I Was a Teenage Child-Killer - ‘Thrill Me’
Thrill Me - Presented by Squabbalogic and the 2010 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras at The Seymour Centre, Downstairs.
Stephen Dolginoff’s Thrill Me sets out to tell a new version of the 1934 murder of Bobby Franks by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. The story has been represented directly in Meyer Levin’s film Compulsion, elliptically in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope and Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, and autobiographically in Nathan Leopold’s own words. Leopold lived long enough to repent. Loeb might have come to the same sort of mature contrition and meditative conformity but before time could weigh on his conscience he was stabbed to death in prison. Leopold and Loeb have taken their place as exemplary figures in the tradition of deluded would-be-übermenschen. For all their privileges they are a particularly tawdry pair. When Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov axed a pawnbroker, it was with the firm intention of doing boundless good with the fortune he would build out of that first stolen handful. Leopold and Loeb simply wanted to know what a person thinks about after they’ve killed someone. The means to that important discovery would have no more claim on them than a beetle has on the naturalist who pins it to a board.
Leopold and Loeb were sons of wealthy industrialists. They grew up in an elite enclave and were both academically precocious. Nathan and Richard met at the University of Chicago where, in their early teens, they were each undertaking undergraduate study. The socially awkward Leopold saw Loeb as a paragon of refinement and grace. Having been advanced through the education system, they were isolated from their peers by their age and from their age-group by their intellect. The young prodigies took their isolation as the confirmation of their superiority. Eventually their friendship became sexual, with Loeb consenting to Leopold’s desire on the understanding that Leopold would reciprocate by joining him in criminal acts. These criminal trade-offs escalated in severity until, with separation imminent (Leopold was to travel to Europe before moving to Harvard), the young men decided to seal their friendship by committing the perfect crime. Leopold had become infatuated with Nietzsche’s notion of the superman and with the idea that special beings, people like himself and Richard Loeb, were not bound by ordinary moral constraints. The pair set about planning and committing a crime that would be unsolvable. For one thing, there would be no motive beyond the act itself, it would be committed in cold-blood. Thanks to their brilliant planning, there would be no evidence to link them to the body and their disinterested crime would offer no contextualising motive to guide investigators.
Dolginoff had been looking to create a theatre piece about a dangerous and unusual relationship. When he came across the story of how two young men from Chicago’s monied elite planned and carried out the kidnapping and murder of a 14 year old child. Thrill Me began to crystallise. Stephen Dolginoff wanted to focus on Leopold and Loeb’s relationship rather than the crime because he felt people would be able to see a cautionary tale in their morally isolating intimacy. The dramatis personae of Dolginoff’s production are simply Nathan and Richard, a subtle disparagement of the true-crime charge in ‘Leopold & Loeb’. It was that very charge, as Dolginoff acknowledges, that drew him to their story. Familiarity breeds familiarity - Dolginoff includes excerpts from Leopold’s parole hearing and drew on Leopold’s book about the crime and its aftermath.
Thrill Me played at The Seymour Centre, Downstairs during the 2010 Mardi Gras Arts Festival. Jay James-Moody directed Blake Erickson as Richard Loeb and Benjamin Giraud as Nathan Leopold. Mark Chamberlain provided musical direction and keyboard accompaniment.
Timothy McCarron. lately of Oatley, attended proceedings and answered questions about the production.
Thrill Me is a musical, but in what style?
Quite varied, even though it’s a piano and voice, that’s all, it’s quite a broad range. There was variety and it was clever in that it was simple.
Dramatic, haunting, spooky?
Atmospheric, it set the mood, but I remember thinking it was good.
Was it meant to amplify the emotional directives given by the content – Loeb luring the child to the car for instance?
It added to the narrative.
So it was unsettling rather than a comfort?
