Republic of Germany; nominally governed by German Communists, it effectively remained under the thumb of the Russians. .

For those who know something of Germany, whether historical or contemporary, it might be helpful to know just which cities were in the American zone. Far and away the largest was Munich, the capital of Bavaria, while the next largest was Frankfurt am Main (that is, on the Main River, not to be confused with Frankfurt an der Oder in East Germany). Other large cities included Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Mannheim, Karlsruhe, Wiesbaden and Darmstadt —and such destinations as Heidelberg, Bayreuth, Oberammergau and Bad Homburg. But here’s the point: It will

Bowman%202.jpg

Map showing the four Occupation Zones of Germany following World War II. In 1949 the American, British and French zones effectively joined together to form West Germany.

probably surprise almost all Americans (it surprised me!) to learn that the American Zone was not much larger in area than the state of Michigan, and it will probably surprise all Americans except those who served time in the zone that it was jam-packed with US military bases and installations. Not to mention housing projects for all those American dependents. But more on these later.

The U.S. Army settled into its occupation zone with a force of well over a million—mostly army, but also many air force units and the odd navy and marines detachments. And it was clear to those at the higher levels that all those men—and at first, at least, almost all were males—it was clear that they were going to have a lot of time on their hands. Even in wartime, the slogan of the military is hurry up and wait, and until the Russians crossed their