Look at that gorgeous body!

Classical music usually conjures up images of civilised rather than raunchy behaviour. But many of Bernstein’s fans found him seriously sexy – and they were not afraid to tell him.

In this episode, we ask: how did Bernstein’s body help to make him an icon of the classical music world?

We reflect on how ideas about "acceptable conduct" constrained sexual expression in Bernstein’s America. We discuss the gaps between sexual values and sexual practice that were exposed by his contemporary Alfred Kinsey’s ground-breaking research. And we consider how women used fan letters to voice their sexuality in a way that wasn’t permitted in other social spheres.

Through letters from Bernstein's archive, we investigate the variety of ways in which women expressed their sexual attraction – from a woman who claims rather unpersuasively that she’s more interested in Bernstein’s artistry than his appearance to a teenager who lays it all bare. 

Visit www.dearmaestro.org for bonus content, including letters read-out and discussed by their writers.

Email us at hello@dearmaestro.org - we'd love to hear from you!

Producers: Rowan Bishop and Kate Guthrie

Hosts: Flora Willson and Kate Guthrie

With thanks to: Cheryl Melody Baskin, Michael Ellison, Cassandra Fenton, Mark Keedwell, Melanie Shaffer, Karen Skinazi, Chuck Talley and Justin Williams. 

Funded by: the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Transcript

[Music]

Kate Guthrie: Hi, I’m Dr. Kate Guthrie.

Flora Willson: And I’m Dr. Flora Wilson.

Kate: And this is Dear Maestro, the podcast where we explore the untold stories of classical music fandom throughout the 20th century. We’ll discover how classical music lovers and pop music super fans maybe aren’t so different after all.

Flora: In this season, we’re focusing on the relationship between Leonard Bernstein and his audience, using an incredible archive of his fan letters and interviews with people who wrote to him. In the last episode, we discussed whether there’s a ‘correct’ way to listen to classical music. This episode’s big question is, ‘why did so many fans find Bernstein so sexy?’

Kate: We’ll be exploring how Bernstein’s body helped make him a classical music icon and how women used fan letters to voice their sexuality in a way that wasn’t permitted in other social spheres.

[music]

Actress: I need not say that I was drooling, but I must say that it went over with my male companion like an iron balloon. Not that he doesn’t like you, but he thinks I like you too much.

Actress: A master of music, tall, stately in stature, he can set my mind aflame with desire, even through a cold, impersonal disc of plastic. I long to touch him. What ecstasy to know him? I would die for him as now I weep. Yet he does not know me, and I nothing of him.

Actress: You are blessed with many virtues, dear conductor. Fascinating to watch, your humour and understanding of people and add to your appeal. All this, and you are very handsome, too, which brings me to ask if you send pictures to your fans. If you do, will you please send one to my daughter?

Actress: Sunday afternoon, I was in the lobby of the Syria mosque during intermission. I couldn’t help hearing what the people were saying. ‘Look at that gorgeous body’. ‘I could really go for him’. ‘Isn’t he good looking?’ ‘He’s so young, isn’t he?’

Actress: I can’t start off by saying how wonderfully you conduct because I never heard you. I just think you're very good looking and I would like an autographed picture of yourself if it is possible, please.

Flora: Wow, Kate, we’ve got drooling from the start. This is intense stuff today.

Kate: It is! And there’s no discretion in these letters.

Flora: Absolutely not.

Kate: Complete transparency. And I think what you really see here is something about the intimacy of the space that fan letters open up, right? That you’ve got these people writing to someone who, on the one hand, they feel they have an intense personal connection but who actually, in reality, they really don’t know. And there’s a kind of possibility there, you know, for actually laying on the table unashamedly, you know, ‘This is who you are. We really fancy the pants off you’. 

Flora: Yeah, and clearly, that distance between the fan and the kind of fan object means they can be projecting whatever they desire onto Bernstein. And oh my goodness, they did. Yeah, it’s heavy.

Kate: I think the person who’s writing in poetry I find particularly funny in a sort of intense way.

