Hot L Baltimore

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Hot L Baltimore

LANFORD WILSON 1973

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

On April 13, 1937, Lanford Wilson was born in Lebanon, Missouri. When he was five years old his parents divorced and his father moved to California; he lived with his mother until 1956.

Wilson attended Southwest Missouri State College (1955–56) and San Diego State College (1956–57). When he was nineteen, Wilson moved to Chicago. He fell in love with big city life and got a job at an advertising agency doing illustrations.

At that time he began writing plays and enrolled at University of Chicago to learn more about the theater. After he moved to New York in 1962, Wilson became an active participant in the Off-Off Broadway movement.

Several of his early plays were produced at the Caffe Cino or at La Mama Experimental Theatre. These early one-act plays were followed by a succession of full-length works, beginning with Balm in Gilead (1965).

In 1968, Wilson co-founded the Circle Repertory Company, where most of his works premiered. Strong character development has become a hallmark of Wilson’s work. His characters often exist on the fringes of society, but as the play progresses, they demonstrate that they are capable of growth and change.

Wilson has been the recipient of several awards, including the New York Drama Critics Circle award in 1973 for Hot L Baltimore and in 1980 for The Migrants. He also received the American Institute of Arts and Letters Award in 1974; in 1980 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

PLOT SUMMARY

Act I

The play opens at 7 a.m. on Memorial Day. The hotel is being torn down and the residents are being notified that they have one month left before they must move.

As Bill notifies the hotel’s residents, Mrs. Bellotti enters looking for Katz, who has refused to allow her son to move back into the hotel. Millie begins a conversation with the Girl about ghosts.

April complains about several things: the sunlight, her inability to sleep, the change to daylight savings time, and the state of the water in the hotel. Mr. Morse enters and loudly complains that his window does not close tightly and that he may well become sick from the draft.

Jackie and Jamie enter, and Jackie immediately begins looking for Katz. Jackie goes up to Morse’s room to fix the stuck window. Katz finally enters and is accosted by the entire group with their complaints.

Jackie returns to the lobby to ask Katz to cosign a loan she needs; he refuses. In the middle of their conversation, Suzy enters with a customer. Katz tries to stop the man from going upstairs with Suzy, but she claims that he is a friend who is going upstairs to have a drink with her.

Mrs. Bellotti pleads with Katz to allow her son to return to the hotel. Katz will not consider it, claiming that Bellotti’s son is a thief. Mrs. Bellotti tells everyone that her husband has recently had his leg amputated because of diabetes and that he will not allow the son to return to their home. Jamie, who has been playing checkers with Morse, offers to help Mrs. Bellotti pack her son’s belongings.

The Girl receives a phone call from her pimp and sets up an appointment with a customer, which bothers Bill. Suzy’s customer comes downstairs, followed by a naked Suzy, who is complaining that the man beat her and locked her out of her room. At that moment, Jamie is descending the stairs and sees Suzy, minus her towel. He is so startled that he drops the box he is carrying.

Act II

Later that afternoon, Paul is badgering Mrs. Oxenham for help in locating his grandfather. Jamie and Morse are playing checkers. The Girl enters and begins to complain about the lack of hot water; she finally realizes that Katz has no intention of fixing the hot water.

Jamie and Morse fight about the checker game. It escalates into a physical brawl. After Morse hides in the closet out of embarrassment, Jamie feigns injuries to lure Morse from the closet.

Jackie enters, complaining that all the pawnshops in town are closed. The Girl asks Paul about his grandfather and learns that he has spent two years on a work farm for selling drugs.

Meanwhile, Jackie brags about the land she bought from a radio ad and about the organic food she is going to grow. The other residents realize that she has been conned. Millie talks about her childhood home.

Morse announces that he has been robbed—all his wife’s jewelry is missing. The residents realize that Jackie is the thief and Katz tells her that she must leave immediately or he will have her arrested.

Millie informs Paul that she is sure his grandfather is still alive.

Act III

At midnight, April is complaining about her customers. Bill has had the hot water fixed. The Girl searches through receipts looking for information about Paul’s missing grandfather.

The residents realize that Jackie has abandoned her brother. Suzy comes downstairs with all her luggage and announces that she is moving to a new apartment that her new friend (her pimp) has arranged for her.

After a glass of champagne, Suzy leaves. When the Girl informs Paul that she thinks she can find his grandfather, Paul tells her not to bother; he is no longer interested. As the play ends, April takes Jamie by the hand and begins to dance with him.

CHARACTERS

Mrs. Bellotti

Mrs. Bellotti is the mother of a former tenant. Described as a whiner and complainer, she tells the audience that her husband just had a leg amputated because of diabetes. When Katz makes it clear that her son will not be allowed to return, she goes upstairs and begins to pack his belongings.

The Girl

A nineteen-year-old prostitute, the Girl is caring and concerned about the other residents. She goes to great effort to help Morse. It is she who tells Jackie that she has bought worthless land.

Paul Granger III

Paul is a college student who was arrested for selling drugs. He has recently been released from a work farm. He comes to the hotel to look for his grandfather.

April Green

April is one of the prostitutes in the play. She is described as large, pragmatic, quick to laugh, and pretty. She is protective of Suzy.

Jackie

Jackie is a hustler traveling with her brother, Jamie. She needs money and tries to get Katz to co-sign a loan so they can go Utah to grow health foods on a worthless piece of land she has bought. She steals jewelry from Morse’s room, but is caught and ordered to leave. She tells Jamie that she is going to buy gas, but never returns to pick him up.

