In ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968), that most devilishly delightful film, Rosemary (Mia Farrow) experiences a dream which is possibly no dream at all but is really happening and which quickly turns into a nightmare. It’s 4 October 1965 and earlier that evening Rosemary had eaten a piece of chocolate mousse (courtesy of her bewitching neighbor Minnie) that had a rather “chalky” taste. She dreams that she’s one of several attractive women aboard a yacht whose captain eerily yet casually resembles John F. Kennedy; the seas are calm but also on the verge of becoming stormy.
The dream switches to a brightly-lit Sistine Chapel that suddenly grows dark and finds herself tied to a bed and raped by something inhuman. A cleric, who bears a consolingly yet inapposite resemblance to Pope Paul VI, emerges from the darkness and offers her absolution; the Pope had arrived that day in New York City, Rosemary’s hometown, and while her dream/nightmare played out, Paul VI was celebrating Mass at Yankee Stadium…and Rosemary was being impregnated with the Baby Satan.
Because Satanists conduct their rites in direct opposition to Christianity (the black mass, the inverted cross, etc.), it follows that the birth date of Satan’s birth would occur on the date in direct opposition to Christ’s traditional birth date of December 25: June 25. Ira Levin worked various events of the day into the novel, compiled from newspapers dating from roughly June 1965 to June 1966, to lend the story a heightened credibility. The transit strike, the election of Mayor Lindsay, etc.,…and that if Rosemary were to give birth on June 25, she would’ve conceived on October 4: the date of the Pope’s visit. Levin, at this point, believed that the book was “Meant to Be.” While the novel published in 1967 wasn’t a huge success, it became a best-seller when it formed the basis for Roman Polanski’s blockbuster film.
Of course, the Pope couldn’t have had the slightest notion in Heaven, Hell or Earth that his visit would help inspire a work such as ROSEMARY’S BABY. It was a cool, sunny day along Queens Boulevard as he rode by in his bubble-topped limousine. President Kennedy had been dead for nearly two years, the phenomenal Beatles were already opening the way for the phenomenal Sixties, and only a handful were aware of the Gulf of Tonkin that had occurred the year before and fewer who foresaw its catastrophic results.
I, along with my fifth-grade contemporaries from Our Lady of Guadalupe, watched in respectful awe and devotion as His Holiness gradually sped by, a mere 12 feet away. Like Rosemary and Paul VI, we hadn’t the slightest notion that this peaceful yet volatile moment in time would soon become an era of war, riots, revolution and eventual disillusionment: adrift on a hopeful but imminently turbulent sea where “sympathy for the devil” would soon become understood if not accepted, down to the present day. If anything, that was a long time ago and, as I recall, it was good to be home again and watching “Lost In Space” where being lost was entertaining.
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