Flora: Yeah.

Kate: You know, it’s a ‘cold impersonal disc of plastic’, and ‘yet I long to touch him’.

Flora: I mean, did you ever write any strangely sexy poetry to musicians you admired as a teenage, Kate? 

Kate: No - disappointingly!

Flora: Me neither, strangely! And yet, I see you’ve dug out some studies that actually suggest that there is a connection between classical music, apparently, and sexiness.

Kate: Yeah, I was very amused by these. So when I typed ‘classical music and sex’ or ‘sexiness’ or something into Google, yeah, it brought up a number of studies where people have been – mostly psychologists – have been trying to analyse whether playing classical music makes people more attracted to one another. And the general consensus, which is a bit … I find a bit problematic, is that it seems to have no effect on men, whereas, apparently, women are highly aroused by, you know, more complex music and some suggestion that, you know, on some level, they subconsciously see classical music as a mark of greater intelligence and better genes, basically.

Flora: Well, we’re very susceptible, you know, Kate? Just, you know, our minds are endlessly malleable by the great works. Yeah, I mean, these are … it is funny, on the one hand. On the other, it clearly is part of a really long history of music getting entangled in these debates about gender basically, and about correct gender behaviour – precisely the kinds of things we were talking about in our last episode, in fact, to do with emotion and whether it’s okay to experience emotion in relation to music or whether kind of a more authoritative, intellectual angle is actually how we should be consuming classical music. 

Kate: Yeah, and I think there’s a really long history, isn’t there, of people trying to draw a line or a distinction between things that are, like, sexy but actually art and things that are sort of pornographic.

Flora: Yeah, that’s the anxiety here, isn’t it? As soon as you’ve got sex kind of on the table as a topic, it’s like, ‘Well, how do we make sure this is kind of elite sex?’ Not just like any old, you know? Exactly

Kate: Right: it has to be sophisticated and it has to be civilised, and you have to find a way of presenting it in those ways. At the same time as, you know, the reality is – and I think this comes through in the letters that on some level – sex just sells, doesn’t it? 

Flora: Mm hmm.

Kate: You know, people are attracted to Bernstein and they think he’s good looking. Some of them even admit ‘I have no idea really about any of your music. I just really think you’re attractive’.

Flora: Yeah, which I suppose stands out in classical music precisely because so many of those conventions of classical music performance and audience … concert-going / audience behaviours. Somehow, it’s all about, again, kind of ignoring your own body about performers being dressed in a kind of uniform, actually, particularly at this time in the mid-20th century, those kind of … all that white tie and tails – not so much about looking handsome as sort of looking the same and looking monochrome, which presumably was trying to get away from the idea of distraction via the body.

Kate: Yeah, and also I think that emphasis on, I guess, very disciplined body movements, right? There’s actually, you know – if you’ve really studied an instrument to a high level, you know – there’s actually not that much spontaneous in how you play. You know, you’ve had those where you put your fingers, how you hold your bow or, you know, blow into your instrument, whatever it is, you know, that it’s drilled into you on such a kind of deep level. But it’s not about that kind of wild freedom, you know?

Flora: No, but then I mean, as I listen to you talking now, you realise the minute you’re also thinking about sex with a different part of your brain, you think, my God, everything about learning to play an instrument sounds like a weird euphemism! Suddenly, you know, it just can’t get away from it. Sex is everywhere. Why didn’t we realise this?!

[music]

Kate: Zooming into the context of Bernstein’s time, the 1950s or 60s, you know, it's a really interesting historic moment, I think, for dealing with these things, because on the one hand, you know, America is on the cusp of its big sexual revolution. You know, people are … you know, yeah, sort of pushing towards this other way of engaging with sex. And yet, we’re coming out of this period where actually, you know, at least in the public sphere, the emphasis was on kind of proper conduct. You know, you didn’t go on a date without having a chaperone or making sure your parents knew where you were. You know, you didn’t … you know, it’s all very constrained.

Flora: Values were positively Victorian still, essentially, in the ‘50s in the US, as they were in the UK, in fact.

