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Incorrect quotes, memes, and general shitposts about Stephen Sondheim's musical Assassins. Mobile Links

[incorrectassassinsquotes-blog]

Assassiversary: Lee Harvey Oswald (November 22, 1963)

Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 – November 24, 1963) was an American Marxist and former U.S. Marine who assassinated United States President John F. Kennedy.

Oswald was born in New Orleans, Louisiana to Robert Edward Lee Oswald, Sr. and Marguerite Frances Claverie. Robert Oswald, who was a distant cousin of Confederate general Robert E. Lee and served in the Marines during World War I, died of a heart attack two months before Lee was born.

Oswald enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in 1956, just after his seventeenth birthday. He was underage and his brother Robert, Jr. was required to sign the forms as his legal guardian. While his primary training was in radar operation, he was also trained in marksmanship and was a qualified sharpshooter. Slightly built, he was nicknamed “Ozzie Rabbit” after the cartoon character by his fellow Marines; they also called him “Oswaldskovich” because he espoused pro-Soviet sentiments and was teaching himself rudimentary Russian.

In 1959 he received a hardship discharge from active service, claiming his mother needed care, and traveled to the Soviet Union. His citizenship application was at first rejected, leading to a suicide attempt in his hotel room, but after being held under psychiatric observation and claiming that as a Soviet citizen he could reveal information about the U.S. Marine Corps, he was successful. The story of the defection of a former U.S. Marine to the Soviet Union was reported on the front pages of some newspapers.

Though Oswald had wanted to attend Moscow State University, he was sent to Minsk to work as a lathe operator at the Gorizont Electronics Factory, which produced radios, televisions, and military and space electronics. He received a government-subsidized, fully furnished studio apartment in a prestigious building and an additional supplement to his factory pay, which allowed him to have a comfortable standard of living by working-class Soviet standards, though he was kept under constant surveillance.

From approximately June 1960 to February 1961, Oswald was in a personal relationship with Ella German, a co-worker at the factory. He proposed marriage to her at the beginning of 1961, but she refused with the explanation that she did not love him and was afraid to marry an American. Some researchers believe that German’s rejection of Oswald’s marriage proposal may have had much to do with his disillusionment with life in the Soviet Union and his decision to return to the United States.Oswald wrote in his diary in January 1961: “I am starting to reconsider my desire about staying. The work is drab, the money I get has nowhere to be spent. No nightclubs or bowling alleys, no places of recreation except the trade union dances. I have had enough.” Shortly afterwards, Oswald (who had never formally renounced his U.S. citizenship) wrote to the Embassy of the United States, Moscow requesting return of his American passport, and proposing to return to the U.S. if any charges against him would be dropped.

In March 1961, Oswald met Marina Prusakova, a 19-year-old pharmacology student; they married less than six weeks later. The Oswalds’ first child, June, was born on February 15, 1962. Later that year, Oswald, Marina, and their infant daughter left for the United States and settled in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where they received less attention from the press than Oswald expected, much to his disappointment.

In March 1963, Oswald made a mail-order purchase of a secondhand 6.5 mm caliber Carcano rifle. On April 10, he attempted to kill retired U.S. Major General Edwin Walker, an outspoken right-wing anti-communist and segregationist. Oswald fired the Carcano rifle at Walker through a window from less than 100 feet away as Walker sat at a desk in his Dallas home. The bullet struck the window frame, and Walker’s only injuries were bullet fragments to the forearm.

During the summer of 1963, Oswald was arrested for disturbing the peace while handing out “Fair Play for Cuba” leaflets, and took part in a radio debate about communism in Latin America. He was hired by the Reily Coffee Company as a machinery greaser, but was fired in July “because his work was not satisfactory and because he spent too much time loitering in Adrian Alba’s garage next door, where he read rifle and hunting magazines.”

In the fall, he was hired at the Texas School Book Depository as a $1.25 an hour minimum wage order filler. During the week Oswald stayed in a Dallas rooming house, but he spent his weekends with Marina at a friend’s home in the city of Irving. On October 20, the Oswalds’ second daughter, Audrey, was born.

