Chez Joey

 Last Saturday, I saw the Arena Stage's adaptation of the Rodgers & Hart musical, Pal Joey, which dates to 1940 and was based on a series of New Yorker stories by John O'Hara. I really still find O'Hara, in his stories and some of his novels, a wonderful writer. These stories were out of his Hollywood/nightclub stories (the others were set in Gibbsville, his made-up town in the Pennsylvania anthracite country modeled after Pottsville, his home town; and New York City and its environs).

Joey in the original musical remains a heel. He has an affair with a rich lady who becomes an angel for his club, but it ends badly. The critics didn't like the 1940 show because the characters, totally real, seemed unattractive to them. So they got all high and mighty and puritanical about it, including Brooks Atkinson of The Times. O'Hara had taken a lot of critical abuse over the years because of what was seen as gratuitous sex in his novels. 

This is all to say that I was game for whatever the Arena decided to do with this show. They changed the name to Chez Joey, which only seemed to mean that the whole show took place in the club that eventually bore that name. The first act was slow as far as I was concerned. They included lots of good R&Hart songs, like I Could Write a Book, Where or When, and even My Funny Valentine, one of their greatest and one I'm absolutely sure was not in the original or previously revived (the production I had seen in New York) Pal Joey. They changed a lot of the tunes, which was too bad, because Rodgers was nothing if not a master melodist. In case I haven't made it clear, the first act left me cold.

The second act, however, saved the show, for me anyway. The show was directed and more importantly, choreographed, by Savion Glover, the greatest modern tap dancer, who more or less revived this art. He didn't dance in the show but his footwork was evident because in the second act, fantastic tap was performed. It even reminded me of those movies with the Nicholas Brothers, fabulous tappers in '30s movies from whom even Fred Astaire learned a lot. Tap did get revived, especially by Glover, a couple of decades ago, and some of the old tappers still around, like Honi Coles, got some work, which was a nice dividend of the revival.

So, this show, with a largely black cast, except for the white female lead--really one of three female leads--who sang the one great song fro the original show, Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered, in the end left you leaving the theater with a good feeling.. Miles Frost, the male lead, Joey, showed plenty of talent, and bears the distinction of having performed the role of Michael Jackson in many productions of the musical based on MJ, as that musical was titled. He won a Tony for playing MJ in the Broadway production but admitted in the showbill bio that he'd hardly played any other major roles.

The Endurance of the Boudins

 

 

I final got around to reading a book I must have purchased two decades ago, Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left (2003). My path crossed that of Leonard Boudin and his family several times. Leonard was a leading left-wing lawyer from the ‘30s through the ‘70s or until his death in 1989. 

 

Leonard, however, was not a hell-raiser. He maintained his image and reputation as a skilled appellate attorney, and represented many clients who were being prosecuted in part for their left-wing views and activities and several who had been accused of spying for the Soviet Union. He won many cases for his clients, relying on his being known as a brilliant advocate who should not be tagged with the politics, views, or alleged crimes of his clients. 

 

I first met him at the home of Richard Gilbert, a Harvard-trained economist who had been heavily involved in the Democratic Party, having served as an adviser to many presidential candidates. Richard was a respected counselor and in his later years, led an economics project for some years in Pakistan. 

 

He lived in Westport, Conn., with his family in a nice house with a pool. This attracted my father, an outstanding competitive swimmer in his youth, to visit Richard now and then. Incidentally, Richard’s older son, Walter, or Wally, subsequently won the Nobel Prize in Physics, and was a founder of Genentech, the genetics company. 

 

One day when we were visiting, Leonard Boudin came by with his son Michael. I was in high school but along with listening to Leonard discuss two recently-decided Supreme Court cases, one of which he had argued and lost, 5-4, Uphaus v. Wyman, I got to ask him a few questions which he delighted in answering in his inimitable fashion. He also handed out dissents by Justices Black and Brennan. At the same time, my dad was swimming a lap or two, demonstrating his marvelous freestyle in the pool. 

 

Years later, I took a course in my third year at Harvard Law taught by Leonard as Visiting Professor from Practice, a seminar in advanced constitutional law. One of the highlights was travelling to Washington, on my own dime, to watch him argue In re Stolar, a case where a client’s previous political associations was causing a state bar, in Ohio, I believe, to refuse to admit him to its bar. 

 

Leonard won that one, and he enjoyed the limelight. He was assisted in the seminar by two young lions—then—of the Harvard  law faculty, Alan Dershowitz and Charles Nesson. They both contributed but like the rest of us were somewhat in awe of Leonard, who peered out at the world through eyeglasses as thick as old green Coke bottles.