Jamie

Jamie is Jackie’s nineteen year-old brother. He is described as being a bit slow. In the last act, Jamie is abandoned by his sister, who simply drives off and leaves him to manage on his own.

Mr. Katz

Mr. Katz is the hotel manager. A balding, tired man, he resists Jackie’s pleas for money. He gives the residents one month’s notice because the hotel is to be torn down.

Bill Lewis

Bill is the night clerk at the hotel. He has a difficult time communicating and covers by talking too loudly. Bill is interested in the Girl and is more tolerant with her than the other hotel employees.

Millie

Millie is a retired waitress. Considered eccentric, she believes in ghosts and lives in a world more imagined than real. She tells the other residents that she grew up in a mansion. She is a caring person who tells Paul that she knows that his grandfather is still alive.

Mr. Morse

An elderly man, Mr. Morse is loud and demanding. He plays checkers all day and gets into arguments with other residents. When he and Jamie come to blows over a checker game, Morse hides in the broom closet and will not come out until he is convinced that he won the fight. He is robbed by Jackie.

Mrs. Oxenham

Mrs. Oxenham is the desk clerk and phone operator at the hotel. She is tough and tries to keep the prostitutes’ customers out of the hotel.

Suzy

Suzy is a prostitute. In the opening act, she brings one of her customers to the hotel; she accuses him of beating her and locking her out of her room.

MEDIA ADAPTATIONS

Hot L Baltimore has never been made into a film, but the play was adapted to television in 1975 by ABC.

She is tough but also romantic in her search for happiness with a new pimp.

THEMES

Choices and Consequences

There are several instances where it becomes clear that in choosing prostitution, the women in the play face the dangerous consequences of their choice.

Suzy is beaten and locked out of her room by a customer early in the play. Later, she announces that she is moving into an apartment with her new pimp. Her friends are concerned that this man will treat her as badly as the previous one did.

Although April makes fun of her customers’ fetishes, she has been put at risk by freaky and dangerous customers. Wilson does not emphasize it, but it is clear that prostitution is a risky way to make a living.

Human Condition

Jamie’s abandonment is a tragic situation that underscores the precarious nature of the human condition. The young man is almost helpless without Jackie to care for him; his ability to think and rationalize is limited. It is unclear how he will be able to survive without his sister to help him.

The picture of this teenage boy bringing all his possessions to the lobby is heartbreaking. The other residents know that Jackie will not return, and the audience knows it as well. The last image in the play is of April trying to distract Jamie as she teaches him to dance.

TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY

Wilson is interested in what he considers to be an American disregard for the remnants of the American past. Research the history of the American city and decide if his concerns are warranted. Are cities too quick to tear down the past and modernize with new structures? Is there too little regard for historical buildings and areas?
Prostitution is often described as a victimless crime. In areas where prostitution is legal, is the occurrance of violent crime any worse? Or does ignoring prostitution free police for more serious crimes? Does prostitution encourage organized crime? Provide statistics to support your answer.
Investigate the history of prostitution. How have communities throughout history handled prostitution? Has the profession changed throughout time?
Determine the number of Americans who get conned by radio, television, and solicitations into buying worthless land each year. What kind of people choose to buy land they have never seen? What are the current laws against this type of con?

Memory and Reminiscence

The majority of the conversations between the residents concern their memories of the past. Millie tells the other residents about her childhood and the large mansion that was inhabited by ghosts. The Girl talks about her travels around the United States.

These pleasant memories help to alleviate anxiety over an uncertain future. It is particularly important to focus on the past when in a short time they will all be homeless.

Morality

Wilson treats prostitution as just another profession. There is certainly no moral judgment about these women’s choice of careers. April’s descriptions of her customers and their desires is intended to amuse and evoke pity, but at no point is the audience expected to criticize her actions. She is simply working and trying to earn a living.

The same is true for Suzy and the confrontation with her customer. The audience is expected to laugh at Jamie’s shock, but there is no expectation that she will call the police.

The only critical comment comes from Bill when the Girl is called with a job. Yet it is understood that he is likes her and wants to protect her. Wilson never makes a moral judgment about these women, and he does not allow any of the characters to do so either.

Wealth and Poverty

Paul Granger’s story about his missing grandfather creates a dichotomy between wealth and poverty. Paul’s parents are wealthy, but his grandfather was a working man. His parents are ashamed of him. Initially Paul searches for his grandfather because he wants to offer him a home. Later, he loses interest in locating him.

Wilson never suggests a reason for Paul’s sudden disinterest. Perhaps the hotel provides insight into the kind of existence that his grandfather has lived and he realizes how different his grandfather’s life has been from his own. Paul may realize that his parents are correct and there is no room in their lives for a poor old man on a railroad pension.

STYLE

Act

Acts are the major divisions in a drama. In Greek plays the sections of the drama are signified by the appearance of the chorus; they are usually divided into five acts. These five acts denote the structure of dramatic action: exposition, complication, climax, falling action, and catastrophe.

The five-act structure was followed until the nineteenth century when Henrik Ibsen combined some of the acts. Hot L Baltimore is a three-act play. However, there is little plot in the play; hence the structure of dramatic action is not applicable.

Character

The actions of each character are what constitute the story. Characters can range from simple stereotypical figures to more complex multifaceted ones; they may also be defined by personality traits, such as the rogue or the damsel in distress.

Characterization is the process of creating a lifelike person from an author’s imagination. To accomplish this the author provides the character with personality traits that help define who he will be and how he will behave in a given situation.

Wilson does not create complex characters in his play. Most of what the audience knows is provided in brief vignettes. Characters tend to be stereotypical, such as the good-hearted prostitute or the street-tough youth.