Kate: Yeah. And I think, you know, I guess this is the really interesting … one of the really interesting things about these letters is that the sort of openness with which they engage with these questions of sexuality, the way they show women exploring them, feels really out of sync with the sort of prevailing image of people, you know, practising their sexualities in a much more private, constrained, traditional Victorian way.

Flora: Is it worth us thinking for a moment about where Bernstein himself fits into some of this? Because, you know, his own position, his own relationship to his sexuality in the mid-20th century in the US, I mean, it wasn’t … it wasn’t a friction free situation, was it?

Kate: No, not at all. I mean, you definitely get a sense that he was somebody who had a very complicated relationship with his own sexuality. 

Flora: He was married, wasn’t he? To a woman?

Kate: Yeah, to Felicia, and they had three children. And I mean, that image of kind of ‘Bernstein the happily married man’, ‘family man’, I mean, you get projected very widely in the papers, you know? I mean, his fans knew about this. You know, there are cards in the archive congratulating him on his engagement and his marriage. You know, people writing in, ‘Oh, I’ve just read about the birth of your first child. Isn’t that wonderful?’ But, you know, within another sphere, he was also somebody who was clearly very attracted to men. And I don’t know whether he would have identified as gay, but certainly had that as part of his sexuality that he wanted to explore and did explore. And it’s, you know, in the film Maestro, I mean, often explored in ways that were quite difficult for his wife.

Flora: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s always it’s difficult to talk about the history of sexuality because, yes, if he himself didn’t use the term, say, ‘bisexual’ to describe himself, then it’s potentially problematic for us to use it. But we would, if all else were the same, that’s how we would describe Bernstein’s sexuality today, I guess, isn’t it.

Kate: For sure. But I mean, you also have to remember that this is an era in which being gay or being bisexual was absolutely not okay. 

Flora: I mean, it was literally illegal.

Kate: Literally illegal. And, you know, particularly, you know, in the 1950s on the tail of the McCarthy era when they had the ‘Lavender Scare’ as it, you know, was termed, this sort of yeah, high profile shaming of gay people, you know, it really … I mean, it wasn’t just a little bit not okay. It was really not okay in that society.

Flora: And was that really to do with an anxiety about masculinity, about sort of American masculinity and what it would mean for a kind of, I don’t know, a sort of a plague of homosexuality to take over the male population.

Kate: Yeah, which is weirdly in the way that these things get bound up in … it’s weirdly tied to the political anxieties of the era. I guess, you know, the McCarthy era is also really associated with this scare about Communism and wanting to preserve Western democracy. And somehow the idea of, like, there being lots of homosexuals in America is seen as like a communist, you know, like a part of the communist threat, which does seem totally bizarre, from our perspective. But yeah, I mean, it was very much a political agenda, you know. And conversely, that actually, you know, encouraging this image – traditional image – of, you know, the sort of man of the household with his wife and, you know, your nuclear family – that was the kind of vision in inverted commas, you know, ‘a good American life’, how you ‘ought’ to be living. 

Flora: Yeah. So, I guess, again, it really does raise the stakes on the ways that Bernstein was so willing to be openly emotional, for instance, and those television appearances we were talking about before that actually, you know, if you’re putting yourself at risk of seeming, as you said, effeminate, like, that’s not nothing in this period of such high anxiety.

Kate: No, I guess in relation to him talking about his emotions on music education programmes, you know, within that sphere, I guess he’s kind of on safe ground, isn’t he? Because he is so respected as a musical authority. He’s conducting this incredibly prestigious institution. I think the situation is a bit different when you’re talking about his own personal life. And interestingly, you know, it’s probably one of the reasons why I haven’t found so many instances of men commenting on Bernstein’s body or, you know, making these sort of explicitly sexual comments. I mean, I imagine that outside of the New York circles he moved in, people wouldn’t really have had any idea that he had this whole complicated sexuality going on behind the scenes – because all they got was like ‘Bernstein the family man’. 

Flora: Yes, of course.