On November 21, Oswald asked a coworker for an unusual mid-week lift back to Irving, saying that he had to pick up some curtain rods. The next morning he returned to Dallas, leaving behind $170 and his wedding ring but carrying the “curtain rods” in a large paper bag.

As Kennedy’s motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza at about 12:30 p.m. on November 22, Oswald fired three rifle shots from the sixth-floor window of the book depository, killing the President and seriously wounding Texas Governor John Connally. One shot apparently missed the presidential limousine entirely, another struck both Kennedy and Connally, and a third bullet struck Kennedy in the head, killing him.

Oswald left the book depository, shot and killed Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit, and attempted to hide in a movie theater, where he was arrested at 2 pm. He denied killing Kennedy and Tippit, telling reporters, “I didn’t shoot anybody” and, “They’ve taken me in because of the fact that I lived in the Soviet Union. I’m just a patsy!”

On November 24, detectives were escorting Oswald through the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters toward an armored car that was to take him from the city jail to the nearby county jail. At 11:21 a.m., Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby approached Oswald from the side of the crowd and shot him once in the abdomen at close range. An unconscious Oswald was taken by ambulance to Parkland Memorial Hospital—the same hospital where Kennedy was pronounced dead two days earlier. Oswald died at 1:07 p.m., and was buried in Fort Worth.

The denouement of the 1990 Broadway musical Assassins, written by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman, features the ghosts of John Wilkes Booth and other assassins appearing before a suicidal Lee Harvey Oswald, and convincing him that the only way for him to truly connect with his country is to share his pain and disillusionment with it. [x]

[godlessondheimite]

[fishprophets]

hmm,,,,,assassins animated adaptation,,,,

[blackfemmejeanvaljean]

me: *listening to The Assassins Broadway Cast Recording on repeat*

my government appointed nsa agent convincing their supervisor I’m a threat to society:

[incorrectassassinsquotes-blog]

Assassiversary: John Flammang Schrank (October 14, 1912)

John Flammang Schrank (March 5, 1876 – September 15, 1943) was a Bavarian-born saloonkeeper who attempted to assassinate former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Schrank was born in Erding, Bavaria, and emigrated to America at the age of 9. His parents died soon after, leaving Schrank to work for his uncle, a New York tavern owner and landlord. After the deaths of his aunt, uncle, and girlfriend in 1904, he sold his properties and drifted around the East Coast for years, writing poetry and seeking solace in religion.

In 1912, ex-President Theodore Roosevelt campaigned against President William Howard Taft, seeking a third term in office. Schrank wrote that the ghost of Roosevelt’s predecessor William McKinley appeared to him in a dream, advising him to avenge his death. Some accounts claim that in the dream, Schrank saw McKinley rise from a coffin and point at Roosevelt, who was wearing a monk’s robe. Schrank claimed that he had nothing against “the citizen Roosevelt”, but wished to warn other politicians away from campaigning for a third term.

On October 14, Schrank shot Roosevelt while the President exited the Gilpatrick Hotel in Milwaukee. The bullet lodged in Roosevelt’s chest, after hitting both his steel eyeglass case and a 50-page copy of his speech titled "Progressive Cause Greater Than Any Individual”, which he was carrying in his jacket pocket. As Schrank was captured by the police, Roosevelt shouted, “Officers, take charge of him, and see that there is no violence done to him”.

Roosevelt, as an experienced hunter and anatomist, correctly concluded that since he was not coughing blood, the bullet had not reached his lung, and he declined suggestions to go to the hospital immediately. Instead, he delivered his scheduled speech with blood seeping into his shirt. He spoke for 90 minutes before completing his speech and accepting medical attention. His opening comments to the gathered crowd were, “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”

Afterwards, probes and an x-ray showed that the bullet had lodged in Roosevelt’s chest muscle, but did not penetrate the pleura. Doctors concluded that it would be less dangerous to leave it in place than to attempt to remove it, and Roosevelt carried the bullet with him for the rest of his life. In later years, when asked about the bullet inside him, Roosevelt would say, “I do not mind it any more than if it were in my waistcoat pocket.” Although Roosevelt won more votes and electoral votes than Taft, Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson bested both of them to win the presidency.