 

Leonard’s daughter, Kathy, had already been convicted of felony murder in the Brinks robbery case in Rockland County, New York, and I realized when reading Susan Braudy’s book that he threw himself into defending Kathy as best he could, drawing on all his skills, experiences, and connections. She still ultimately served 22 years before being paroled.

 

I wrote my third-year paper for him as my professor, on disqualification of judges for expression of opinion. Seeing him in his office one day, I noted a drawer in a large, four-drawer, metal file cabinet with the label, “Kathy Boudin” on it, I listened as he related to me with his traditional twinkle that he felt sorry for the ancient civil procedure professor whose chambers Leonard was occupying while the procedure professor was on sabbatical: “He won’t realize that because I was here, his phone will be tapped forever by the F.B.I.”

 

Of the other main characters in the boo, I did get to meet Leonard’s son, Michael, who became, unlike everyone else in his family and clearly in contrast to his sister, became a Republican, Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust in the Reagan Administration, then a judge, and when I met him again, Chief Judge, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston.

 

He had been generous enough to permit the commission of which I was then Executive Director, the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, to conduct a public hearing in this court’s building. The commission’s chair, Judge Reggie B. Walton, and I went up to his chambers to thank Chief Judge Boudin.

 

I learned in the Braudy book that Leonard was especially proud of his son although devoted, a much harder task, to his daughter. I mentioned that I had had Leonard as a professor and Michael was wide-eyed and seemed incredibly pleased to hear that I had enjoyed the class and his father as a professor. He died last year and apparently as a traditional Republican, was less than enthralled with the current Administration. 

 

I also met Jean Boudin, a poet and Leonard’s wife. She seemed as a poet to be a bit unused to domesticity: she took the boxes of pizza that had been ordered for this informal supper for Leonard and his class and put them in the oven to warm, boxes and all. She was surprised when they burst into flames, which were extinguished speedily. 

 

It did surprise me that Leonard was a true ladies’ man and had had liaisons with a number of omen over the years, including lawyer who worked for his firm. For some it took some of the sheen off his image, but I always found him a fascinating lawyer and all-around compelling character.

 

 

 

Ernie Friesen, the true founder of modern judicial administration

 

 

Ernest Clare Friesen, Jr., who died in December [2025] at the age of 97, was more responsible than anyone else for the successful start and growth of judicial administration in the U.S. He was an amazing, imaginative, and yes, brilliant leader, teacher, and innovator. He held almost every top job in the field, having been the first director of the Institute for Court Management and the National Judicial College. 

 

He had been Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, and Assistant Attorney General for Administration in the U.S. Department of Justice before that. Later on, he was dean of two law schools. He co-wrote the first major text, Managing the Courts, and was a valued and sought-after consultant for decades. Ernie, above all, was a delightful guy to work with, learn from, and just spend time absorbing his knowledge, experience, and energy.

 

He was one of the only stars in the field who could walk into any judge’s chambers or court and be welcomed based on his presence as well as the reputation he had acquired. I experienced that when we worked on a project to reduce criminal case processing time in the major Chicago criminal court. He introduced us as we interviewed a lot of judges: “Between us, Mr. Hoffman and I have been in just about every major metropolitan court in America.” 

 

Ernie was a Kansan and could present that kind of statement with the aplomb of actor Frank Morgan, who played the Wizard in the 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz. I recall my late colleague, Bob Tobin, remarking that Ernie was the speaker you needed when you wanted to rouse everyone in the audience to go out into the streets and shout for court reform.” 

 

I last saw Ernie in Colorado when I persuaded a friend with whom we were staying in Breckenridge to invite Erne and his wife Corley to dinner with all of us. Ernie was as fascinating as always—he was only in his 80s then—and left everyone there amazed at his command of the role of courts and what needed to be done to make them work right. 

 

His court management principles were short and clear: Always have a definite next date for action on any case. Use "short scheduling," i.e.,  if a lawyer asks for a 30 or 60-day continuance, give him 15 or 20. Set a cutoff date for pleas. In his various positions, he probably directly or indirectly caused more judges and court administrators to aim for significant improvement in how courts processed cases and how long they took to do it. 

 

I also was with him when we both travelled to North Conway, New Hampshire, for Maury Geiger’s funeral. Maury always had brought a splash of humor to the often not so funny field of court and justice system management. He also believed in serving ordinary people—court users—and had worked on many projects with Ernie. Maury told me once that when he was driving Ernie in San Diego—locale of one of the law schools he was dean and got accredited—he asked Ernie what the biggest problem, the greatest obstacle was to getting the courts operating effectively or running right. 

 

Without missing a beat, Ernie replied with a twinkle, “the goddamn fucking judges.”