Yeah, I felt uncomfortable, that part may have been unaccompanied, just Loeb singing to the child – the musical genre was quite an interesting way to approach the material, it’s beautiful in a way but about an ugly scenario. You’re sitting there thinking about this, it’s sad, and having someone singing about luring someone and murdering them. It’s challenging. It made me think that musicals have a power, unlike Wedekind’s Spring Awakening [currently at STC’s Wharf 1] where the music was there to jazz it up, this seemed to be, like the lighting and the design, it helped the story along, it wasn’t singing for singing’s sake.
It didn’t make murder palatable?
Yeah, you know, the music was good, a pleasure, but it brought up the creepy side of it. It was weird singing.
Did you think Leopold and Loeb were monsters?
Psychopaths, I don’t know if ‘monsters’ is quite the word. But they were pretty creepy, and pretty awful, ultimately.
Both of them?
Yes, but in different ways, like in their own way they were both awful.
Were they presented as wrapped up in each other with no awareness of the rest of the world?
Probably that to an extent, but I think Leopold… Leopold was wrapped up in Loeb, it seemed to be a one-sided relationship and he was driven by that, whereas Loeb didn’t respond to Leopold, he played hard to get, was very stand-offish, not that, but he didn’t reciprocate. Well he did reciprocate, but he didn’t seem to like it very much. He was more interested in the idea of the superman – he was very narcissistic.
Thinking of Hindley and Brady, with Myra a kind of passive enabler – was it like that?
I think so, but it’s a bit hard to tell, because in the end Leopold, the way the story goes, it seems that he’s playing that passive role in order to take charge of the situation, to take charge of Loeb in a way. Like you had the sense through the story that Loeb was in charge, he was the alpha male of the two, but at the end there’s this twist, I can’t remember the exact words, but he sort of seems to say that he left his glasses on purpose to capture Loeb so they could be together in prison.
They used transcripts in the show?
You could hear the voice from the parole hearing, from when he got parole.
And he mentioned the bit about the glasses?
No, I don’t think so, it’s hard to remember but I’m pretty sure he admitted it to Loeb in the prison.
An embroidery from the writers?
Yes, to give it a bit of narrative. Leopold wrote a book, he might have spoken about it in his book. I think it’s feasible that it was an improvisation.
Loeb was killed in prison.
In the shower, stabbed, I’m pretty sure that was mentioned in the play but only in passing.
Supposedly by someone he made a pass at, though child-killers aren’t well-loved.
I can’t remember how he disappeared, but he sort of goes away. I think you understand what happened but … it’s more focused on Leopold, from his parole hearing. Coming out, he seems a bit shocked.
How does Thrill Me structure the story?
It starts at the parole hearing, they walk in, I think they kind of set up a bit of a court room then flashed to the lead up to the events, then the murder, then prison and towards the end he’s back at the parole hearing. Leopold kind of drives the story, he’s not a narrator, but Loeb is just like an actor on stage, Leopold is the central consciousness, he’s the lens. I can’t remember if he addresses the audience but he is the one explaining things.
How was the murder presented?
As murder. There was a scene where Loeb is singing to the child ‘come and look at my car’, looking off the stage. You never see the boy, but that struck me as the lead to it, I don’t have any memory of the actual killing, there was no kind of re-enactment or going through the motions. They just highlighted the paraphernalia, the stuffing of the body. You see them talk on the phone afterwards getting quite nervous about how the body has been found so quickly. There was a lot of suggestion, it was that method, with a bit of tension, the way he was singing, it was kind of in a tender way but you know the kid was about to meet a horrible death. And then they’re pouring acid on the body, and Leopold missed a bit, the child had a birthmark on his skin that they didn’t pour acid over.
The perfect crime, the bastardisation of Nietzsche, did they go into that before the murder?
Yeah, you got a sense of like, ‘we are’, Loeb was saying, ‘we are supermen’ and strutting around and explaining the idea to Leopold. From memory Leopold was the one that was led on and just seemed to be infatuated with Loeb.
It was Leopold though that introduced Loeb to the idea of the superman, the passive enabler again. What about the fact that they were filthy rich?