Soon after the assassination attempt, doctors examined Schrank and declared that he was suffering from “insane delusions, grandiose in character”. Schrank was committed to the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Waupun, Wisconsin in 1914. He remained there for 29 more years, until he died on September 15, 1943 of bronchial pneumonia.[x][x]

[schmergo]

Informal (and sorry, very long) review of ASSASSINS at Signature Theatre

ASSASSINS is famous for its provocative concept—telling the story of nine people who assassinated or attempted to assassinate US Presidents in a series of songs and vignettes—and it feels even more daring when staged only 15 minutes from the White House. But this musical isn’t a tasteless exercise in shock value for the sake of shock, nor is it a misguided attempt to portray assassins as ‘just misunderstood.’ These nine central figures are alternately pathetic, disturbing, funny, repulsive, charming, and eerie. Some are clearly delusional, others simply disillusioned. But together, they represent the dark side of the American Dream.

Americans are raised with a sense of exceptionalism, a belief that we deserve everything we want simply because we’re Americans. At some point, we realize that only a few people have the luck, money, skills, and connections to achieve their dreams. Most of us accept that it’s not really true that “anyone can become the President.” But some troubled people throughout the country’s history cling to a distorted corruption of this dream: anyone can kill a President.

That doesn’t mean we should agree with their horrifying choices. But it does let us examine what aspects of life in America make some people so desperate to be seen and remembered, by any means necessary. “Where’s my prize?” is the childish refrain these assassins sing over and over again as they wander through the grey purgatory they’ve been consigned to.

Historically, productions of ASSASSINS are set in a ghastly carnival where contestants are encouraged to ‘step right up’ and shoot a president! A wonderful community production at Dominion Stage created a masterpiece of vivid Americana in which an electric chair or hangman’s noose were reimagined as theme park rides. This production took the opposite route by setting the action in a grimy, industrialized, empty stage in which pieces of furniture like a bench, the steps to a gallows, or a sofa float on and off like ghosts. Through this strange empty world, assassins interact unbounded by time or space, cursed to constantly repeat their most famous actions and relive their frustrations. Garfield assassin Charles J. Guiteau instructs would-be Ford assassin Sara Jane Moore in the finer points of shooting. McKinley assassin Leon Czolgosz reprimands attempted Reagan assassin John Hinckley for carelessly breaking a bottle.

The only set piece that remains throughout the show is a weathered and ghostly replica of the Presidential box at Ford’s Theatre, plunked onto the stage as though fallen from the sky. Here, the brooding spectre of John Wilkes Booth sits and watches the show unfold—and yes, he recreates his famous jump from the box. He serves as a kind of ringleader to the assassins, weaving through crowds, advising that everyone try their hand at assassination as a cure for all of their ills—even chronic stomach pain. After all, he was the first to pull off the historic act. We even see him convincing Lee Harvey Oswald to change the course of history by bringing assassination into the age of television.

As Booth, there’s a whiff of the rock star about Vincent Kempski—fitting, because Booth was a celebrity and even heartthrob in his day even before shooting Abraham Lincoln. Most of the time, he seems at ease, in control, erudite—we might even be seduced by his words until he explodes in fits of rage and reminds us how twisted and monstrous his views really are. Kempski only occasionally unleashes the full power of his singing voice, and when he does, it feels like a punch in the gut.

One minor gripe with his performance, though not limited to Kempski’s portrayal alone: his Booth, like most I’ve seen, delivers his lines with a thick Southern drawl. Not only did that occasionally make it difficult to understand his words, I doubt the real John Wilkes Booth would have spoken with such a heavy accent. For one, although he supported the Confederacy, he was from Maryland. For another, his father was British. And most importantly, he was a professional stage actor before the era of microphones and would have been well-trained in diction. Still, his charisma was palpable throughout the show. The moment he set foot on stage, a chill ran down my spine: it really was like seeing a ghost.

