We're all excited right now because "White Houses" has been optioned for TV. It's getting spun as "an American version of 'The Crown'." Which raises questions. How are these two bits of storytelling similar?
(1) They both treat the historical record rather lightly. Hilary Mantel has said she would never knowingly falsify history. She will not dirty her hands with "composite characters." Everything she reports is factual, as far as she is aware. This high-minded approach to history doesn't appeal to Amy Bloom or Peter Morgan. So, for example, Bloom invents a circus-worker phase for Lorena Hickok. And Peter Morgan links Elizabeth's triumph in Africa to a stormy visit from Jackie Kennedy, though there's nothing to suggest the two events were actually linked, in actual history. (Lin-Manuel Miranda also uses and abuses history in ways that are convenient for him. e.g. Thomas Jefferson really had nothing to do with exposing Hamilton's infidelity. And LMM skips over some blithe, troubling statements Aaron Burr made in the wake of Hamilton's death.)
(2) Bloom and Morgan both love gossip. "White Houses" and "The Crown" are both really about pairings of people who discuss a third party in the third party's absence. So, for example, the wacky Kennedy episode of "The Crown" has Margaret hissing about Jackie in a solo audience with Elizabeth. And Jackie hisses about Elizabeth in a solo audience with a partygoer. And Elizabeth hisses about Margaret's new boyfriend with a group of spies--a group that definitely does not include the boyfriend, or Margaret, but a group that is well-stocked with scandalous photos. In "White Houses," Eleanor Roosevelt is far too dignified to sully herself with gossip, but we do get Lorena chatting about Charles Lindbergh with some people who are not Charles Lindbergh. And we get Lorena whispering about the Kennedys--in the definite absence of the Kennedys. And *everyone* gossips about a famous trip Lorena took with Eleanor to Yosemite--the Hickok/Roosevelt "honeymoon"--when Lorena famously fell of a horse.
(3) Bloom and Morgan love symbols, grand gestures, the story under the story. In "The Crown," Elizabeth is hypnotized by the bits of brain matter on Jackie Kennedy's Chanel suit. "Oh," says the Queen Mum, "couldn't they at least have fetched her a change of clothes?" But Elizabeth understands something: The lingering presence of the brain matter is deliberate. It's part of the construction of The Kennedy Myth. Later, Elizabeth has her special flag flown at half-mast--despite a violation of protocol--as a gesture of I-love-Jackie solidarity. (The question of where/how high to fly the flag becomes a big moment in Morgan's "The Queen," as well--famously. In "The Queen," the question concerns the death of Princess Di.) Violations of greeting protocol--precisely how should John F. Kennedy address Elizabeth?--also become major plot points. "They're just tiny details!" we might say. But Morgan understands--better than most writers--just how much these details matter. Similarly, in "White Houses," a great deal of the plot concerns how/whether or not to construct a face-saving story for a loyal soldier who is flagrantly, relentlessly gay behind the scenes. And which people are clipped out of photographs, and when. And why certain letters get burned. (A fixation of "Hamilton," as well; in a story with world-historical importance, an aggrieved wife's decision to light a fire is a grand gesture; it "tells," via code, a great deal more than it might at first seem to tell.) Also, P.S.: Bloom's whole plot is a story under a story: We get the accepted narrative, that Hickok and Roosevelt were just friends, and then we get the chutes-and-ladders secret love story allegedly happening in the White House, hidden from public view. And Morgan gives us the glamorous, polished Jackie and JFK we think we know-and-love--and then he peels back the curtain to show us secretly-meth-addled-and-warring Jackie and JFK. (And Lin-Manuel Miranda has fun with stories under stories: "Sally, be a lamb, darling: Won't you open it?" This line seems to be a simple request from Thomas Jefferson to an enslaved woman. But we, the 2018 audience, understand things about this relationship that a naive onlooker might not understand.)
(4) Bloom and Morgan take "Mad Men"-ish pleasure in quietly mocking the past. Morgan has photographers describing one man's homosexual dalliances as "unnatural"; they say this with a straight face. A woman's difficulties in obtaining a divorce take up almost an hour of Morgan's screenwriting. And in "White Houses," Eleanor refuses to help a gay friend whose naughtiness seems very, very tame to us in 2018. Eleanor also once referred to an African-American fan's children as "delightful pickaninnies"--a turn of phrase that provoked a stern response from the fan. ("The Crown," additionally, has great fun with changing understandings of the role of the press. Prince Philip expresses outrage when an interviewer tries to investigate his history with the Nazi party, and his family's troubled past. Philip had imagined he was just treating himself to a nice piece of ass. It's hard to imagine such a blinkered understanding of the media today, of course. And we see Margaret speeding away from her boyfriend, stunned to be surrounded by early progenitors of today's paparazzi. There's a hint at Princess Di material here. Unlike Margaret, Di would not feel startled to encounter photographers on the street.)
(5) Both Bloom and Morgan have their eyes on difficult relationships. There aren't really simple love stories here. One of the great pleasures of "The Crown" is the frenemy bond between Elizabeth and her obnoxious sister, Margaret. We see Elizabeth obtaining devastating information about Margaret's husband-to-be, then sitting on this information--maybe to protect Margaret from heartache, maybe to hold some weird power over Margaret, or maybe for a strange, unsavory mixture of motives. Elizabeth doesn't want to piss Margaret off, because Elizabeth has already ruined one of Margaret's foolish affairs. In "White Houses," meanwhile, Lorena, like Elizabeth, makes a heroic effort to steer herself through various impossible conversations. Making nice with Eleanor's spiteful daughter (who maybe doesn't love that her mother is living a lie). Making chit-chat with the suicidal former secretary of FDR--a stroke-addled skeleton, girlfriend of Lorena's girlfriend's husband. Weaving her way through awkward small talk with FDR himself. Both Morgan and Bloom give us likable heroines--and then both invent difficulty after difficulty after difficulty. No snarling dragons here. Just endlessly complicated political tasks.
Well, that's all that is on my mind for now. I'm back--slightly earlier than anticipated. I look forward to working my way through the final two hours of Claire Foy's tenure as Elizabeth. More soon!
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