Thursday, February 4, 2021
“If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.”
Mark Twain, notebook entry, January or February 1894,
Continue reading Almanac: Mark Twain on honesty at About Last Night.
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, February 3, 2021
A scene from the film version of Somerset Maugham’s “The Alien Corn,” directed by Harold French, adapted for the screen by R.C. Sherriff, introduced by Maugham. The film is one of four…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“’If I thought you had in you the makings of an artist I shouldn’t hesitate to beseech you to give up everything for art’s sake. Art is the only thing that matters. In comparison wit…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, February 2, 2021
From 2015:
Pamela Paul, the editor of the New York Times Book Review, just did an excellent “By the Book” interview with my old friend David Brooks. I liked the results so much that I…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be p…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, February 1, 2021
The Manhattan Transfer sings Claude Thornhill’s “Snowfall” in concert:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wedne…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AMFriday, January 29, 2021
In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, I review the Irish Rep’s webcast of Aedín Moloney in Yes! Reflections of Molly Bloom. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
Throughout the pandem…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:02AMFredric March appears as the mystery guest on What’s My Line? (His first name is misspelled on the nameplate.) John Daly is the host and the panelists are Steve Allen, Bennett Cerf, Arle…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“One of the difficulties with all our institutions is the fact that we’ve emphasized the reward instead of the service.”
Harry S. Truman, letter to Harold E. Moore (September 27, 1949)…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, January 28, 2021
“There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.”
Somerset Maugham, The Summin…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, January 27, 2021
Vladimir Horowitz plays Schubert’s Impromptu, Op. 90, No. 2, at a recital in Vienna in 1987:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“It is drawing-room furniture, a sign of bourgeois prosperity, the most massive of the devices by which the young are tortured in the name of education and the grown-up in the name of ente…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, January 26, 2021
From 2005:
I went to my framer yesterday afternoon and picked up the presidential commission for my appointment to the National Council on the Arts. It’s a splendidly old-fashioned docume…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.”
Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day
Continue reading Almanac: Thornton Wilder on hope at About …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, January 25, 2021
“To want power is corruption already.”
Gore Vidal, The Best Man
Continue reading Almanac: Gore Vidal on the will to power at About Last Night.
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMSunday, January 24, 2021
In an undated TV interview, Gore Vidal talks about Franklin J. Schaffner’s 1964 screen version of The Best Man, his 1960 play, and the ideas about politics on which it was based:
(This is…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AMFriday, January 22, 2021
In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, I review Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey’s Shaw! Shaw! Shaw!. Here’s an excerpt.
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Webcasts of the plays of George Bernard Sha…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:03AMIn today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I talk about how to jump-start a post-pandemic revival of the arts in America. Here’s an excerpt.
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As everybody with eve…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:02AMAlfred Hitchcock is interviewed by Dick Cavett on TV in 1972:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Frida…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.”
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude)
Continue read…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, January 21, 2021
“PRESIDENT, n. The leading figure in a small group of men of whom—and of whom only—it is positively known that immense numbers of their countrymen did not want any of them for Presiden…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, January 20, 2021
Sound footage of the presidential inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, W…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“Power doesn’t have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.”
Ralph Ellison, I…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, January 19, 2021
From 2006:
I woke up this morning at nine-thirty, an hour later than my normal get-up-and-go time. As I descended from the loft in which I spend my nights, it struck me that I had nothing wh…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“We have all forgot more than we remember.”
Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia
Continue reading Almanac: Thomas Fuller on memory at About Last Night.
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, January 18, 2021
Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli plays the slow movement of Ravel’s G Major Piano Concerto, accompanied by Sergiu Celidibache and the London Symphony:
(This is the latest in a series of ar…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“Things are beautiful if you love them.”
Jean Anouilh, Mademoiselle Colombe (trans. Louis Kronenberger)
Continue reading Almanac: Jean Anouilh on beauty at About Last Night.
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, January 15, 2021
A new episode of Three on the Aisle, the podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available on line for listening or downloading.
He…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:03AMIn today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, I review two theatrical webcasts drawn from important New York productions of the past by the Hunter Theater Project and Shakespeare in the Par…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:02AMA scene from the 1963 film of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,” directed by Laurence Olivier and starring Olivier, Rosemary Harris, and Michael Redgrave:
(This is the latest in a series of art…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“A woman can be a man’s friend only in this sequence: first an acquaintance, then a mistress, and after that a friend.”
Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya
Continue reading Almanac: Chekhov on…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AM 