Flora: Yeah. Let’s shift focus slightly to think about the fans who did get in touch with him. And as you said already, they were mainly women. So, I mean, what was it like to be a woman in mid-20th century America? What have you kind of found through your research about what their lives were like, especially in relation to sex and sexuality?

Kate: So it’s a really interesting time, and I guess, from a contemporary standpoint, highly problematic in many ways. So during the Second World War, there’d been a really strong propaganda drive using women’s bodies basically to encourage men to fight. So there was this idea that if you were the good soldier, you know, you would come back and have this reward that was, like, a beautiful woman’s body. And this goes on, I mean,

it goes on kind of internally within the United States. It was also one of the key strands in the propaganda when the GIs went to fight in France. Yeah, and, you know, in that context, you know, this sort of stereotype of the sexy, available French woman. And if you go and fight there, you’ll have all these sexy French women, you know, waiting for you to enjoy. So yeah, so you have this I mean, it’s a real sort of politicisation and instrumentalization of women’s bodies, right? And then you come into the postwar period, and at this point, you know, there’s a shift towards this emphasis on kind of nuclear family life. But again, in that context, you know, women’s bodies are not their own: they’re being presented as a vehicle for building this kind of nuclear family American dream. One of the things that I think is really interesting, though, is that actually there’s evidence that the sort of public rhetoric around sex and how people were actually living their lives were not completely in alignment. 

Flora: Ah, interesting.

Kate: Yeah, so in 1953, somebody called Kinsey does this amazingly progressive – I mean, at the time, amazingly progressive study – where he surveyed about 16,000 adult men and women, basically asking them about all aspects of their sex life. And, you know, some of the interesting statistics that came out of this, you know, that half of the women in the study – literally half – had had sex before marriage, even though that was absolutely not okay in, you know, kind of moral terms – or deemed not okay in moral terms at this time. And 37% of the men admitted to having had at least one homosexual encounter. So, you know, you have this sense there’s a kind of official code of conduct which is like, no sex outside of marriage. You don’t marry somebody … if you’re a man, you definitely don’t marry a woman who’s already had sex. You definitely don’t have gay relationships. But the reality was that actually, behind doors, you know, other things were going on.

Flora: Okay, so I suppose in that context, actually, these letters that you found that are kind of dripping with sex at times are actually less … maybe they’re less unusual? Maybe actually we’re getting a really valuable insight into what was actually quite normal – that these women were just, you know, of course, they were thinking about sex. You know, they were humans. They were alive. And Bernstein was a young person with lots and lots of energy and who was ferociously talented. And so, yeah, of course, they were going to find him sexy.

Kate: Yeah, of course they were going to find him attractive, yeah.

[music]

Flora: Okay, let’s delve into some of these letters in a bit more detail. They’ve got a lot to offer, and the devil is in the detail here. What have you got for us first?

Kate: Yeah, so our first letter is an example of somebody who has clearly been motivated to write in because they find Bernstein sexy, and yet they’re a little bit uncomfortable with the reality that that’s what they’re doing.

Actress: Dear Mr. Bernstein, For the past few years, I have greatly admired your conducting and especially your compositions. Now I’ve discovered that besides being one of the great men of music of our times, you are both young and handsome. This is a great accomplishment to be both gifted in music and to be especially good looking. I can assure you that I am more interested in your artistic qualities than your looks, but still, I would appreciate an autograph picture of yourself.

Kate: I love this. Like, it’s honestly … it’s because I appreciate your work as a conductor and composer, but please do send me a signed photo. Yeah, and also this idea that his good looks are some kind of accomplishment.

Flora: Yeah… ‘Well done Lenny!’ ‘He grew all his own hair’. 

Kate: But I think, you know, one of the things you have to remember from this is that, you know, fandom in the pre-Internet age looked really different from how it is now, you know, in that you had far fewer opportunities to get a close-up sense of what celebrities looked like. You know, and particularly, like this letter dates from the late 1940s – so at this point in time, Bernstein is not even on TV. 

Flora: No. 

