Zoot Suit

In the final scene of "Zoot Suit," the Luis Valdez play about the 1942 Sleepy Lagoon murder trial in Los Angeles, the character Smiley directs the following line to fellow Mexican American Hank Reyna after the unfairly accused men are released from prison: "Let's face it, Hank. There's no life for us in this city, I'm taking my family and I'm moving to Arizona." In Mexico City, where "Zoot Suit" is playing, audiences have erupted in applause and laughter in response to the line in light of the controversial illegal immigration law recently enacted in Arizona.

In the final scene of "Zoot Suit," the Luis Valdez play about the 1942 Sleepy Lagoon murder trial in Los Angeles, the character Smiley directs the following line to fellow Mexican American Hank Reyna after the unfairly accused men are released from prison: "Let's face it, Hank. There's no life for us in this city, I'm taking my family and I'm moving to Arizona." In Mexico City, where "Zoot Suit" is playing, audiences have erupted in applause and laughter in response to the line in light of the controversial illegal immigration law recently enacted in Arizona.

LAST YEAR, warfare broke out between African Americans and Latinos at Jefferson High School. Earlier this month, black-brown strife led to a gang shooting in Venice. And the ongoing controversy about immigration has only made things worse. Blacks and Latinos in Los Angeles increasingly see themselves as rivals competing for everything from jobs and control of neighborhoods to political power. But it hasn't always been this way, nor does it always have to be. A little-known chapter of L.A.

Alice McGrath, a lifelong activist who first gained fame as a champion of the wrongly convicted young Mexican Americans in the 1942 Sleepy Lagoon trial, has died. She was 92. McGrath died Friday at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura of an infection resulting from a chronic illness, said her daughter, Laura D'Auri. McGrath was taken to the hospital on Thanksgiving. McGrath's role in the infamous trial was celebrated in Luis Valdez's play "Zoot Suit," which debuted at the Mark Taper Forum in 1978 and was made into a movie in 1981.

The principal of a suburban high school who had blocked the showing of "Zoot Suit" a month ago relented and was prepared Tuesday night to show the movie on campus. There was only one problem: Not a single student showed up to see it. Terrie Pennock, principal of Santana High School in Santee, said she still believes the movie does not fit the school's 11th-grade American literature curriculum.

Social justice crusader Alice McGrath will travel to San Diego on Thursday, where she will be feted at a revival of Luis Valdez's famed Chicano-themed play "Zoot Suit" at the San Diego Repertory Theatre. As the young Alice Bloomfield more than 50 years ago, McGrath organized the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee, which obtained a reversal of the murder convictions of 12 young Latino men during a time of race riots against Latinos.

Those turbulent June days of 1943 became known as the "zoot suit riots," but perhaps they should be called the "servicemen's rampage." For 10 days, uniformed sailors, soldiers and Marines took to the streets of Los Angeles, beating up and disrobing Mexican Americans wearing zoot suits. Exactly what triggered the vigilante action was never clear. Some trace it to earlier assaults on military personnel, allegedly carried out by Mexican American gang members who called themselves pachucos.

Big and beautiful, Luis Valdez's landmark Mexican American play "Zoot Suit" unfolded proudly Friday against a backdrop of history and nostalgic myth in a lively production filled with brassy music and swagger on the Lyceum Stage.

"From the time I was 6 years old," playwright and director Luis Valdez told a Cal State Fullerton audience Wednesday night, "I found myself asking, 'Who am I?' " Valdez--founder of El Teatro Campesino, creator of the stage hit "Zoot Suit" and writer and director of the film of the same name, plus "La Bamba" and "The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez"--mused on the topic of identity, personal and cultural, as the university's Distinguished Hispanic Lecturer for 1989. As an artist, Valdez said, he seeks to define "what it means to be an American."

The recent resurgence in swing music has been mainly a club-bound phenomenon, but one ensemble has made the leap from the bandstand to the Billboard charts with the unlikeliest of songs--a breezy account of the infamous Zoot Suit Riots, the 1943 episode in which sharply dressed young Mexican Americans were assaulted by civilians and soldiers on leave in the streets of downtown Los Angeles. Nearly a year after its initial release, Eugene, Ore.'