Comedy

There are two types of drama: tragedy and comedy. Hot L Baltimore is a comedy. The purpose of comedy is to amuse. It has many forms, such as farce and burlesque, and may also include satire and parody. For instance, Wilson is using comedy to point out the problems that occur when cities are too eager to destroy debilitated buildings just because they are old. He sees historical wealth and social value in their preservation and renewal.

Setting

The time and place of the play is called the setting. The elements of setting may include geographic location, physical or mental environments, cultural attitudes, or the historical time in which the action takes place. The location for Hot L Baltimore is the lobby of a seedy hotel. All of the action occurs between 7 a.m. and midnight on Memorial Day.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

In the early 1970s satellite transmissions meant that Americans could watch history unfold as it happened. Because more Americans were watching, television branched out and offered live coverage of important news events.

In the early part of the decade, the Vietnam War as well as the protests over the war across the country were televised into American homes. In a very real sense, it was the images of American men dying on camera that helped fuel much of the opposition to the war.

Television viewers also watched the shooting of four student protesters at Kent State University and the deaths of two more a week later at Jackson State University, events that led to protests at more than 1,200 other colleges and universities—most of which were also covered by television cameras.

Certainly, television changed the way America fought wars. By early 1973 the last of American ground troops were finally pulled from Vietnam in 1975. The televised roof-top evacuation of the American embassy in Saigon was a haunting final image for American viewers.

Other dramatic events made for good television too. The moon landing in 1969 drew millions of viewers all over the world. A year later, the troubled mission of Apollo 13 reminded Americans that there was nothing routine about space flight—viewers were glued to their sets, praying the astronauts would make it home safely.

In 1972, the murder of several Israeli athletes shocked viewers of the Olympic games. Throughout the 1970s, air hijackings and hostage situations escalated, often as a protest against American foreign policy.

When Arab countries, protesting American support of Israel, imposed an oil boycott that resulted in gasoline shortages and higher prices, it was television that brought the images of long lines into American homes. Helping Americans deal with the inconveniences of the embargo was another role for television, which brought the president’s warnings about conserving energy.

It was television that broadcast the Watergate hearings—as well as the live image of President Nixon waving goodbye as he left the White House after his resignation from office.

CRITICAL OVERVIEW

Hot L Baltimore was very popular with both critics and audiences on its debut in February 1973. After a month, Wilson’s play moved to an Off-Broadway theatre, the Circle in the Square Theatre, where it opened March 22, 1973.

Amongst critics, a sense of nostalgia prevailed. As Douglas Watt noted in his review, “It’s no place

COMPARE & CONTRAST

1973: Senate hearings begin in Washington into the break-in at the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate building. The hearings would eventually lead to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Today: The nation is still recovering from the impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton. During the impeachment trial and its aftermath, televised coverage—network, cable, and the Internet—was continuous and comprehensive.
1973: The Arab oil embargo pushes the price of gasoline to new highs as severe shortages result in mile-long lines at the gas pumps. Consumers are encouraged to conserve energy, and alternate energy sources become more prominent.

Today: Oil is plentiful and inexpensive. As a result, gas-guzzling SUVs become a popular vehicle.
1973: The median sales price of an existing single-family home in the United States reaches $28,900.

Today: While the prices of new homes have stabilized in recent years, the median price of a new home now exceeds $130,000 in most areas. In part this results from an increased demand for larger homes.

to live, but it’s worth a visit.” Watt discussed the setting, a crucial element of this play: “Time stands still in seedy hotels. The locations may change, and the people’s names; but today’s castoffs are the same as yesterday’s, giving their own kind of continuity to life. They’re the ones you meet in Lanford Wilson’s quietly affecting three-act play.”

According to Watt, “nothing much happens . . . [but] we become part of their small world.” The audience becomes interested in these characters, although there is no plot or action, just dialogue.

Watt asserted that the characters are timeless; there is nothing that establishes them as from 1973, except for their clothing and the music playing in the background. “There are false notes and awkward moments,” said Watt, “but Wilson is a gifted and appealing playwright.”

One of the aspects of the play that apparently appealed to Watt was the absence of gunmen, cops, heroes, villains, and melodrama. In conclusion, Watt maintained that “you wouldn’t want to room there, but Hot L Baltimore is an interesting place to visit on a quiet day.”

Another critic, Martin Gottfried, lauded the play: “The Hot L Baltimore is first-class Lanford Wilson, and that is as good as you will find in the American theatre.”

He praised Wilson’s ability to find beauty in American stories:

Wilson was one of the first of our playwrights to seek an American beauty and an essential mythology in our national roots; one of the first to deal with that subject in a style of heightened, poetized reality; one of the first to return to language while fashion was still demanding minimalism and noncommunication. The Hot L Baltimore shows him still at the peak of his mastery over these qualities.

He also contended that Wilson’s “writing is superb, a triumph of inspiration and craftsmanship.” After praising Wilson’s ability to create believable characters, Gottfried concluded that “Wilson builds a magnificently detailed concerto for humanity.”

Richard Watts offered a mixed review. He deemed the play “as odd and original a play as you are likely to see all season.”

After noting the lack of plot, Watts considered characterization the strength of this play, since Wilson is not trying “to make any particular points” but is interested in exploring people and their lives.

Wilson’s characterization was also praised by Jack Kroll in his review for Newsweek. Referring to Wilson’s work as “so old-fashioned in its humanity that it’s the freshest play—the best American play—I’ve seen this season,” Kroll wrote that Wilson “dares to remind us of what writers once were in this country.”