Kate: You know, so the chances are that this person has, you know, probably seen a photo of him in a music magazine, maybe in a paper. And, you know, you think about those old grainy black and white reproductions. 

Flora: So, in a sense, we’re getting a kind of snapshot into a genuinely more kind of innocent time, in the sense that, no she may genuinely have only just discovered what he looked like, and there’s something kind of delightful about the fact that she feels moved to get in touch to kind of go, ‘Wow. You’re really great, you know, good looking, as well as a good composer’. ‘Cause I love the fact that she says, ‘especially your compositions’. It’s that idea of the great composer who, you know, it’s not as though we, in classical music, make a habit of aestheticizing our composer heroes who are, you know, these dead men in the past. You know, we don’t tend to sort of say, ‘Oh, J. S. Bach, yeah, he was a looker!’ You know, that’s not how it goes. You think of Beethoven. He looks like an angry, slightly kind of mad guy who struggled. That’s the image.

Kate: Well, I think, you know, again, picking up on themes from previous weeks, you know, Bernstein’s youthfulness was really unusual, right? You know, this is not just a great composer, somebody who has established themselves as the great composer, the great American composer of his generation, but also somebody who is young, right? And in that sense, you know, it’s much easier for people to take that image of the young, beautiful person and associate that with this kind of composer figure. 

Flora: There is also something about the fact that she she’s worrying about whether or not he’ll think she’s just mainly interested in what he looks like after all – there’s all that struggle there. Have you found that elsewhere as well with other writers? 

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. And this next letter is an even clearer example of that.

Actress: Dear Mr. Bernstein, You had no right to wear a dark jacket for yesterday’s concert. We were cheated of your shoulder movement, so that the beauty of your work was incomplete. For the people who will be fortunate enough to see you again on the 11th, do be more thoughtful and return to your white jacket. It will create less eyes strain and still greater pleasure.

Flora: Wow. This is a really weird one.

Kate: Yeah, and the thing that’s really jumped out to me from this letter was this idea of ‘the beauty of your work’, right? Yeah. You know, there’s a long tradition, isn’t there, going right back to the, you know, classical era of, you know, the beauty of the human body being used as a … a kind of basis for distinguishing art from pornography. And she really seems to be invoking that here. 

Flora: It really struck me when I first read this letter that there’s something about the white jacket: it’s like she wants him to look like a statue, like a classical statue, you know, like one of those naked men posing, you know, from ancient Rome. There’s something where, again, it’s a kind of classier form of porn, basically.

Kate: Yeah, absolutely.  And, you know, this sort of emphasis on, like, ‘less eye strain and still greater pleasure’. I mean, you’ve got that, you know, she’s preserving that sense of distance. You know, this is an object that she is going to look at. It’s not one that she’s going to touch or interact with – very much like the sculpture, you know, that is there to be sort of observed. And I also think in that, you know, there’s a really interesting inversion of, like, who is doing the looking and who is being looked at, right? Because traditionally the gaze is the male gaze, and the thing being gazed at is the woman. And what you’ve got here in a sort of, you know, sanitised, elevated, sophisticated way is the opposite, isn’t it? It’s a woman saying, ‘Actually, I would like to be able to sit here and admire your physique, and the best way that you can achieve that for me is by wearing this particular outfit’. 

Flora: Yeah. And it’s also … what do you make of the tone? Because she sounds so outraged.

Kate: She does sound outraged. It’s true. There’s also quite an amusing formality to it, almost as if … it’s kind of incongruous, you know. On the one hand, she’s basically being, like, ‘Please wear something else so I can enjoy your body more’. But it’s written in this highly … yeah, I mean, sort of outraged but formally outraged way, which I’m sure is all part of this attempt to try and retain that sense of propriety, even though she’s writing about something that might border on, you know, not being very proper.

Flora: Yeah. Do you know anything about whether Bernstein ever actually answered any of these kind of explicitly sexy or sexualizing letters?

Kate: This particular letter was not responded to. 

Flora: Ah! 

