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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

FILM

June 27, 2008 by Terry Teachout

The Trouble With Harry. Most of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies are funny–that’s part of what makes them so jolting–but this one is a not-so-straight black comedy about a group of people in a small Vermont town who stumble across a corpse in the woods and can’t decide what to do with it. Shirley MacLaine made her screen debut in this 1955 film, and the rest of the ensemble cast includes such familiar faces as John Forsythe, Edmund Gwenn, Mildred Natwick, and Jerry Mathers–yes, that Jerry Mathers. Eisenhower-era audiences didn’t buy the premise of John Michael Hayes’ screenplay, and even now The Trouble with Harry is probably the least well known of Hitchcock’s middle-period major-studio pictures. Might its fey, off-center humor make it ripe for revival today? See for yourself, and be sure to note Bernard Herrmann’s droll score (his first for Hitchcock) and the gorgeously autumnal cinematography of Robert Burks (TT).

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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