The strength of character development was also noted by Leonard Probst in his television review of Wilson’s play. Probst contended that “the people are alive and real” and the set is “so real that you feel that you’re in the Hotel Baltimore.” Probst also considered the lack of plot, but added, “the play is completely engrossing.”

Probst maintained that “the play has a wonderful sense of humanity, a feeling [sic] of the loss of passion as we, our cities, and our institutions grow weary, and too wise to do anything about it.”

CRITICISM

Sheri E. Metzger

Metzger is a Ph.D., specializing in literature and drama at The University of New Mexico. In the following essay, Metzger discusses the creation of character in Hot L Baltimore.

The 1970s were a decade of protests: protests over the war in Vietnam, protests for women’s rights, and protests about racial inequities. It was a decade to rethink our nation’s history. It is only right that Lanford Wilson’s play Hot L Baltimore focuses on the importance of preserving America’s cities, while embracing each character’s personal history, since he presents the notion that history is worth remembering and savoring.

It is primarily the individual characters that bring Wilson’s play to life. He manages to imbue each one with a unique spirit that makes it especially difficult for audiences to select a favorite. Each character—whether a prostitute, the forgotten elderly, or the soon-to-be-unemployed hotel staff—brings a humanity to his or her role. It is primarily the setting and the characters that deliver this play’s message.

In an interview with Gene A. Barnett, Wilson perceives his strength as writing dialogue for his plays. After first mentioning that he became a playwright because he always wrote dialogue better than he wrote narrative, Wilson asserts that dialogue “was always something that I had under control and had always been attracted to—juxtaposed sounds and rhythms of characters—and so it was really natural.” It is the natural sound of the character’s dialogue that captures his audiences—and the critics—attention.

Reviews of Hot L Baltimore invariably cite the play’s greatest strengths as the realism of the characters and the flow of dialogue. In his review for Women’s Wear Daily, Martin Gottfried asserted that Wilson’s

writing is simply superb, a triumph of inspiration and craftsmanship. He has created 17 [actually 15] individual characters with specific speech patterns and personalities, and has orchestrated them. Each weaves his strand through the play, maintaining his individuality yet part of the whole . . . With such language, with such real and yet mythic characters, with such a clear conflict between life’s rulers (the hotel personnel) and its victims... with such poetic ambiguity (a cry for convictions by people whose convictions are doomed), Wilson builds a magnificently detailed concerto for humanity.

Gottfried is not alone in commending Wilson for the richness of his characters or for his appeal to his audience’s humanity. Richard Watts’ review for The New York Post also focused on Wilson’s ability to create interesting characters. In fact, he credited the play’s success to the characters, finding the plot not worth mentioning.

Watts maintained that “the important thing is that they [the people in the hotel] are entertaining and friendly people, though a little crazy, and their thoughts, woes, confidences and self-revelations make an engaging and sympathetic play.” It is the character’s stories that pull the audience in and holds its attention.

Each of the hotel’s residents is an outcast, living on the fringes of society in a hotel that is on the fringe of existence. In her review of Wilson’s life and works, Ann Crawford Dreher asserted that “all the people at the Baltimore are either hurting each other or helping each other.” This “delineates a pattern of the human ability to go on feeling and striving in the midst of a crumbling world.”

Although each of these people is a societal outcast, each has something to contribute toward the common goal of survival; thus they make their own place in a society that would consider them

WHAT DO I READ NEXT?

Talley’s Folly, one of Lanford Wilson’s most successful plays, was first performed in 1979. Set in 1944, this play is about the romance between a Midwestern spinster and a Jewish tax accountant.
Lanford Wilson’s Balm in Gilead was written in 1965 and is set in New York City. It features characters who are considered outcasts: prostitutes, thieves, and the elderly.
Serenading Louie, Lanford Wilson’s 1976 play, is about alienation, estrangement, and death. The focus is on two couples, neighbors who are enduring crises.
Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1903) explores what happens when something old and beautiful is destroyed to create something new.
The Time of Your Life (1939), written by William Saroyan, is a series of vignettes about people doing ordinary things.

eccentric or foolish. In his article on Wilson’s plays, Henry I. Schvey contended that many of Wilson’s works “have large casts and are essentially peopled by characters who have no definite place in society.”

Of Hot L Baltimore, Schvey maintained that Wilson’s focus is not solely on the characters as outcasts; instead he is attracted to “the world as it is (dramatically conveyed by the shabby decaying hotel), and a community of people who need to believe in something—whatever the odds.”

These people refuse to give up. Their strength and humanity appeals to the audience. Whether or not they are losers, they convey the notion that they are survivors, and American audiences want to cheer for winners.

Schvey asserted that nearly all of the characters are searching for something—but that something is, according to Schvey, “either worthless or fraudulent.” Perhaps that is their attraction to audiences, who can identify with the character’s fears, while remaining thankful that they, too, have managed to avoid those particular traps.

However, Schvey claimed that in spite of the play’s “almost unanimously favourable reviews and wide public appeal . . . its simple message wears thin, and its characterization is ultimately superficial.” The play’s “upbeat message of hope is not sufficient” and Wilson’s play could not bear comparison to other works that also focus on similar ideas, such as Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, which has a complexity that Wilson’s play lacks.

Martin J. Jacobi would disagree that the characterization in Wilson’s play is inadequate. In his article on Wilson’s comic vision, Jacobi argued that Wilson’s plays

move from bleakly naturalistic portraits of ineffectual outcasts who have little connection to their group, through pessimistic portrayals of outsiders who might have saved themselves from destruction but do not, to realistically optimistic views of individuals who challenge societal prejudices but still find acceptable places within it. They develop from pathos and incipient tragedy to true, and not sentimental, comedy.