Kate: Neither by him nor by his secretary. Some of these other letters from sort of enamoured young women, particularly where they requested an autograph, they usually would receive an autograph in response, but that was the end of it.

Flora: I see. 

Kate: So attempts to further communication after the autograph had been dispatched were definitely curtailed by Bernstein and / or by his secretary, Helen Coates.

Flora: But then, of course, then there’s the letters where there’re just so many words … A very, very long way from a fan being silenced. Let’s hear one of those. 

Actress: I have just heard the regular Sunday afternoon concert by the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. I became uncontrollably excited when, after hearing last week’s concert, it was announced that next week Leonard Bernstein would conduct a programme including Le sacre de printemps. I was particularly excited because I had seen you conduct this piece, which is one of my favourites. Hearing Le sacre done by a live orchestra is a singular experience. Hearing Le sacre done by a live orchestra conducted by you, Mr. Bernstein, is an experience without equal. The Milwaukee journal compared it to going over Niagara Falls on a bar stool. I will say that it was the most exciting, if rather disturbing experience of my life. I doubt if you noticed me, Mr. Bernstein, on the evening of January 22, in the gallery Row D, seat nine at the Papst Theatre in Milwaukee. I was convinced that the world consisted completely of you and I and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. I cried during the Haydn. Heaven only knows why since Haydn is not one of my favourites. Hearing the concert this afternoon brought back the feelings I had that evening and which I thought I would never have again. I doubt if I will ever enjoy another concert unless I fall madly in love with the conductor. Artistry as fresh and vital as yours does not go unappreciated, and the appreciation should not go unvoiced. Thus, I have taken it upon myself to write to you. You look like your music. 

Flora: And there it is. You look like your music. I mean, we don’t need to be psychoanalysts to … to imagine various things in this letter. I mean, this woman is extremely excited. That much is very obvious, uncontrollably excited.

Kate: Uncontrollably excited, indeed. And interesting, actually, while we’re on the subject of replies, this letter was answered. 

Flora: What did he say?

Kate: I don’t know, because the reply … 

Flora: Argh!

Kate: I know it’s so disappointing, isn't it? None of the replies that were sent out were kept on file. So the only one I’ve seen I’ve seen because the family who received it still had it in their family memorabilia. But I would love to see what they wrote in response to this. But yeah, I mean, I think that’s interesting, isn’t it? Because it suggests that somehow I mean, there is clearly a line. You know, there are letters that are deemed not appropriate or worthy of a response. This one, you know, there’s a lot of explicit content here.

Flora: Yeah. 

Kate: You know, yeah, I mean, some pretty blatant innuendos. And yet, she’s obviously done enough provided enough of the sort of flattery around that, that it was deemed, you know, acceptable for this one to have a response. 

Flora: Yeah. The fact that she provides the exact seat number that she was sitting in, you know … Okay, fine. ‘I doubt you noticed me’. And yet she obviously doesn’t totally doubt. She’s just checking cause if she really thought, of course, you wouldn’t notice, there’s no need to provide where you were sitting, is there, at that point?

Kate: No. 

Flora: It’s this writing in hope that you’re actually gonna turn out to have attracted his attention, that maybe after all, he fell in love with you that evening, as well.

Kate: Yeah, I do think there is something a little bit bordering on the parasocial in that moment in the way that she’s … I mean, the intensity of this experience. It’s like, literally, I was in this row, in this seat on this particular day that feels yeah, I mean, like, weirdly obsessional, you know? And this thing, ‘I was convinced that the world consisted completely of you and I’. I mean, it’s like nothing else is there other than the two of them. It also reminded me incidentally of those … like the scenes you get in some Hollywood movies from this era where the woman is having her sort of romantic daydream about something. I mean, there’s a classic one in Brief Encounter. You know, where the lady – the wife – is sitting on the sofa and Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto comes in, you know, beautiful lyrical melody in the background, and she’s dreaming about the person she’s going to … wants to have an affair with. And, you know, you do … I mean, it’s like what this woman is describing here where sort of the whole of the world has disappeared, apart from these two people. So yeah, almost kind of Hollywood-esque, in that sense.

