Crime of the Century: The Lindbergh Kidnapping Hoax 

 & The Execution of Bruno Richard Hauptmann 

 Film, Theatre and Music 

Based upon Ludovic Kennedy's book - The Airman and the Carpenter

  The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case 1976 VHS    

Charles and Anne Alone Together      Lindbergh's Great Race 1996

  Lindbergh: The Shocking, Turbulent Life of America's Lone Eagle '88 

  The Biography of Charles Lindbergh    A&E         National Geographic - The Lone Eagle

  Across the Atlantic: Behind The Lindbergh Legend       The Story of Charles Lindbergh

Charles Lindbergh: Famous Americans of the 20th Century  1991

Lindbergh Kidnap Stage Productions List 

Assembled by Sam Bornstein  

April, 2004

Franklin, Cary John. 2002. Loss of Eden. Opera Theatre of St. Louis.

Greening, John. June, 2002. A Ladder in Hopewell. NC Stage Company Theater, Asheville, NC.

Greenwood, David Valdes. October, 1998. Brave Navigator. Pyramid Theatre Alliance, Rochester Playwright Festival.

Kazman, Harry. Lindbergh and Hauptmann: The Trial of the Century. (a reenactment of the trial)

Logan, John. Hauptmann. (got as far as Off-Broadway)

Mooney, Bill. April 25 and 26, 2003. Everyone Wanted in the Act. (One-man show, fundraiser for the Hunterdon County Medical Foundation).

Ogborn, Jeffrey. 2001. Baby Case. Arden Theatre Co. Philadelphia.

Noel Behn Obit 

NEW YORK (AP) - 10/13/98 
 Noel Behn, a novelist and screenwriter who appeared in Woody Allen films and was a regular at celebrity hangout Elaine's, died of a heart attack Monday. He was 70.

Behn, a creative consultant for the NBC series ``Homicide: Life on the Street,'' was an early supporter of the off-Broadway theater movement, working as producing director of the Cherry Lane Theater in the 1950s and '60s.

He wrote seven books, several of which were made into movies. His first novel, ``The Kremlin Letter,'' was released in 1970 as a film starring Orson Welles and directed by John Huston. Behn's ``The Big Stick-up at Brink's'' became ``The Brink's Job,'' a 1978 movie with Peter Falk and Peter Boyle.

At Elaine's, he met Woody Allen, who cast him in ``Another Woman'' and ``Stardust Memories.''

Behn wrote six scripts for ``Homicide: Life on the Streets.'' One, ``A Many Splendored Thing,'' was nominated for the 1994 Writer's Guild Award for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series.

 BABY CASE 

The Arden Theatre Company is a nonprofit theatre company located in Philadelphia.

 www.ardentheatre.org

The Arden [has developed] Baby Case, a world-premiere musical by emerging composer Michael Ogborn. Baby Case  recounts the media circus surrounding the 1932 abduction of the Lindbergh baby and the subsequent trial, exploring the cultural, political and historical motivations of one of the most notorious crimes in American history and how it captured the American psyche. 

Under the direction of the Arden’s Producing Artistic Director Terrence J. Nolen, Baby Case  will open on our 360-seat F. Otto Haas Stage 

on October 11, 2001, and run until November 11, 2001.

While the Arden has produced musicals and new works since our inception in 1988, *Baby Case* is our first world-premiere musical. Never before has the Arden mounted a work of this scope (25 actors playing 67 roles, 10 musicians), and we expect *Baby Case* to be among the region’s most memorable cultural highlights next season. 

As part of the production, we hope to use multimedia projections of archival film footage, photographs and newspaper headlines to help tell the story and underscore the media’s omnipresence in the Lindberghs’ lives.

David & Bruno Off-Broadway

New Jersey Law Journal

June 15, 1992

By Drew Clark

  John Logan traveled the same path as historians and Lindbergh aficionados and

agrees with the revisionists: Bruno Hauptmann was innocent of killing the

Lindbergh baby and shouldn't have been executed. Logan also thinks prosecutor

David Wilentz was an instrument of public revenge.

   Unlike other purveyors of post-Lindbergh literature, Logan presents his

conclusions in a play

   The result is "Hauptmann," which opened to mixed reviews off-Broadway on May

28 and had a two-week run at the Cherry Lane Theatre.   The Chicago-based playwright says he didn't conclude that Wilentz was a

villain at the 1935 trial, but that the audience may think he was because the

play is written from Hauptmann's perspective.

   Logan, who was a library clerk at the Northwestern University School of Law,

says that as he researched the case, his opinion of Hauptmann's guilt began to

change.

  "I was looking for a real villain, and I thought Hauptmann was guilty," Logan

says. "I read the original transcripts. The primary source material made me

think he was possibly innocent."

   Logan says he believes Hauptmann was convicted in the media by writers like

Alexander Wolcott, H.L. Mencken, and Edna Ferber, and in the minds of Americans

well before he went to trial. The message of the play is that capital

punishment is wrong and that in America, justice is sometimes meted out to

satisfy the demands of a vengeful public.