This is far different from an assessment of the characters as superficial. Jacobi viewed Wilson’s ability to “identify important traditions and cultural values” as a major contribution in his characters’ development. Although they are society’s outcasts, each has something to give to the other members of the group.

For example, the play’s conclusion demonstrates that while April wants to help Jamie survive his sister abandoning him, he is capable of being on his own. Jamie may be flawed and different, but he is capable of surviving.

This idea is picked up by Jacobi, who noted that “Wilson professes to his audience that people can be individuals, sometimes eccentrically so, and still be good members of their group.” This is a reassuring message for the audience, and it clearly belongs in a decade that valued individualism and rebellion as did the 1970s.

Often times, writers write to explore ideas, to help them develop a better understanding of an issue. In an interview published by Jackson R. Bryer, Wilson contended that “writing is the process of understanding what you’re feeling.”

Writing also offers Wilson a chance to experiment with creating different ideas and different characters. In providing his characters with eccentricities, Wilson makes them more appealing. It is worth noting that the 1970s were a time of self-expression, of outlandish clothing, of experimentation with drugs, and of sexual adventures.

Wilson told Gene Barnett that he wanted to create characters who were more vibrant, exciting, and unusual. He wanted to move out of “that suburban rut that I’d gotten into.”

The characters in Hot L Baltimore are especially unusual and vibrant. Millie’s belief in the spirit world and her family history of eccentricity make her one of Wilson’s most interesting characters. And the Girl’s inability to pick a name echoes a common theme, often unexpressed beyond childhood, that each individual should be able to select his or her own name.

Each of the other two prostitutes is an individual, moving beyond conventional description into the extraordinary. April’s candid descriptions of her customer’s proclivities provide some of the funniest lines in the play. And Suzy’s humanity inspires the audience’s sympathy.

There is no reason for the audience to invest itself in one of Wilson’s characters. None of them is what audiences would consider the star of the show. And yet, the audience is mysteriously drawn in and forced to care, even when it does not wish to do so.

In part, this is because there is a sort of timelessness about Wilson’s play. The setting is 1970s Baltimore, but it could be any decade and any city. There have always been the poor, the downtrodden, the illicit members of any society. And they have always been the object of urban renewal.

Douglas Watt noted in his review of Hot L Baltimore for the Daily News that this “slice-of-life

“THE INHABITANTS OF WILSON’S HOTEL SHARE THE AUDIENCE’S INSECURITIES, BUT THEY ALSO SHARE THEIR DREAMS AND HOPES FOR A BETTER LIFE.”

might have taken place 30 years ago but for the trivial facts that the clothes are different, the country music has a rock beat and April sends out for pizza instead of hamburgers or danish.”

Yet in truth, these characters are representative of what city government often hopes to eliminate when they decide to tear down a seedy hotel, a tenement building, or whatever else they consider an example of urban blight. These are the people who cannot afford something better.

Except for Suzy, whose quest for a better living arrangement may ultimately hurt her, Wilson never suggests a solution for his characters. They do not have to search for a place to live—not yet. And the audience does not have to face the fact that in a month these people will be homeless.

In many ways, Wilson’s play is as topical in 2000 as it was more than twenty-five years ago. The homeless clog big city streets, and the working poor are often only a paycheck away from sharing the same fate.

The inhabitants of Wilson’s hotel share the audience’s insecurities, but they also share their dreams and hopes for a better life. The hotel may be torn down, but life will provide for the people, and the audience is forced to cheer for their survival.

Source: Sheri E. Metzger for Drama for Students, Gale, 2000.

Liz Brent

Brent has a Ph.D. in American Culture, specializing in cinema studies, from the University of Michigan. She is a freelance writer and teaches courses in American cinema. In the following essay, Brent discusses the themes of loss and nostalgia in Wilson’s play.

Langford Wilson’s play The Hot L Baltimore, set in the lobby of a soon-to-be demolished hotel, currently a flophouse, focuses on the interactions between a motley set of hotel tenants in exploring deeper themes of loss, death, and nostalgia. The setting of the play is itself steeped in nostalgia. Opening descriptions of the hotel, as well as the nearby railroad station, paint a picture of faded elegance.

Once there was a railroad and the neighborhood of the railroad terminals bloomed (boomed) with gracious hotels. The Hotel Baltimore, built in the late nineteenth century, remodeled during the Art Deco last stand of the railroads, is a five-story establishment intended to be an elegant and restful haven.

A description of the once-grand interior renders its imminent destruction sharply poignant: “Its history has mirrored the rails’ decline. The marble stairs and floors, the carved wood paneling have aged as neglected ivory ages, into a dull gold. The Hotel Baltimore is scheduled for demolition.” Wilson’s description of the theater setting in which the play should be produced echoes this theme of decayed elegance: “The theater, evanescent itself, and for all we do perhaps itself disappearing here, seems the ideal place for the representation of the impermanence of our architecture.” Later in the play, the Girl expresses nostalgia, not just for the Hotel Baltimore, as it once was, but for the city itself, as it once was: “Baltimore used to be one of the most beautiful cities in America.”

Wilson sets the time period of the play as “a recent Memorial Day,” and provides the directions that the music from the radio should “incorporate music popular during production.” The playwright sets his story in a “recent” time, with contemporary music, in order to emphasize the immediacy of the moment, thereby rendering the sense of nostalgia for the past all the more powerful to the audience. Furthermore, characters in the play are continually asking, being informed of, and discussing the time of day. This preoccupation with the theme of time creates an atmosphere in which all of the characters are painfully aware of the passage of time. They learn that they have only one month left before they are evicted and the hotel is demolished. This literal anxiety about the passage of time echoes with the play’s theme of nostalgia for a past which can never be recovered.

