Archives for April 2017

“The trouble is that if an artist knows he has genius, he’s done for. The only salvation is to work like a labourer, and not have delusions of grandeur.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, quoted in Raymond Durgnat, Jean Renoir

From 2007:

One thing that most teenagers neither know nor expect to see in movies is death, the ultimate reality of life. I’m not talking about the ersatz mass murders that are the subject matter of your average Hollywood shoot-’em-up, but the real wrong thing itself, the knowledge of which is not normally accessible to young people, least of all by going to the local multiplex. Truth sometimes finds its way into the movies–accidents happen–but when it comes to death, Hollywood is incapable of honesty, and the bigger the budget, the balder the lies. Movie stars live forever or die nobly, uttering memorable last words and expiring with a smile; you never see the catheter, or smell the pus….

Read the whole thing here.

“Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.”

Margot Fonteyn, Autobiography‎

Charles Lane is interviewed on Late Night With David Letterman. He played character roles in more than 250 films, including Ball of Fire, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, It’s a Wonderful Life, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Nothing Sacred, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, as well as on such TV series as The Beverly Hillbillies, Bewitched, Dennis the Menace, I Love Lucy, and Petticoat Junction. This episode, which is thought to be the only surviving TV interview with Lane, was originally telecast on July 15, 1982, when he was seventy-seven years old. He gave his last performance in 2006 and died the following year at the age of 102:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“The Art Snob can be recognized in the home by the quick look he gives the pictures on your walls, quick but penetrating, as though he were undressing them. This is followed either by complete and pained silence or a comment such as ‘That’s really a very pleasant little water color you have there.’”

Russell Lynes, Snobs: A Guidebook to Your Friends, Your Enemies, Your Colleagues and Yourself

In today’s Wall Street Journal I report on the new Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly! Here’s an excerpt.

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Bette Midler is playing in “Hello, Dolly!” on Broadway. As far as most people are concerned, this review could end right here. The box office at the Shubert Theatre has been printing money by the carload ever since previews for the show started in March, and no matter what I or anybody else has to say, it will continue to do so as long as Ms. Midler doesn’t slip and fracture a tibia. She is what she is, “Hello, Dolly!” is what it is, and putting the two together is as close as show business gets to a no-brainer: “Dolly” won’t work without a superstar in the title role and Patti LuPone is otherwise occupied, so casting Ms. Midler as Dolly Gallagher Levi, the matchmaker with a big heart and an empty purse who longs for a rich husband to ease her life, makes perfect sense. That’s the theory, anyway, and judging by the show-stopping shrieks of joy that greeted Ms. Midler when she made her first entrance on Wednesday night, her fans are going to love this revival….

Perhaps critics ought not to dash cold water on such displays of collective affection, but the producers of “Hello, Dolly!” are charging $169 for an orchestra seat, for which reason it seems to me that I have an obligation to report honestly on what I saw and heard. So here goes: Ms. Midler’s singing voice is in a desperate, sometimes shocking state of disrepair. If you remember what Ethel Merman sounded like in her last years, you’ll know exactly how she sounded in “Before the Parade Passes By.” I’m not sure whether she’s suffering from an acute case of laryngitis (her speaking voice was hoarse as well) or the inescapable effects of age (she is 71). Whatever the reason, her singing suggested that she’d have trouble making it through the curtain calls, much less the run of a show as demanding as “Dolly.” As for the rest of the performance, Ms. Midler doesn’t even bother to act: She simply comes on stage and plays her familiar self…

Jerry Zaks and Warren Carlyle, the director and choreographer, have staged this revival in a cartoonish manner. That’s appropriate in a way, since “Hello, Dolly!” is a cartoon version of Thornton Wilder’s “The Matchmaker,” the enduringly winning 1955 farce from which it was adapted by Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart in 1964. Nevertheless, it’s possible to perform “Dolly” with the same unforced sweetness and underlying emotional seriousness that make “The Matchmaker” so satisfying a romantic comedy, and that’s what’s wrong with Mr. Zaks’ staging: It’s totally unfelt. Every supporting performance is a grotesque caricature…

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Read the whole thing here.

Carol Channing sings “Before the Parade Passes By” on the 1971 Tony Awards telecast:

“A Conversation with Igor Stravinsky,” an episode of Wisdom originally telecast by NBC on November 17, 1957. Robert Craft, Stravinsky’s assistant and amanuensis, is also seen in the program. The piece played by the two men at the beginning of the film is the conclusion of the “Pas de quatre” from Stravinsky’s Agon:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“I had another dream the other day about music critics. They were small and rodent-like with padlocked ears, as if they had stepped out of a painting by Goya.”

Igor Stravinsky (interviewed in the Evening Standard, October 29, 1969)