   Logan calls prosecuting attorney Wilentz "the cold gun of the state," but

gives him credit for being good at it.

   "The cross-examination of Hauptmann was a forensic masterpiece of dissecting

the witness on the stand," he says.

   Warren Wilentz, of Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer of Woodbridge has not seen the

play but, agrees with the author's assessment of his father, David. "All he had

to have was the seat across from you to dissect you. He didn't even have to get

you on the stand."

New Jersey Law Journal

September 10, 2001

    Bringing Down the House - 

Lawyers faced with rising litigation costs should

feel some empathy for Harry Kazman, whose tab for re-enacting the 1935 trial of

Bruno Hauptmann at the old Hunterdon County Courthouse in Flemington appears

about to go up.

    When the freeholders meet this Tuesday, they are expected to decide whether

to start charging him for use of the space, based on whether his Century

Productions, which stages the event, is for profit.

    The retired drama teacher says he is obtaining nonprofit status but won't

have it by Tuesday. The $25 ticket charge barely covers the $2,500 to $3,000 he

pays for the sheriff's officer who is required to be present, not to mention

cast salaries and advertising costs. A hefty county fee could keep the show from

going on, he says.

    The play, "The Trial of the Century," is about the 32-week trial that led to

the execution of Hauptmann for the fatal kidnapping of the son of Charles

Lindbergh. In its 11th year, it is scheduled to start Sept. 28. Kazman says

large numbers of lawyers attend, including Justice Peter Verniero last year. "

Prosecutors seem to like it particularly," he adds.

BRAVE  NAVIGATOR

http://store.bakersplays.com/bravenavigator.html

thanks to Sue Campbell for submitting the following info

Drama
David Valdes Greenwood
4f / 2m / representational sets

This captivating play was inspired by “The Crime of the Century” — the Lindbergh baby kidnapping case of 1932.

On the night she can never sleep, the anniversary of the kidnapper’s execution, the widow of America’s early aviator hero is compelled to reveal the “true” story of the kidnaping to her granddaughter. Too ashamed of the truth to reveal it to anyone, the woman of the title divulges that the man who was put to death for the crime ... was an innocent man. Now in her eighties and swarmed by memories and guilt, the Brave Navigator flashes back to the trial and her marriage to the famous world traveler, saying, “People do surprising things for love.” By the author’s own account, “The play is a fantasia on a mystery...”.

Originally produced by Pyramid Theatre Alliance in the Rochester Playwright Festival as winner of the Midwest Theatre Network National New Play Competition.

“Brave Navigator proves absorbing...” -- Post Bulletin.

 Here is an overview of Brave Navigator. You can also go to www.ppp.org to
get more information and see pictures of the production.

 Brave Navigator Searches for the Truth

 Since the advent of the mass media, the public's fascination with
 celebrities has grown increasingly obsessive. Even the most routine
 celebrity activities are well documented in words and images. But sometimes
 the lens of a camera or the headline of a newspaper can distort the reality
 of an event. This fall season, the Poplar Pike Playhouse's Brave Navigator,
 written by David Valdes Greenwood and set to open on November 6th, takes a
 look at what can happen when idolatry is taken too far, and the guilty go
 unpunished.
 The public and media reactions to the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder are
 reflected throughout Brave Navigator, a compelling story inspired by the
 events of the infamous case. The play, however, does more than examine the
 Lindbergh trial. It comments upon all trials in America in which a frenzied
 media have clouded the truth to satisfy the public.
 Radio had just come into its own in 1932 when the child of America's first
 sensationalized celebrity, Colonel Charles Lindbergh, was kidnapped. The
 world was abuzz with competing theories and accusations. For the first time,
 radio news had the power to capture listeners. "Frenzied speculation about
 the kidnapping dominated the media for seventy-five days until the child's
 body was found in the woods, and continued to spin throughout the search for
 and conviction of the perpetrator," says Dr. Janann Sherman, a professor of
 history at the University of Memphis.
 

"The play relates to many of the high profile legal cases we've seen, such
 as the JonBenet Ramsey case," says Jeff White, Brave Navigator's associate
 director. "The public latched on so quickly that the truth became
 irrelevant. There was no telling if justice had been served."
 Though Brave Navigator bears an obvious similarity to the entire sequence
 of events surrounding the Lindbergh kidnapping and trial, the play itself is
 purely fictional. Greenwood wrote the play as a reaction to the O.J. Simpson
 trial and the public's interest in the case.  After listening to the
 theories of his co-workers, Greenwood began to wonder, "If the actual
 reality of publicly dissected events does not line up with how these events
 are recorded in historical fact, what must the knowledge be like for those
 parties who know the difference?"
 

Greenwood introduces key characters and integral components through a series
 of flashbacks. The play's abstract presentation only adds to the thrill of
 the mystery. The audience's perspective can change easily in a matter of
 seconds. Combining the media with themes of kidnapping, murder, trial, and
 punishment allows the play to reach people on many levels. In the end, it's
 up to the audience to play judge and juror.

 Séra Babakus
 Publicity and Promotions Director
 Poplar Pike Playhouse
 Germantown, TN 38138