The Legacy of Sacco & Vanzetti

A. An overview of the literature

The Sacco-Vanzetti case arouses passions like no other murder case and trial in American history. Very few books treat the case dispassionately. Most are intense arguments about the guilt or innocence of the two Italian immigrants.

So many intellectuals, jurists, and artists were drawn to the events of 1920 to 1927, that important chapters in the biographies, memoirs, and diaries of such individuals as Heywood Broun, Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Felix Frankfurter, Oliver Wendell Holmes, H.L. Mencken, and Katherine Anne Porter (to name but a few) are significant sources for understanding certain aspects of the case, the protests against the verdict and the execution, and the aftermath.

Even more so than the legendary Lizzie Borden, the Sacco-Vanzetti case has inspired poems, plays, and novels of unprecedented volume. Joughin and Morgan have analyzed the literature that was created during and after the trial. They have found a total of 144 poems, of which twelve they consider to be "significant American verse." Six plays have been written that are based in part or entirely on Sacco and Vanzetti, the most famous of which is the prize-winning verse play Winterset, by Maxwell Anderson. Two of these plays, Winterset and The Male Animal, by James Thurber and Elliott Nugent, have had movie versions. The shabbiest version is a musical remake of the Thurber-Nugent play, retitled "She's Working Her Way Through College," starring Ronald Reagan as the heroic professor whose job is threatened not only when he proposes to read some of Vanzetti's letters in one of his classes, but when it is discovered that one of his students (horror of horrors) is working part-time as a burlesque stripper.

Joughin and Morgan list nine novels that are based heavily on Sacco-Vanzetti material. Most of these novelists are admired and accomplished writers, and include Upton Sinclair, H.G. Wells, John Dos Passos, and James T. Farrell. The novel with the most accurate presentation of the case, and the one that reaches a very high level of literary artistry, is the neglected work of Upton Sinclair, Boston. Sinclair began the novel just after the executions, and it was published in 1928. Six years later, Sinclair, who could best be described as a "pragmatic utopian socialist," ran and was defeated for the governorship of California. Whatever one's political philosophy, Boston is an impressive novel.

The most comprehensive movie is "Sacco and Vanzetti," directed by Giuliano Montaldo and released in 1971. It is available on video. Court TV will present a program on the case in late June, 1998, in its famous trial series.

Most of all, the enduring literature is very likely to be the letters of Sacco and Vanzetti, particularly some of the letters written by Vanzetti. Letters by both men often achieve an eloquence that is quite exceptional. They are all the more interesting because the two men actually learned to write in English during their years in prison.

B. An evaluation of the principal books

Felix Frankfurter

A comprehensive list of the books about Sacco and Vanzetti can be found in the Bibliography section that follows. At this point, a few of the influential books those available in most libraries and bookstores (both those carrying used books and new) are summarized and evaluated. Unlike other famous cases, these books do not always build a case for guilt or innocence; some argue for "a fair trial" for the accused.

A credibility score of one to ten has been assigned to each book and its theory.

1) Frankfurter, Felix. 1927 (reprinted, 1962). The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti. Grossett's Universal Library, Little, Brown.

Frankfurter, at the time he wrote this book, was a respected Harvard law school professor. Originally, much of this book appeared in the March, 1927, issue of Atlantic Monthly.

The manuscript had been completed in February. Hence, both the article and the slightly expanded book were published about a month before the sentence of death was handed down by Judge Thayer, and six months before the execution. Clearly, Frankfurter's intention was to produce a brief for a new trial.

As one would expect from a legal authority who would become a respected member of the United States Supreme Court, the book is dispassionate, carefully argued, and filled with supporting evidence. Frankfurter, as it has been mentioned, is arguing for a new trial, and demonstrates convincingly Judge Thayer's prejudice against the defendants, and the likelihood that the Morelli gang were the actual criminals of the South Braintree murders.

The appendices in this small book are interesting. The first is the brief of Sacco and Vanzetti's defense lawyers, Thompson and Ehrmann, submitted during the appeal period between sentencing (April, 1927) and execution (August, 1927). The brief presents, side by side, a comparison of the evidence against Sacco and Vanzetti and the evidence against the Morelli gang. It is quite impressive.

The second appendix is the editorial in the October 26, 1926, Boston Herald, calling for a new trial, reversing its earlier condemnation of Sacco and Vanzetti. It is so well argued that one suspects that Frankfurter had a hand in its writing.

As an argument for a new trial, this is a very effective work. It is not written in "legalese," and sweeps the reader along. Unfortunately, the combination of Judge Thayer, Governor Fuller, and the Lowell Committee made any attempt at securing a new trial futile. Nonetheless, this book stimulated the intellectuals of the day to increase their protests of the judicial treatment of Sacco and Vanzetti.

Credibility Score: 10