The Girl, the young prostitute who has not yet decided on a name for herself, seems of all the characters to have the strongest sense of nostalgia about both the decline of the railroads and the imminent demolition of the old hotel. The Girl is obsessed with the train schedule, continually listening for the sound of the trains passing which can be heard inside the hotel lobby. She is obsessed with the fact that the trains are always behind schedule, and imagines that they once ran on time. This concern with time expresses both a nostalgia for the railroad system she imagines to have once been grand and precise, and a sense of anxiety over the passage of time, of time passed, of time lost which can never be recovered. Her interest in the past is expressed directly when she tells Paul that, in high school, “I was pretty good in history.” The Girl’s fascination with a lost past is expressed in her musings about the hotel’s history: “We probably walk right under and right past the places where all kinds of things happened. A tepee or a log cabin might have stood right where I’m standing.” This interest in the past takes on a strong aura of nostalgia when she concludes that, “Wonderful things must have happened on this spot.”

The setting of Memorial Day provides a frame for the play’s theme of death, loss and mourning. The title of the play, in fact, is derived from the loss of the “e” from the original “Hotel Baltimore” sign, so that it reads “Hot, Baltimore.” The loss of the “e” establishes the theme of loss incurred due to the ravages of time. The character of Paul, who first appears in Act Two, most directly addresses the theme of loss of loved ones appropriate to Memorial Day. Paul, a young man, appears in the hotel lobby in search of his grandfather, not knowing if he is alive or dead. Mrs. Oxenham, one of the tenants, comments that “We’re not a missing persons bureau.” In questioning the hotel tenants and employees, Paul himself brings up the possibility that his grandfather may be dead, inquiring, “Would you remember if he fell dead in the lobby?”

The theme of loss is also brought up in several more or less minor elements of the play and offhand comments by various characters. Mrs. Bellotti, whose son lives in the building, mentions that her husband, who is a diabetic, has “lost” his leg, as it had to be amputated. After the Girl borrows Jackie’s magazine, Jackie makes a point of getting it back from her, stating, “I don’t want to lose that.” Jackie later says, out of the blue, “Did you know the first two hours after you pick them, green beans lose twenty percent of their vitamin C?” The loss of objects and the loss of loved ones seem to pile up as the play goes on. When Mr. Morse accuses Jackie of stealing from him, he makes a direct association between the loss of his wife, who is dead, with the loss of her jewelry, claiming that Jackie, “Took my wife’s things. That’s all I have in this world.” When questioned, he explains, “My things! My wedding cuff links and my necklace that belonged to my wife! And my mother!” The elision between the loss of objects associated with a loved one and the death of a loved one is suggested by Jackie’s defensive response that, “Yeah, well, I didn’t take his fucking mother.”

Amidst the overwhelming sense of loss which envelopes these characters, they each struggle with what they do and don’t have. As mentioned above, Mr. Morse exclaims that his wife’s “things,” her jewelry, are “all I have in this world.” Jackie, accused of the theft, retorts that, “I have dreams!” But the Girl later points out to her that, “You have nothing,” referring to the worthless land Jackie has been suckered into purchasing. The Girl, who herself has nothing—not even a name—is especially sympathetic to others who “have nothing.” She tells Bill that she can’t bear to think of people wanting things and not having them.

Death, loss and nostalgia are combined in the discussion of ghosts and spirits among the hotel residents. The Girl explains that Millie, a retired waitress, “sees things, knows things, she sees ghosts and auras and things.” Millie later expresses a nostalgia for old buildings, akin to the play’s expression of nostalgia for the old hotel, in describing her childhood home, “a huge old Victorian house outside Baton Rouge; an amazing old house, really.” Millie goes on to describe, again nostalgically, the ghosts which resided there:

Millie: When you ask about spirits—oh, well, you couldn’t keep track of them all. Banging doors, throwing silverware, breaking windows. They were all over the house. There was a black maid—slave girl, I suppose, and a revolutionary soldier and his girl, and a Yankee carpetbagger, and a saucy little imp of a girl who sashayed about very mischievously. She’d been pushed out of a window and was furious about it. Storming through the upstairs, slamming windows shut all over the house. It was quite an active place.

Millie later explains that “Spirits are very peaceful, of course. They don’t act up unless there’s tension in a household.” The Girl, in keeping with her strong sense of nostalgia for the historical past, is the most fascinated and excited by the idea of ghosts. She exclaims excitedly that “I want them to come up with absolute scientific proof that there are spirits and ghosts and reincarnation. I want everyone to see them and talk to them. Something like that! Some miracle. Something huge! I want some major miracle in my lifetime!” Since a ghost represents a person who has died, yet still exists, the Girl’s enthusiasm for, in effect, the return of the dead to some form of life, some “miracle,” is an

“WHILE THE GIRL’S EXPRESSION OF HOPE FOR THE PERPETUAL REPARATION OF LOST LIFE, LOST BUILDINGS, AND LOST TIME SEEMS TO BE NEGATED BY ALL OF THE LOSSES WHICH EMERGE THROUGHOUT THE PLAY, IT IS SHE WHO EXPRESSES THE PLAY’S MESSAGE REGARDING THE THEMES OF LOSS AND NOSTALGIA.”

expression of a desire to negate the ravages of time and the inevitability of death, as symbolized by the demolition of the hotel, which have thrown all of these characters into crisis. Likewise, the mention of “reincarnation” expresses a desire for those who have died to come back in another life, and therefore never really be lost to the world. In the closing scene, the Girl again expresses the desire, or belief, that life can never really be lost, when she tells Paul, who has given up on finding his grandfather, that “Nobody vanishes.”

