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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for September 2019

With biographies, size matters

September 5, 2019 by Terry Teachout

In this week’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I call for shorter, better biographies. The immediate occasion is the publication of Con Chapman’s Rabbit’s Blues: The Life and Music of Johnny Hodges, a biography of Duke Ellington’s great alto saxophone soloist, which is 227 pages long and contains not a single wasted word:

As I read “Rabbit’s Blues,” I thought: Why aren’t there lots of books like this? Biographies have been growing longer and longer for decades now, and even when they’re about deserving subjects, they’re still likely to be far too clotted with hour-by-hour detail to suit the needs of the general reader. What I’d like to see, by contrast, are brief lives of artists about whom it would be pointless to publish what we now think of as a full-length book—the supporting players of art, so to speak….

Read the whole thing here.

Almanac: Samuel Fuller on war movies

September 5, 2019 by Terry Teachout

“For moviegoers to get the idea of real combat, you’d have to shoot at them every so often from either side of the screen.”

Samuel Fuller, A Third Face

Snapshot: Mabel Mercer performs in 1976

September 4, 2019 by Terry Teachout

Mabel Mercer and Jimmy Lyon appear on The Mark of Jazz, hosted by Sid Mark and originally telecast on WHYY-TV in 1976:

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

Almanac: S.N. Behrman on vanity in the theater

September 4, 2019 by Terry Teachout

“Jed Harris, in the full tide of success, could not imagine that anything he would do would fail; this is a form of imagination that must be acquired early by anyone who consigns his life to the theater.”

S.N. Behrman, People in a Diary: A Memoir

Lookback: things I miss

September 3, 2019 by Terry Teachout

From 2009:

• Rooftop TV antennas. I don’t miss the lamentably fuzzy reception that they provided, or the fact that my family could only pick up three channels in Smalltown, U.S.A. (I never saw a public-TV program until I went off to college in 1974.) On the other hand, I loved being able to climb onto the roof of our house via the antenna pole. To do so was a hanging offense at 713 Hickory Drive, mainly because it terrified my mother, who was sure–not without reason–that her hopelessly clumsy son would fall off the roof and break his neck….

Read the whole thing here.

Almanac: S.N. Behrman on novelists and playwrights

September 3, 2019 by Terry Teachout

“The author of a well-received novel never knows whether his book, even if it sells, is also read. Nor does he know where his reader yawns, at what page he may have decided that he wants no more of it and throws it away in disgust. The novelist’s audience is invisible; the playwright’s right there with him. With a successful play the author is reviewed every night and the playwright can tell what kind of review he’s getting.”

S.N. Behrman, People in a Diary: A Memoir

Just because: Jimmy Durante sings “This Is All I Ask”

September 2, 2019 by Terry Teachout

Jimmy Durante sings Gordon Jenkins’ “This Is All I Ask” on Jimmy Durante Presents the Lennon Sisters Hour. This episode was originally telecast by ABC on October 31, 1969:

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

Almanac: S.N. Behrman on contentment

September 2, 2019 by Terry Teachout

“What strikes me as I look back is that I have known few contented people. I have known very busy ones, rich ones, triumphant ones, but few who have been contented.”

S.N. Behrman, People in a Diary: A Memoir

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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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