One was richer than the other, well actually that might not be true. Leopold was loved by his father, his father was the one who wanted him to get the glasses that were his downfall, they were the latest fashion and his father wanted him to have that, The special hinges – his father wanted him to have the best and the latest. It was a throw away line really – whereas Loeb said that his father wouldn’t necessarily visit him in prison. You got the sense that Leopold had support whereas Loeb had to fight more to get money and things from his parents. Perhaps Loeb didn’t have the bottomless funds, he seemed more stressed about money.
And more ruthless?
Yes, Leopold didn’t seem that resourceful.
Any sense that killing a child was an absurd testing ground for supermen?
It seemed to me that it was just a license to do whatever you wanted, it was like he went to university, and he’s 14, and he hears about this cool idea and thinks it’s the answer to all his problems. You know, nobody likes me but it’s because they know I’m better than they are, they’re inferior beings. Maybe then there’s the idea of living out that theory – so I’m a superman, well let’s test this out, see how high I can fly … In the story there’s a bit towards the beginning where Loeb gives a bit of a discourse on the theory, but it was something Leopold kind of fed to him, I guess to puff him up, make him bold.
So ‘why’ was one of the big questions Thrill Me asked, did they get any answers?
I think if the actors had a bit more, if you had really talented actors, you might have got a more subtle… they might have been more likeable. As it was, you might not have asked why because you’d think: these are just dysfunctional people. But if you had actors that could inject a bit of appeal, there might have been more chance of leading you to think ‘why?’ It might have been that bit more three-dimensional with more confident actors. In the end you do ask ‘why?’ because it seems so senseless, like it was so ego driven, it wasn’t really … like they just killed some random kid because of some book. It wasn’t … like they didn’t do it for money. I think they wanted the ransom, probably so they could party on, but it didn’t seem like the real motive. They just wanted to kill someone. I think you do come away thinking ‘why did it come to that point?’ and ‘why did they … why would anyone want to do that?’ I think one of the victims was going to be Loeb’s brother, then they thought that was too hard, there was some reason they didn’t do it … I think it was also something about the relationship with the father, jealousy of the brother or something like that. Then they thought that’s too … it wouldn’t necessarily work.
They were going to kill family members?
Yes, they thought about killing their fathers actually, but it would have made the whole ransom scenario absurdly complex. And with his brother, or anyone linked to the family, it would have been the same. And then they were going to kill a young man who had been threatening to expose their relationship, but the problem with that was he was too big. They didn’t think they could overpower him. I mean it’s a little ironic isn’t it, that two supermen are forced to prey on a child because a child is the only victim they were confident of subduing. So much for their ingenuity.
The title Thrill Me emphasises the thrill-killing aspect. The movie Funny Games is a notable example in that line, and one which has a lot of common ground with the Leopold and Loeb story. It follows two privileged adolescents who terrorise and kill a family – in that thrill-killing scenario, the enjoyment comes from the power and the violence. But Leopold and Loeb don’t have that do they, they want to prove they’re supermen, the murder looks like a test they have to get past, an initiation?
I think that comes back to that idea of being the supermen, that you can do anything, kill someone, it’s like making a piece of toast, but it does give you cachet, or power over life and death.
A sense of power, having done it. Did you get that sense, that was what they were after, or did they just want to kill someone and needed abstract justifications to prime themselves to do it?
I think it comes back to the superman thing, I think the killing was almost incidental. Someone told me that in the court, or when the police were getting statements from the pair, both of them recounted how Leopold - who was in the backseat of the car hitting Bobby Franks in the head with a chisel – was crying out to Loeb that murder was nothing like what he expected. ‘This is horrible’, he was saying.
Loeb was the main spokesman of the superman theory (though it was Leopold who fed the idea to him in the first place), was he a vicious character or just cold?
I think it was the coldness, because he didn’t seem to… like with Leopold in the sex scenes, he didn’t seem that interested. He was there in action, but he didn’t seem that interested. Just cold, a psychopath –not really into human relationships, just going through the motions.
Sex scenes?
Yeah, but implied and not really, the kissing was a bit lame. No spark, but that shouldn’t matter should it.