While the Girl’s expression of hope for the perpetual reparation of lost life, lost buildings, and lost time seems to be negated by all of the losses which emerge throughout the play, it is she who expresses the play’s message regarding the themes of loss and nostalgia. Frustrated by Paul Granger’s decision to give up on looking for his lost grandfather, the Girl blurts out, “That’s why nothing gets done; why everything falls down. Nobody’s got the conviction to act on their passions.” This assertion rings poignantly true in the case of Bill, who is unable to “act on his passion” for the Girl. In the final moments of the play, as she is on her way upstairs to take a bath, the stage directions state that, “Bill looks off after her, aching.” April, observing this, attempts to motivate Bill into action; she “Snaps her fingers lightly at him. One. Two. Three. Four,” saying, “Hey. Hey.” But April’s attempt to get Bill to snap out of his torpor, and express his longing for the Girl, ultimately fails, and April concludes that “Bill, baby, you know what your trouble is? You’ve got Paul Grangeritis. You’ve not got the conviction of your passions.” The urgency of the need to “act on the conviction of your passions” expresses the play’s message of how to approach life in spite of the inevitability of death, loss and decay, a piece of advice frequently summed up by the well-known Latin phrase (not used in the play itself): Carpe Diem! Seize the day!

Source: Liz Brent, for Drama for Students, Gale, 2000.

Sheri E. Metzger

Metzger is a Ph.D., specializing in literature and drama at The University of New Mexico, where she is a Lecturer in the English Department and an Adjunct Professor in the University Honors Program. In the following essay, Metzger asks if Lanford Wilson’s play Hot L Baltimore can correctly be defined as comedy, or if the urban theatre is a euphemism for tragedy.

At the conclusion of Lanford Wilson’s Hot L Baltimore, the inhabitants face eviction, and for many of them, homelessness. Some of them face even more uncertain futures. Suzy, beaten in the first act by a customer, leaves the hotel to live with a new pimp. Pimps have abused her in the past, and there is every reason to suspect that this alliance will end in the same way. All three prostitutes face similar futures and the possibility of violence. Another resident, James, who is incapable of caring for himself, has been abandoned by his sister. James’ sister, Jackie, has bought into a land swindle and is headed into a future that does not really exist, something she probably suspects. But her prospects are so bleak that she has no choice but to pursue this empty future. Other characters will leave the hotel with disappointed prospects and diminished dreams. Hot L Baltimore is comedy, and there are plenty of laughs, but the characters, their lives, and the bleakness of their futures all point to a play that is more tragic than comic in its presentation.

Traditionally, comedy was defined as drama with a happy ending, as in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Later, in the evolution of comedic form, Shakespearean comedies concluded with a wedding, or even three, as in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The weddings in Act V provided a resolution to the story, granting a happy ending that tied up all the story lines and offered a blissful future for the characters. While part of the enjoyment of comedy comes from the near misses, the mistaken identities, and the incongruity of language, much enjoyment is also derived from the slapstick nature of physical comedy. Plays depend on performance to be completely understood. The audience needs to hear and see how the lines are delivered, since this delivery may convey as much meaning as the author’s words. It is the body’s movements, the expressions on the actor’s face, and the intonations of voice that turn the play into comedy. But beyond the words is the subject matter, and the subject of Wilson’s play is the plight of homelessness, the loneliness of the individual, the need for compassion, and a desire to hold onto a happier past. Comedy is designed to make the audience smile, to make us laugh, and to help create an escape from the real world. Hot L Baltimore manages the first two goals easily, but there is no escape from the reality of the world outside the theatre. The problems that plague large cities—homelessness, crime, prostitution, and hopelessness—are all present in the theatre and on the streets outside. Wilson’s play brings the streets and their sometimes bleak future into the theatre. As a result, it is difficult to label Hot L Baltimore as comedy.

Wilson originally intended to write comedies, and he has said that even if his plays “didn’t hold out much hope for the world and its people, at least they were a pleasant experience while you [the audience] were going through it.” But, as his work has progressed, Wilson’s approach to theatre has changed. In an interview with John DiGaetani, Wilson notes that he doesn’t want to think of his plays as comedies anymore, and while he still wants to entertain, he also wants to explore what he calls “darker themes.” This exploration of darker themes is certainly evident in Hot L Baltimore, which is really on the edge of tragedy throughout the plot. Wilson is certainly reflecting changes in society, which will be mirrored in performance and theatre. Just as the 1960s and 1970s signaled a period of social unrest and a desire for social reform, theatre of this period could be used as a weapon to create social reform. Playwrights, like Wilson, used their plays to promote new goals and to illuminate the problems of the world. Wilson acknowledges that he recognizes that a play “impinges on the people.” But the effect on the audience cannot always be determined until the play is performed; as DiGaetani observes, “you can see what works in the theatre.” Because a play always needs revising, Wilson states that in his experience, “a play never seems to be really completed.” Although Wilson is speaking strictly of rewrites, sometimes a play with no resolution can appear unfinished, without having been completed. This is the case for Wilson’s play, since at the conclusion of Hot L Baltimore the audience is left wondering what will become of these characters. There is a feeling that Wilson has brought to life individuals who will have a life after the play concludes: their stories do not end, and the play is simply a brief episode in their lives.

