They had the `fire` down below

by Roger M. Showley | Jan 4, 2001
They had the `fire` down below "Greek Fire: The Story of Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis," by Nicholas Gage; Knopf; 407 pages; $26.95.

The volatile, glamorous, but ultimately tragic life of the late opera diva suprema Maria Callas has been the subject of books penned by her mother, sister, ex-husband, a personal assistant, a fawning music critic and current political pundit, Arianna Huffington, when she was known as Arianna Stassinopoulos.

All of those writers failed to chronicle the Callas saga as definitively as Nicholas Gage does in "Greek Fire: The Story of Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis." For once, someone explains Callas` vocal deficiencies (although her top range was shrill and wobbly, no soprano before or since has sung and acted with such bravura). Finally, someone debunks the much-

discussed abortion Callas claims Onassis forced her to undergo in 1966. After years of idolization of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, someone dares to be objectively iconoclastic about the woman who came between Callas and Onassis.

Gage`s sterling accomplishment stems from his years as an investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. As an author, his nonfiction effort, "Eleni" (the story of his mother`s life and death during the Greek civil war), won accolades and was made into a movie.

Born in Greece and fluent in Greek, Gage determined that most of the previous volumes about Callas and Onassis were riddled with errors and misinformation. Still, he acknowledges it would be impossible for anyone to accurately tell the story of two individuals whose lives were obscured by fantasies and legends, and who often made up things about themselves.

As members of the international jet set, Callas and Onassis met in Venice in 1957 at a gala put on by American gossip columnist (and latent lesbian troll) Elsa Maxwell. This led to Callas and her 64-year-old pudgy husband - Veronese businessman Giovanni Battista Meneghini - being invited in 1959 to cruise the Mediterranean aboard Onassis` 325-foot luxury yacht, the Christina.

Among other guests on board were Sir Winston Churchill and his wife, Clementine, and Onassis` wife, Tina. Gage meticulously reports the three-week cruise - during which Callas and Onassis consummated their love affair. In the wake of the sojourn, Tina divorced her husband and Callas` career took a nosedive as she became obsessed with a self-serving, self-indulgent man she later described as "beautiful as Croesus."

Gage`s coup is documenting the birth and quick death of Callas and Onassis` love child in March 1960, eight months after their shipboard fling. The writer also proves Callas was unable to conceive after the birth of Omero Lengrini Onassis - hence an abortion would have been impossible in 1966.

The controversial medical procedure is the climax of Terrence McNally`s one-woman (Callas) play, "Master Class." A womanizer, Onassis bedded Lee Radziwill, sister of Jacqueline Kennedy. Radziwill was Onassis` entree to Jackie, whom he reluctantly married in 1968, leaving Callas to rage on about being dumped. Almost immediately after his nuptials to America`s revered widow, Onassis was on Callas` Paris apartment doorstep begging for forgiveness and bemoaning Jackie`s extravagances and coldness.

Gage completes his microscopic examination by covering the painful details of Callas` disastrous attempted concert comeback (with tenor Giuseppe DiStefano) in the mid 1970s, and both Callas and Onassis` prolonged physical declines.

Today, Callas` name and popularity endure. When she died in 1977, her albums sales totaled 280,000. Twenty years later, sales of her CDs came to 750,000. Onassis` fame hangs on by a slender thread, but only because he married an American "royal" who married into an Irish-American dynasty.

- Preston Turegano

"The Annotated Wizard of Oz," by Michael Patrick Hearn Norton; 396 pages; $39.95.

"Oz Before the Rainbow," by Mark Evan Swartz; Johns Hopkins University Press; 291 pages; $34.95.

Frank Baum`s 100-year-old "Wonderful Wizard of Oz" comes in many editions and has spawned numerous sequels, studies and spinoffs. For many, "Oz" starts and stops with the much-beloved 1939 MGM movie, featuring Judy Garland, hummable tunes and the fearsome Wicked Witch of the West.

For anyone wishing to dig deeper, these two studies offer hours of insight into the "Oz" phenomenon - a phenomenon very much akin to the still-exploding "Harry Potter" craze.

Hearn, who issued his first annotated "Oz" in 1973, has greatly expanded his notes and comments in this "centennial edition." The most attractive feature remains the reproduction of the color prints and drawings by W.W. Denslow. The design of the book represented a dramatic departure from the sober, moralistic fare of the day and thus paved the way for today`s ton-of-fun kid-lit.

Several lower-priced facsimiles are on the market, but they don`t include margin notes like Hearn`s. One example: A concern expressed by Dorothy in Chapter 23 about unaffordable funerals leads to Hearn`s exploration of funeral costs in turn-of-the-century Kansas.

"Oz" was not only the juvenile book of the year in 1900, but also a hit on Broadway, when the first stage musical based on the book debuted in 1903.

Swartz, an archivist with the Shubert Archive in New York, traces the origins of the production and goes on to discuss silent films promoted by Baum. He ends with an epilogue on the roots and repercussions of the MGM classic.

Many critics trashed the 1903 show - it departed widely from Baum`s story - but that didn`t keep the public away. Its success prompted Baum to write another "Oz" musical, "The Woggle-Bug," and 13 more "Oz" books, and to establish the short-lived Oz Film Manufacturing Co.

"Considering the worldwide iconic status of MGM`s `The Wizard of Oz,` it is likely that the film`s imagery will continue to be, for most people, the main gateway into L. Frank Baum`s fairyland," Swartz concludes. "But the rich world of Oz prior to 1939 ought to be explored as well, if for no other reason than to remind us of the way our past shapes and informs things that we have come to take for granted. We need only look before the rainbow to find the past in our present."

(c) Copley News Service

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Author: Roger M. Showley

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