[music]

Flora: I wonder how much of a range of these kinds of … let’s call them sexy letters … What kind of a range have you found in terms of, you know, different ages of letter writers, perhaps, and, like, different generations, given that this was the moment when that kind of teen generation, the young people were beginning to really forge their own identities, particularly in relation to sex, for instance?

Kate: So you definitely see some fairly transparent letters from young people. Interestingly, there are also quite a lot of people of the sort of housewife age, you know, mothers with young or slightly older children. I haven’t found any letters from, like, really old writers talking about how beautiful Bernstein is.

Flora: But it’s so interesting that the middle-aged writers – sorry to group them like that – but actually, again, it’s a reminder that looking at fans, thinking … taking fandom seriously does actually … it subtly changes our sense of, like, a whole period of cultural history because it’s so easy to think, ‘Oh, yeah, 1950s, repressive, repressed women’. That was that. End of that. And actually, you found all these women who are clearly, like … sure, in other bits of their lives, and they may not have been willing to talk about these things, but clearly in relation to Bernstein, in relation to their own experience as fans, then they can say this stuff.

Kate: Yeah, and I think there’s something particularly interesting about that getting attached to classical music or classical music being a sphere for people to explore these things, right? Because, you know, again, coming back to this question about, you know, cultural hierarchies at this time, and, you know, popular music is the thing that is associated with, like, bodies rubbing up in dance halls, with, you know, young people being a bit promiscuous, pushing the sexual boundaries. Classical music doesn’t have any of those connotations because, you know, the performers are on the stage at a distance and you’re sitting in your seat being civilised. 

Flora: And I think you found a letter where actually someone does write to Bernstein as if he’s kind of equivalent to a film star or a pop music figure?

Kate: Yeah, literally drawing that comparison. 

Actress: Dear, sir, I enjoyed your concerts very much. You should probably become bored if I told you how great I think you are. You are to me as Troy Donahue might be to another girl. I adore your Jeremiah Symphony and your music for Waterfront. This may seem ridiculous and foolish to you, but do you have any pictures to spare, perhaps autographed? I took pictures of you conducting on one of your concerts, but the pictures did not, unfortunately, come out.

Flora: Who is Troy Donahue, Kate? We need to know!

Kate: So yeah, Troy Donahue was an American actor from this period and also, I mean, famously a pin up. So he’s like, you know, a sex icon for young women at this time. 

Flora: Okay. And that’s … 

Kate: That’s it. 

Flora: This is the same category that Bernstein is in. 

Kate: Yeah, this is what Bernstein is to her. And, again, I mean, you can see here, can’t you, you know, this sort of difficulty of accessing pictures. And again, you know, there’s a sense that actually you know, of how classical music compares to things in the popular sphere. You know, if you are a Hollywood actor, you know, your face is all over the big screen, you’ll be on posters. You know, your image is really, really out there. I guess, to some extent, once Bernstein’s on TV, that begins to happen more. But, you know, you get a sense here, ‘I’ve tried to take these pictures of you conducting, but they haven’t really come out very well’.

Flora: No, I mean, that’s incredible, actually, because that suggests she you know, smuggled a box brownie or something like that, one of those little cameras at the time, sort of slightly old fashioned by them. ‘Cause I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have been allowed to take photos in a concert hall then any more than mostly you are allowed to now.

Kate: No, for sure. And yeah, I mean, the Troy Donahue comparison is interesting, isn’t it? Because, you know, he was known as a pin up, and there’s sort of no shame. You know, she is not asking for a picture to have as a kind of great artist of classical music on her wall. You know, she’s not asking for a picture because it’s going to make her family look, you know, like they’ve fulfilled their social aspirations to be sophisticated. Basically, she just thinks he’s really attractive. Yeah.

Flora: And is it just me or have we come across letters before asking for autographed photos, like the desire for images is quite widespread?