Wilson has said that Hot L Baltimore derived from his brief experience as a night clerk at a hotel. Were the people Wilson met this lonely and this sad? Were they also abandoned and in need of one another? It is possible, but Wilson had other sources for his writing, as well. The inhabitants of the Hotel Baltimore are as dark as the society that Charles Dickens depicted in his nineteenth century novels. Wilson’s director, Marshall Mason, has said that Wilson devoured Dickens during rehearsals for his play. In an interview with Philip Middleton Williams, Mason remembers Wilson reading “Dickens after Dickens,” with characters immersed in greed and poverty, and moral stories that inspired the playwright. Dickens’ novels are dark, often with an element of hope, but mostly depicting the exploitation of individuals. They are not comedies, and if Wilson used Dickens to inspire his work, as Mason alleges, than certainly Wilson’s play will center more on the dark aspects of the world, rather than the happier ones. It is true, as Mason suggests, that “while Wilson created a cast of social misfits, he broadened their appeal with the comedic approach and nearly farcical staging.” The characters are appealing. The audience wants to like them and wants them to succeed. In truth, there are comedic moments and physical humor to lighten the issues underlying the play, but the problems of prostitution, loneliness, and abandonment help to stifle the laughter. The audience likes the characters too much to permit complete surrender into laughter.

It is the characters who capture the audience’s imagination and who evoke both laughter and tears. The wise-cracking April creates much of the laughter, but her laughter is also an attempt to ignore the reality of her life. She is the stereotypical whore with a heart of gold who populated so many Hollywood westerns of the twentieth century, now magically transported to 1970s Baltimore. Her familiarity makes it easy for the audience to identify her and to identify with her, and she makes it easy to laugh. The audience does not have to think about her occupation and the danger that prostitutes face on the street. The slow-witted James is an entirely different matter. At the play’s conclusion, April will take him into her arms and begin to dance with him. She is meant to appear as his rescuer, and so, the audience can leave reassured that he will be safe—and

“THE LOSS OF ONE MORE DERELICT HOTEL WILL NOT MOVE THE CITY TO RESCUE ITS POOR, BUT WILSON DOES ILLUMINATE THE SERIOUSNESS OF THE PROBLEM, AND IN DOING SO, HE MOVES HOT L BALTIMORE FURTHER FROM COMEDY AND CLOSER TO SOCIAL COMMENTARY.”

perhaps they will all be safe, all of the characters who are soon to be thrown into the streets. But Wilson’s world on stage deals with easy solutions. In the real world April will not protect James. The James of the world all too often end up as the homeless, lying on the streets. There is no resolution, no comedy at the play’s conclusion. These characters drift in and out of the action, as the homeless drift in and out of our lives. The loss of one more derelict hotel will not move the city to rescue its poor, but Wilson does illuminate the seriousness of the problem, and in doing so, he moves Hot L Baltimore further from comedy and closer to social commentary.

Upon its debut, Hot L Baltimore was the first big hit for both Wilson and for the Circle Repertory Company. Critics and audiences loved the play, and it set an Off-Broadway record of 1,166 performances after first playing Off-Off-Broadway for a month. Hot L Baltimore won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for the Best American Play of 1972-73. It also won an Obie Award for best Off-Broadway play, an Outer Critics Award, and the John Gassner playwriting award, and was included in the Burns Mantle/Guernsey Ten Best American Plays volume for that season. Hot L Baltimore has continued to be very popular, with numerous productions staged every year. This play appears to speak to people, and perhaps it says something about our country and our past. But instead of advertising a Lanford Wilson comedy, perhaps this play might better be advertised as an urban drama, a play that explores modern city life. There is comedy certainly, and the audience will laugh and be entertained, but the inhabitants of the Hotel Baltimore will also evoke a thoughtful response to a problem that haunts many large cities. In the quest to tear down the past, what will take its place and where will those inhabitants of the past find their future?

Source: Sheri E. Metzger, for Drama for Students, Gale, 2000.

SOURCES

Barnett, Gene. “Recreating the Magic: An Interview with Lanford Wilson,” in Ball State University Forum, Vol. 25, No. 2, Spring, 1984, pp. 57-74.

Bryer, Jackson R. “Lanford Wilson,” in The Playwright’s Art: Conversations With Contemporary American Dramatists, Rutgers University Press, 1995, pp. 277-96.

diGaetani, John L. A Search for a Postmodern Theatre: Interviews With Contemporary Playwrights, Greenwood Press, 1991, pp. 285-293.

Dreher, Ann Crawford. “Lanford Wilson,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 7: Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, edited by John MacNichols, 1981, pp. 350-68.

Gottfried, Martin. A review, in Women’s Wear Daily, March 23, 1973.

Jacobi, Martin J. “The Comic Vision of Lanford Wilson,” in Studies in the Literary Imagination, Vol. 21, no. 2, 1988, pp. 119-34.

Kroll, Jack. A review in Newsweek, February 26, 1973.

Probst, Leonard. A television review on NBC, March 22,1973.

Savran, David. “Lanford Wilson,” in In Their Own Words: Contemporary American Playwrights, Theatre Communications Group, 1988, pp. 306-20.

Schvey, Henry I. “Images of the Past in the Plays of Lanford Wilson,” in Essays on Contemporary American Drama, edited by Hedwig Bock and Albert Wertheim, Hueber, 1981, pp. 225-40.

Watt, Douglas. A review, in the DailyNews, March 23,1973.

Watts, Richard. A review, in the New York Post, March 23, 1973.

Williams, Philip Middleton. A Comfortable House: Lanford Wilson, Marshall W. Mason and the Circle Repertory Theatre, McFarland & Company, 1993.