We watched “Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst” last night and I remembered that I kept this page from People magazine from that time period. The movie was pretty lame considering the sensational story and dramatic characters. It would make a great opera.
Patty’s narcotic like voice in the audio tapes that she sent home and to the country were like beautiful art pieces. I remember how exciting it was each time a new one was released. There was a lot of speculation that she was drugged but Patty’s voice sounded the same in her press conference when she was released.
Patty’s transformation from Kidnap victim in a closet to the Bonnie and Clyde style bank robber, Tania, was as riveting as watching OJ Smpson get away with murder. “Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people”, the Symbionese Liberation Army and their seven headed serpent logo, the whole thing was like performance art. Patty gets her father to empty his bank account and feed the poor. Governor Ronald Reagan predicts no one will accept the food and then riots break out in the mad rush to grab the goods.
And back to the opera. Steven Weed, Patty’s boyfriend who was with her when she was kidnapped, pines for Patty and then gets dumped on the national stage as Patty took up with the revolutionaries. Which one of them was she sleeping with?
This is the way the caption of the People magazine article read. “These pictures show a few of the ways that Patty Hearst might try to avoid recognition. The face directly below, prepared with Identi-Kit composites used in police work by an Identi-Kit expert, is structurally similar to Patty’s own smiling face in the above photograph. Though the basic facial features remain the same, a different hair style (even a man’s), wigs, glasses or a paste-on mustache or Van Dyke beard could radically change Patty’s appearance. What she cannot easily disguise, however, are her height (5’3″), her weight (110 lbs.), or, as all the pictures illustrate, the small mole near her chin.”
2 Comments
Is the middle one Sara Palin?
I LOVED Patty Hearst (what is it about women cons?). I sent her a postcard in prison which included the now embarrassing line, “When I was a Dreamer and you were a Dream”. She never wrote back. (UNLIKE Pamela Smart!)
paolo.