In January 1970, the famous composer Leonard Bernstein held a fundraiser at his Manhattan penthouse to help the Black Panthers. At the time, he was in the middle of one of the most famous high-society racial controversies of the 20th century.
But Bradley Cooper, who is directing and starring in the upcoming Bernstein biopic Maestro on Netflix, has decided not to include the famous party to raise money for the “Panther 21.” These 21 people were arrested and charged with plotting to kill police and bomb parts of New York City.
The party, which was held at Bernstein’s duplex apartment on the Upper East Side, caused a lot of trouble. The New Yorker magazine called it the “most notorious episode” of Bernstein’s career, and writer Tom Wolfe’s account of the party made the term “radical chic” popular.
A person who saw an early screener of the movie told DailyMail.com, “The party became the public’s image of Leonard Bernstein, but Bradley Cooper completely avoids it.”
All 21 members of the Panther 21 were eventually found not guilty of planning bomb and gun attacks on NYPD offices in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Queens. The 1971 trial fell apart when it was found out that police spies had played key roles in setting up the campaign.
Bernstein was one of the most famous American composers and conductors of the 20th century. He was also the musical director of the New York Philharmonic and wrote the Broadway musicals West Side Story, On the Town, and Candide. He died, aged 72, in 1990.
Cooper’s new movie, Maestro, is the follow-up to A Star is Born, which was a huge hit in 2018. Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese are among the producers of Maestro.
It will come out in the fall, but the Paris Theatre in New York showed a test run of it last week.
The source who saw the early screening said, “Even though the FBI and the political establishment were suspicious of Bernstein’s left-wing politics, Cooper doesn’t talk about them at all in the movie.”
The source said that Maestro is missing more than just the Black Panthers party.
People thought that Jeremy Strong, who won an Emmy for his role on Succession, would play Bernstein’s biographer John Gruen in Maestro. However, Strong does not appear in the finished film.
The source says, “Bradley Cooper and [co-writer] Josh Singer decided to take the character out of the script completely, so Jeremy Strong never got to film any scenes.”
“It was brave of Bradley to decide not to give Jeremy the part in the end. He is still listed in Wikipedia and other sites as being in the movie, but he is not. In the movie Maestro, Carey Mulligan plays Leonard Bernstein’s actress wife Felicia Montealegre. They met at a party in 1946 and stayed together until she died of lung cancer in 1978.
Latinx people have also said negative things about the movie because English actress Carey Mulligan plays a Chilean-American.
Jamie, Alexander, and Nina Bernstein, the children of Felicia and Leonard Bernstein, all liked the choice. Jamie, who is 70 years old, said in a statement, “We’re thrilled that Carey Mulligan will play our mother in Maestro.
“Carey will definitely be able to capture Felicia’s unique mix of wit, warmth, elegant beauty, and emotional depth.”
Bernstein had many affairs with men, like clarinetist David Oppenheim (played by Matt Bomer) and musician Tom Cothran (played by Tom Cothran).
But the movie doesn’t talk about Bernstein’s ten-year relationship with Japanese insurance worker Kunihiko Hashimoto, whose letters with Bernstein were published in the 2019 book Dearest Lenny: Letters from Japan and the Making of the World Maestro.
Maestro also has a scene where Bernstein does cocaine at a ritzy party in the 1970s.
In the movie, the composer also dances and sings along to Tears for Fears’s hit song “Shout,” which came out in 1985.
The movie was shot in Los Angeles, New York, and in England at Ely Cathedral.
In the 1940s and 1950s, when the movie is about Bernstein’s meteoric rise in music and his early marriage to Felicia, it is made in black-and-white. In the later decades of his life, it is made in color.
In an interview with Mahershala Ali for Variety’s Actors on Actors series, Cooper said that Maestro was a project close to his heart.
Cooper said, “Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a conductor.” “I was so into it that when I was eight, I asked Santa Claus for a baton.”
»Leonard Bernstein’s Black Panther party is ignored by Bradley Cooper in biography.«