Lawrence Redmond plays the disgruntled worker Leon Czolgozs with gravitas and stoic desperation. He is perhaps the most sympathetic—or pathetic—of the assassins, and he gives us a sense of the loss of human potential. As the crass Sam Byck, attempted assassin of Richard Nixon, Christopher Bloch is horribly funny, spouting commercial catchphrases and leaving professional advice to Leonard Bernstein on an audiotape recording.

Some of the most enjoyable scenes of the evening were those between the two attempted assassins of Gerald Ford, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme (Rachel Zampelli) and Sara Jane Moore (Tracy Lynn Olivera). These are two deeply kooky women—a ditzy Manson groupie and a frumpy mom who’s been married five times and is endlessly losing items in her oversized bag. Together, they shoot at a bucket of fried chicken and bond over an unexpected shared acquaintance in Manson himself.

Zampelli may not be the childlike pixie we’d expect as Squeaky Fromme, but she totally inhabits the character of a lost soul, a flower child whose brains, if she ever had them, are long-since fried and warped. Her voice isn’t a high-pitched girlish squeak but has a distinctive creaky vocal fry to it that makes her sound utterly deranged. She’s so intense in her devotion to Manson that she ranks among the most unsettling characters on the stage. She also shares a strangely beautiful duet, “Unworthy of Your Love,” with sad sack John Hinckley (Evan Casey), a failed songwriter who’s obsessed with Jodie Foster.

As Sara Jane Moore, Olivera is absolutely hysterical in both senses of the word. A chatty, scatterbrained housewife, she seems to represent the mundane and trivial compared to Squeaky’s revolutionary furor— but she can also burst into tears or pull a gun on you at any second. Her utter lack of self-awareness and deadpan one-liners like “I couldn’t hit William Howard Taft if he was sitting on my lap” made her an audience favorite. Ms. Olivera has a special talent for making dialogue sound totally natural, as if everything she says is an ad-lib. I’ll jump at the chance to see any show she’s in because she makes every character completely her own.

But the performer who truly stole the show, and my other favorite local actor, is Bobby Smith, as the lifelong loser, Charles Guiteau. Guiteau is a comically tragic figure, a man who failed at everything he did and still retained the grandiose belief that his actions were divinely inspired. He was so consumed with his delusional belief that President Garfield would make him the Ambassador to France that he shot him. As Guiteau, Smith does a jaunty dance up and down the steps of the gallows before he is to be hanged, singing a refrain of “Look on the bright side!”

Guiteau is a man of extremes, euphoric and despondent at the drop of a hat. Smith, whose appeal as a performer often lies in his unassuming, everyman demeanor, gives amazing nuance to those abrupt transitions. We see real tears shining in his eyes beyond his too-wide smile, a tremble of the lip or shaking of the hands that betray his instability. He’s incredibly entertaining to watch every moment he’s onstage, yet you’re always simultaneously concerned for and creeped out by him. There’s something so obviously ‘not right’ with Guiteau. The last character to make me feel that way was Gollum.

Tying the whole story together is Sam Ludwig as the Balladeer, who serves as a cheery narrator for the show, delivering songs that span the gamut of American music styles. These are some of the most toe-tapping tunes in Sondheim’s catalog, contrasted sharply with the discordant numbers that run between them. Ludwig also inhabits a second role, which may come as a surprise (and isn’t listed in the program). He embodies the saccharine spirit of an American narrative that sees assassination attempts as isolated incidents rather than a symptom of a deeper illness. I occasionally found his piercing tenor voice a little grating to my ears, but it suited his character well—and I was sitting very close to the stage. An increasingly mangled rendition of ‘Hail To The Chief’ ties the musical numbers together.

This show runs almost two hours with no intermission. It’s so immersive that it gives you the curious sense of waking up from a vivid dream as you leave the theatre. You almost feel that the assassins linger behind you, reliving their crimes and failures in the abandoned theatre once you’ve gone home to bed.

Assassins plays through September 29. Don’t miss this show. You’ll find yourself laughing at the most unexpected lines and thinking about the most minor moments long after the curtain call.

