Archives for 2017

Leopold Stokowski rehearses the American Symphony Orchestra for a performance of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. This performance was originally telecast in 1968:

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

“Be interested in your subject, not in yourself. Listen carefully, with your own ears; don’t turn over the job to a tape recorder to listen for you. Be accurate, honest, responsible. Do homework and be prepared. Your point of view should be implicit in your choice of facts and quotes in your report. Don’t exploit your position as a reporter to divest yourself of pettiness, bitterness, jealousy, prejudice, resentment. Don’t be catty. Don’t gossip about people who try to help you in your reporting. Don’t gossip about your colleagues. Don’t try to go where you’re not welcome. Don’t write about anybody you don’t like. Try to be original by following your own instincts, your own ideas, your own thinking. Find the humor in everything you see or hear or feel. If you have anything to say, about the world, about life, look for a way to say it without making a speech.”

Lillian Ross (quoted in Susan Morrison, “The Fun of It,” The New Yorker, May 14, 2001)

Mississippi John Hurt sings and plays “Lonesome Valley.” This performance was originally telecast on WNJU-TV in 1965 or 1966 as part of an episode of Rainbow Quest, a series hosted by Pete Seeger:

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

“I believe that one ought to have only as much market efficiency as one needs, because everything that we value in human life is within the realm of inefficiency—love, family, attachment, community, culture, old habits, comfortable old shoes.”

Edward Luttwak (quoted in Corey Robin, “The Ex-Cons: Right-Wing Thinkers Go Left!,” Lingua Franca, February 2001)

In my latest “Sightings” column, which appears in the online edition of today’s Wall Street Journal, I pay tribute to the American Film Theatre, twelve of whose original releases are now playing at a New York revival house. Here’s an excerpt.

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Broadway and Hollywood have always had an uneasy long-distance relationship. From “The Front Page” to “Six Degrees of Separation,” most of the biggest stage hits of the 20th century have been adapted for the screen at one time or another—but far too many were mangled beyond recognition in the process. Among other notorious crimes against good taste, studio executives insisted on tacking happy endings onto Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” and Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie,” which is sort of like making a Lincoln biopic in which he doesn’t get shot.

It was in response to such outrages that Ely and Edie Landau launched the American Film Theatre. Starting in 1973, the Landaus released low-budget, high-quality screen versions of 14 important stage plays and musicals, all of them scrupulously faithful to the original scripts. The films featured big-name stars like Katharine Hepburn, Glenda Jackson and Laurence Olivier and top-tier directors like Arthur Hiller and Tony Richardson, all of whom agreed to work for chump change in return for the chance to be associated with such elevated fare. The films, which included Edward Albee’s “A Delicate Balance,” Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters,” Bertolt Brecht’s “Galileo” and Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming,” were then shown in 500-odd U.S. movie houses on a limited-run subscription-only basis, complete with fancy “Cinebill” souvenir programs.

So noble a venture was, needless to say, doomed to failure: The American Film Theatre went bust in 1975. Not until 2003 did its releases finally make it to home video, and even now they are known for the most part only to theater buffs with very long memories. That’s why it’s such good news that 12 of the AFT’s films are playing through Nov. 21 at New York’s Quad Cinema. For the first time in years, these remarkable films can now be viewed in a movie theater, the way they were meant to be seen.

The AFT made its debut with a four-hour version of Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh” directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Fredric March and an up-and-coming youngster by the name of Jeff Bridges. Marvin, who had been propelled into name-above-the-title stardom by “Cat Ballou” and “The Dirty Dozen,” accepted a flat fee of $25,000, a tenth of his usual salary…

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Read the whole thing here.

The original theatrical trailer for The Iceman Cometh:

The original theatrical trailer for Rhinoceros:

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:
• The Band’s Visit (musical, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Dear Evan Hansen (musical, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• The Home Place (drama, PG-13, extended through Dec. 17, reviewed here)
• The Portuguese Kid (comedy, PG-13, closes Dec. 10, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:
• After the Blast (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

“The political mind is the product of men in public life who have been twice spoiled. They have been spoiled with praise and they have been spoiled with abuse. With them nothing is natural, everything is artificial.”

The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge (courtesy of Mona Charen)

“The Telephone Hour,” a 1945 short featuring Josef Hofmann, Donald Voorhees, and the Bell Telephone Orchestra. In this promotional film, produced by Leslie Roush and based on a Bell Telephone Hour radio broadcast, Hofmann performs Rachmaninoff’s C-Sharp Minor Prelude and an abridged version of the finale of Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto. This short, made on July 30, 1945, is thought to be the only surviving sound film of Hofmann in performance:

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