Kate: It’s very widespread. In fact, it’s the most common trope by a long way in the fan letters. Some of them, you know, people literally just, ‘Can I have an autograph?’ A lot of them like this, where you have some extended – like the ones we’ve seen here – you have an extended account and then a request for an autograph at the end. And, you know, I think there’re, you know, a number of things that account for you know. One of them: obviously, autographs and autographed photos are something that can easily be sent through the mail. You know, this is the mail generation, right? If you want to find a photo of somebody now, you go on the Internet. In that generation, you’d write off for a photograph. So that, you know, it was a really common thing to do. I also think, you know, there’s a sense in which people’s signatures and kind of images of them are seen as a sort of … like a snapshot of who they are, right? And that as you write off for an autograph, you get to have a little bit of that person. You know, it’s like they’ve given you … they’ve personally signed – and Bernstein did personally sign all his photos – where the person’s name was known to the person, you know, ‘To Flora Willson. Best wishes from Leonard Bernstein’. So you can have that yeah, that kind of your very own little bit of the artist to hold, to own, you know, to keep close to in your home. And it feels that bit more personal than, you know, cutting a picture out of a magazine. 

[music]

Flora: So, I suppose the question with all of this really is do you think it was a good thing that all these women could take a look at Bernstein and then effectively be using him as a way of thinking through their own sexuality, thinking through their own relationship with sex, which seems to be what was going on here, basically?

Kate: Yeah, I mean, basically, I think it was a really positive thing. You know, as we’ve talked about, this was a society in which women were highly constrained. You know, they weren’t just constrained in terms of their sexuality. They were constrained in terms of, you know, the jobs they were allowed to do, what phases of their life they could have careers in. You know, even if you sort of embrace domestic life, there are a whole load of constraints around, you know, being a good housewife and what that entailed. And actually, you know, within that very constrained social setup, you know, I think having spaces where you could explore these aspects of who you are, to get a better understanding of yourself and, you know, your place in the world, was basically a really good thing.

Flora: And I suppose the weird thing for us in relation to our other episodes so far is that in lots of ways, this didn’t seem to be that much about Bernstein.

Kate: No.

Flora: you know, he had to be there because he was young and he was good looking, as seen by many people. But actually, this isn’t really to do with his particular skills, talents, et cetera.

Kate: No, not at all. I mean, despite the claims that ‘we’re actually really interested in your art rather than your looks’, I mean, no, this isn’t really to do with him at all, is it? It’s about people finding someone who enables them to engage with, you know, who they are as a person sexually. And, you know, I do think, again, you know, there probably are aspects of Bernstein’s public figure that are key to enabling that. You know, the fact he is this, you know, great conductor, composer, highly respected, in a prestigious sophisticated, you know, high classical sphere. These things they make it more possible to explore his sex appeal where you’ve also got a kind of safety net for disavowing … ‘that’s actually not what we’re doing’, even though really it is what’s going on. You know, I’m sure that’s why particularly, you know, the demographic or sort of middle-aged women, you know – there’re so many instances of them responding to him in this way.

Flora: So this is fandom providing a really unusual space, actually, but it is … this is more about fandom than it is about Bernstein?

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. And about people having … using their fandom to get a better sense of who they are as a person and what their place in the world is. 

[music]

Kate: In the next episode, we’ll be talking about how celebrities can help us find ourselves. In the meantime, if you’re a fan of classical music or of Leonard Bernstein and you have a story to share, we’d love to hear from you. You can drop us an email at hello@dearrmastro.org or pick up a pen and paper and find the postal address on our website, dearmaestro.org.

Flora: Remember to subscribe in your podcast app to be notified of new episodes landing. And for extra bonus content, including letters read out and discussed by their authors, head to dearmaestro.org.

Kate: This episode of Dear Maestro was produced by Rowan Bishop and me, Kate Guthrie, with thanks to my co-host Flora Willson and to my colleagues and the fan writers who recorded the letters for this series, including Cheryl Melody Baskin, Michael Ellison, Cassandra Fenton, Mark Keedwell, Melanie Shafer, Karen Skinazi, Chuck Talley, and Justin Williams. Music courtesy of the University of Bristol.