[playbill]

Tony Nominees Will Swenson, Judy Kuhn, and Brandon Uranowitz, More Set for Off-Broadway Revival of Assassins

[a-theatre-in-1800]

dear people who enjoy hearing a guy straight up get electrocuted and die for seven solid seconds (i counted) boy do i have a sondheim musical for you

[a-theatre-in-1800]

very unoriginal, i hope no one has done this 

[a-theatre-in-1800]

that assassins stan feeling

so basically i’m listening to my music on shuffle, right? suddenly i hear “have it your way, have it your way” i just think this is an advertisement coming on so i pay it no mind. to my utter amazement what comes next is “you know what my way is? hot.” then my ears are utterly shredded into pieces by “HOW BOUT A HAMERGA THATS FUCKIN HOT”

[crowcassette]

[incorrectassassinsquotes-blog]

Assassiversary: Sara Jane Moore (September 22, 1975)

Sara Jane Moore (née Kahn; born February 15, 1930) is an American citizen best known for attempting to assassinate US President Gerald Ford in 1975.

Moore was born in Charleston, West Virginia, and was at various points a nursing school student, Women’s Army Corps recruit, FBI informant, and accountant. Divorced five times, she had four children before she turned to revolutionary politics.

In 1974, Moore volunteered as a bookkeeper for the People In Need charity in San Francisco, stating that “God sent me to help”. Moore’s friends said that she had a fascination with Patricia Hearst, the daughter of People In Need founder Randolph Hearst, who was kidnapped and indoctrinated by the Symbionese Liberation Army terrorist group and was arrested several days before Moore’s assassination attempt.

On September 21, 1975, Moore was picked up on an illegal handgun charge, but was released. The police confiscated her .44 caliber revolver and 113 rounds of ammunition. The next morning, she dropped off her nine-year-old son at school, hastily bought a new .38 caliber gun, and fired a single shot at President Ford from about 40 feet away as he exited the St. Francis Hotel. She was unaware that the sights on her new gun were six inches off the point-of-impact at that distance, and she narrowly missed.

After realizing she had missed, she raised her arm again, and Oliver Sipple, a bystander and former Marine, dived towards her and grabbed her arm, possibly saving Ford’s life. The gun went off again, and the second shot ricocheted and hit John Ludwig, a 42-year-old taxi driver. Ludwig survived. U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti, still on the bench in 2010, spoke on the record, saying that Moore would have killed Ford had she had her own gun, and it was only “because her gun was faulty” that the president’s life was spared.

Moore pleaded guilty to attempted assassination and was sentenced to life in prison. At her sentencing hearing Moore stated: “Am I sorry I tried? Yes and no. Yes, because it accomplished little except to throw away the rest of my life. And, no, I’m not sorry I tried, because at the time it seemed a correct expression of my anger.” During her time in prison she converted to Judaism, worked in the kitchen and as an accountant, edited the prison newspaper, and staged a one-woman strike to win more recreational space for the inmates. In 1979, she escaped from the Alderson Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, West Virginia, but was captured hours later.

She was released on parole in 2007, after serving 32 years of her life sentence. She said that she had been blinded by her radical views and stated in an interview, “I am very glad I did not succeed. I know now that I was wrong to try.” In recent years, Moore discussed her attempt in appearances on CNN and Radiolab.

Moore’s story is one of nine told in Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s musical Assassins. She appears alongside John Wilkes Booth, Charles J. Guiteau, and Leon Czolgosz in “Gun Song”. [x][x][x]

[incorrectassassinsquotes-blog]

Assassiversary: Leon Czolgosz (September 6, 1901)

Leon Frank Czolgosz (May 5, 1873 – October 29, 1901) was a Polish-American anarchist and former steel worker who assassinated U.S. President William McKinley in September 1901.

Czolgosz was born in Alpena, Michigan, on May 5, 1873, one of eight children born to a Polish American immigrant family. In his mid-teens, he worked in a glass factory in Natrona, Pennsylvania. By age seventeen he found employment at the Cleveland Rolling Mill steel company. After the economic crash of 1893, when the factory closed for some time and looked to reduce wages, the workers went on strike, putting Leon and his brothers out of work. With great economic and social turmoil around him, Czolgosz found little comfort in the Catholic Church and other immigrant institutions, and sought others who shared his concerns regarding injustice. He joined a moderate workingman’s socialist club, the Golden Eagle Society, and eventually a more radical socialist group known as the Sila Club where he became interested in anarchism.