This production is quite forward about telling this story with the homosexual relationship openly acknowledged. That’s a different way to tell the story, what did that add?
I think it was useful because it gave you a sense of Leopold being in the thrall of Loeb. Which was maybe not the central reason why it happened, but it’s the catalyst, that kind of obsession that makes people do things they might not ordinarily do, simply because they’re obsessed. But he kind of appeared to go along with it, so he could be closer to the guy, because he was infatuated with the guy. But then that twist at the end, like it was all part of his plan. When it’s all said and done he claims it was all an act to get where he wanted to be, so it seems that he’s very underhandedly manipulated the situation. I think focusing on the relationship is interesting because at the time it would have perhaps all been conveyed in an unsaid way. In the newspaper they might have called them ‘close friends’. I think it’s a valid thing, bringing that homosexual relationship into it.
The details of their relationship were all out on the table during the trial though, in fact the judge ordered all ladies out of the courtroom during evidence relating to the particulars of the pair’s sex life. The press stayed of course, but as you say, there would have been limits to what they could report.
The same goes for the populist retellings of the story, Compulsion in particular, which was clearly produced with a mass audience in mind. Thrill Me looks back to what might have occurred but with a modern sensibility. I think it works as a narrative device, I don’t think it’s really important whether they’re together or not, but it helps tell the story.
It does allow that emphasis on the intensity of an intimate kind of unit though. Again, Myra Hindley and Ian Brady were not just friends who shared an interest, they became a co-dependent pair stoking the same obsession.
The intense closeness of some sort - the fact that there were just the two actors added to that.
And they’re courting one another in a way.
A kind of sick love story.
Like with Leopold’s suggestion that he left the glasses so they could be bound in jail – and the murder also binds them, which is a motivating force, once they’ve done that together.
You can’t take that away – and the sense of being imprisoned in society and law, and being actually imprisoned, these all tie in together. I think they spoke, at some point, about their original plan. They were going to strangle their victim with a piece of rope. They would hold one end each and pull at the same time so that they would be equally implicated.
With Leopold’s confession about his glasses, that does turn the story into a sort of tragic romance and also allows him to become the kind of moral conscience of the pair.
He’s using the prospect of punishment for his own ends, but he is accepting the idea that what they’ve done warrants punishment as well. I think he says something like ‘I’m broken’ – it’s almost an acknowledgement, like, you know he seems a bit moral for asking that question. But when I watched it I thought is this about being gay? Does he think that means he’s broken? On reflection though, it’s that bigger question - if I do something wrong it means I go down this road to moral perdition. He doesn’t want to just be different or other from everybody else, he wants to be better. So he still has that consciousness of what morality is and the constraints it asks of normal people.
Which is quite opposite to the approach of the superman - a superman shouldn’t care. Leopold, of course, has normal moral feelings and feels broken because he’s betrayed those feelings. Having Leopold like this softens the pair of them, they’re not just psychopathic killers – they’ve got a good-murderer / bad murderer routine going – but I worry about the fact that this distracts from the fact that they were not very good at being bad.
Yes, that’s that arrogance though. You know, just sort of young, you can see two young rich uni students go down this road, I mean it has happened, and will no doubt happen again, it’s how Anu Singh started out I think - they’re just so arrogant and they only think in one dimension.
And Leopold’s glasses, three pairs like that in Chicago, the mark of his privilege, and their lack of common smarts. They’re not as clever as they think, by a long shot.
They’re wrapped up in this kind of novelty idea of being murderers. Leopold buys the murder kit, the crowbar, makes a catalogue of things you need to kill someone. Then the bottle of acid isn’t really big enough, like a vial you’d have in a medicine cabinet, then they use their own names for the rent-a-car, and the body is found well before they’d planned.
So they start with a bit of a crime novel shopping list and end up botching the job – again they shadow Raskolnikov at every step.
Yeah, just not thinking it through, like just ‘ooh, I need acid’, not realising you need a litre or more, they’re just young.
You are more generous than me.