Re "Zoot suits against the world," Opinion, June 19 I was 12 during the zoot-suit riots. I remember hiding in my room clutching a baseball bat as truckloads of sailors led by a police car came through the Ramona Gardens housing projects where we lived. No Mexican American youths were safe regardless of how they were dressed. The fact that many Mexican American servicemen fought courageously in the war and were awarded a disproportionate number of Medals of Honor may be the ultimate irony of the whole episode.

LAST YEAR, warfare broke out between African Americans and Latinos at Jefferson High School. Earlier this month, black-brown strife led to a gang shooting in Venice. And the ongoing controversy about immigration has only made things worse. Blacks and Latinos in Los Angeles increasingly see themselves as rivals competing for everything from jobs and control of neighborhoods to political power. But it hasn't always been this way, nor does it always have to be. A little-known chapter of L.A.

After a three-month trial, an all-white jury convicted a dozen young Mexican American men of killing Jose Diaz, 22, at an Eastside swimming hole that became known as Sleepy Lagoon. In the months that followed, tension between uniformed servicemen and young Mexican American men wearing baggy outfits called zoot suits gave rise to the notorious Zoot Suit Riots. The convictions were overturned on appeal in October 1944.

Playwrights and pop singers -- from Luis Valdez ("Zoot Suit") to the Cherry Poppin' Daddies ("Zoot Suit Riot") -- have elevated the 1942 slaying known as the Sleepy Lagoon murder and the so-called Zoot Suit Riot of 1943 to mythic status in the popular culture.

All year long, hundreds of people pass through El Pachuco's Deco-style doors, looking for an offbeat Halloween costume or a hipster's answer to black-tie affairs. They are likely to find what they're looking for in the rows of zoot suits -- long coats with impossibly wide shoulders in vibrant flashes of color: purple, red, orange and more. The matching pants start just below the chest and balloon around the legs before pegging shut at the ankles.

Old pachucos never die. They just move to Palm Springs and keep the memories alive. Bandleader Don Tosti, the man who helped spark a Mexican American musical craze with his 1948 tune "Pachuco Boogie," lives in a tidy home off Palm Canyon Drive with his pet Chihuahua, named Cacahuate (Peanut). Widowed for many years, the musician dotes on the dog, which he keeps in a comfy baby pen surrounded by stuffed animals.

A revival of "Zoot Suit" is in the works. The 1978 production of Luis Valdez's piece about cultural conflict in World War II-era Los Angeles is one of the seminal reference points of Latino-American theater history--and recent Los Angeles theater history. "For the first time, CTG/Mark Taper Forum turns its beam on its own city," began Dan Sullivan's Times review of that initial production.

Director Luis Valdez watched his actors intently Wednesday night from a seat overlooking a small, curved stage at the Skirball Cultural Center in Brentwood. The stocky Chicano playwright sat behind a recording console as his 16-member troupe worked through the opening night of a novel new production of "Zoot Suit," the play that put Chicano theater on the map 23 years ago and made its creator famous. Valdez was dressed in black jeans and T-shirt.

Leslee Komaiko's article about a local hat store ("The Interfaith Appeal of a Fine Hat," Metropolis, April 7) brought back a sweet, nostalgic memory of the year 1945. Returning home to Brooklyn after serving 28 months in China, Burma and India, my new husband excitedly donned his old zoot suit and, with great anticipation, made a mad dash to Ruby's to purchase the perfect fedora. A zoot suit, a new bride, a black overcoat, gray suede gloves and a custom-made Ruby's hat. It was as good as it got!

"Zoot Suit Riots," a new PBS "American Experience," is the first major documentary about the 1943 riots that took place in Los Angeles, pitting young Mexican American men--then known for wearing baggy-pant zoot suits--against members of the armed forces and civilians who considered the youths not only unpatriotic, but also enemies of the country. Tensions ran high in wartime Los Angeles.