He was impressed after hearing a speech by radical anarchist Emma Goldman, whom he met for the first time during one of her lectures in Cleveland in May 1901. After the lecture, Czolgosz approached the speakers’ platform and asked for reading recommendations. On the afternoon of July 12, 1901, he visited her in Chicago and introduced himself as Fred Nieman (nobody), but Goldman was on her way to the train station. He only had enough time to explain to her about his disappointment in Cleveland’s socialists, and for Goldman to introduce him to her anarchist friends who were at the train station. His social awkwardness, evasiveness, and blunt inquiries about secret societies caused other anarchists to publish a warning that he was a spy.

Czolgosz came to believe there was a great injustice in American society, an inequality which allowed the wealthy to enrich themselves by exploiting the poor. On September 6, 1901, he went to the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, where President McKinley was greeting the public. Inspired by the 1900 shooting of King Umberto I of Italy by anarchist Gaetano Bresci, he carried a newspaper clipping about the assassination, as well as a .32 caliber Iver Johnson revolver, the same type Bresci had used.

At the Temple of Music at the Exposition, citizens lined up to shake hands with President McKinley. The usual rule that those who approached the President must do so with their hands open and empty was not being enforced, perhaps due to the heat of the day, as several people were using handkerchiefs to wipe their brows. Under Czolgosz’s handkerchief he concealed his revolver. An experienced politician, McKinley could shake hands with 50 people per minute, only pausing to give his trademark lucky red carnation to 12-year-old Myrtle Ledger.

When Czolgosz reached the front of the line, McKinley extended his hand. Czolgosz slapped it aside and shot the President in the abdomen twice, at point blank range: the first bullet ricocheted off a coat button and lodged in McKinley’s jacket; the other seriously wounded him in his stomach. As Czolgosz was tackled to the ground by a pile of officials and citizens, he was heard saying, “I done my duty”. The injured McKinley told the crowd, "Go easy on him, boys.” The President would die eight days later of an infection which had spread from the wound.

Emma Goldman was arrested on suspicion of being involved in the assassination, but was released due to insufficient evidence. She later incurred a great deal of negative publicity when she published “The Tragedy at Buffalo”. In the article, she compared Czolgosz to Marcus Junius Brutus, the killer of Julius Caesar, and called McKinley the “president of the money kings and trust magnates.” Other anarchists and radicals were unwilling to support Goldman’s effort to aid Czolgosz, believing that he had harmed the movement.

Czolgosz was convicted on September 24, 1901, after the jury had deliberated for only an hour. On September 26, the jury unanimously recommended the death penalty.  Czolgosz was said to have remained silent and to have shown no emotion upon either his conviction or his sentencing to death.  When he was asked by Judge White if he wanted to make any statement in open court, Czolgosz shook his head to indicate that he did not. 

He was electrocuted on October 29 at Auburn Prison. His last words were: “I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people – the good working people.  I am not sorry for my crime. I am sorry I could not see my father.” His body was autopsied before being dissolved in sulfuric acid on prison grounds, and his clothes and possessions were incinerated to discourage exhibitions of his life.

Czolgosz’s death was re-enacted in Edison Studios’ silent film Execution of Czolgosz with Panorama of Auburn Prison. Czolgosz is also featured as a central character of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Assassins, in which his assassination of McKinley is depicted in a musical number called “The Ballad of Czolgosz”. [x]

[incorrectassassinsquotes-blog]

 Assassiversary: Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme (September 5, 1975)

Lynette Alice “Squeaky” Fromme (born October 22, 1948) is an American citizen best known for attempting to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford in 1975.

Fromme was born on October 22, 1948 in Santa Monica, California. As a child, she performed in the Westchester Lariats dance group, which toured the United States and Europe and appeared on the Lawrence Welk Show and at the White House in the late 1950s.

During high school, Fromme began using drugs and alcohol, seeing older men, and arguing with her parents. In 1967, a depressed nineteen-year-old Fromme was kicked out of the house after a conflict with her father, and met Charles Manson, who had recently been released from federal prison. She became one of Manson’s followers, believing him to be the Son of God, and the new Manson Family traveled through California, Washington, Mexico, and the Southwest in an old school bus painted black and refurnished with pillows and tapestries. They lived with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys for several months, Manson recording several songs in a studio. The Family trashed Wilson’s house and car,  costing him an estimated $100,000.

After being evicted by Wilson’s manager, the Family came to live to live at Spahn Ranch, a former movie set owned by 80-year-old George Spahn. Manson ordered his young female followers to act as seeing-eye guides for the nearly blind Spahn, as well as giving him sexual favors, in exchange for the Family being allowed to stay there. Spahn gave Fromme the nickname “Squeaky” after the noise she made when he touched her.

At the ranch, Manson indoctrinated his followers through a series of acid trips, mandatory orgies, and hypnotic, repetitive lectures outlining the “Helter Skelter” plan. He explained that racial tensions had been growing for some time, with events such as Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 assassination, and that the Beatles’ White Album was full of coded references to a future race war scenario. The Family would provoke the war by framing black men for the murders of rich white celebrities, and then hide in a secret city beneath Death Valley until they could come out and rule over the remainder of the population.

After Manson and some of his followers were arrested for the Tate and La Bianca murders in 1969, Fromme and the remaining Family camped outside the trial in protest, carving Xs into their foreheads and preaching about Helter Skelter to anyone who would listen. In 1971, Fromme served 90 days in jail for attempting to feed a hamburger laced with LSD to witness Barbara Hoyt, to prevent her from testifying. In 1972, she was held in custody for two and a half months for suspected involvement in two murders by the Aryan Brotherhood, but never charged. In March 1975, she attempted to contact Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page to warn him of “bad energy”, but was unsuccessful.

On September 5, 1975, Fromme went to Sacramento, California dressed in a red robe to plead with President Gerald Ford about the plight of the redwood forests. Ford generally prioritized the economy over the environment in his policies, which conflicted with the Manson Family’s philosophy of “clean air, healthy water and respect for creatures and creation”.

As Ford greeted the crowd, Fromme pulled a .45 Colt from her leg holster and attempted to fire. The gun had ammunition in the magazine, but none in the chamber, which Fromme would later claim was intentional as she “was not determined to kill the guy”. As Fromme was disarmed and brought to the ground by Secret Service agent Larry Buendorf, she said, “It didn’t go off. Can you believe it? It didn’t go off”. Secret Service agents then half-dragged Ford away from Fromme towards the east entrance of the Capitol,until Ford yelled in protest, “Put me down! Put me down!” Ford continued his walk to the California state house, entered, and then met with California governor Jerry Brown at 10:06 a.m. for 30 minutes without mentioning the assassination attempt until they were through talking business. Ford, who later indicated that he was not scared, concluded, “I thought I’d better get on with my day’s schedule.”

After a lengthy trial in which Fromme refused to cooperate with her own defense and threw an apple at U.S. Attorney Dwayne Keyes, she was convicted and sentenced under a 1965 law which made attempted presidential assassinations a federal crime punishable by a maximum sentence of life in prison. She was eventually released on parole in 2009 and now lives in New York.

Fromme’s story is one of nine told in Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s musical Assassins. She appears in a duet with John Hinckley Jr., “Unworthy of Your Love”. [x][x][x]

[fishprophets]

b-balladeer assassins??

[baking-accident]

me thinking about how maybe flag song isn’t that great on its own but another national anthem would have hit so much harder if balladeer was doing a panicked, ineffectual reprise of the earlier Genuine Patriotic Song as the assassins closed in on him

[godlessondheimite]

Assassins With the Cast of CATS The Movie

Squeaky Fromme…Taylor Swift

Sarah Jane Moore…Judi Dench

Charles Guiteau…James Corden

Leon Czolgosz…Idris Elba

John Wiilkes Booth…Robbie Fairchild

The Proprietor…Jason Derulo

The Balladeer/Lee Harvey Oswald…Steven McRae

Voice of the Presidents…Ian McKellan