Monday, November 28, 2016
“To stand up for truth is nothing. For truth, you must sit in jail. You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even t…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, November 25, 2016
Mrs. T and I just got back from seeing Maria Schneider’s first set at the Jazz Standard. Two thoughts come to mind, the first original and the second not: • In the presence of music, tim…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 09:48PMIn today’s Wall Street Journal I review an important new off-Broadway revival of Sweet Charity. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Why is the New Group, which specializes in hard-headed plays by s…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMPeggy Lee sings “Blues in the Night,” by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, on The DuPont Show of the Month: Crescendo, originally telecast by CBS on September 29, 1957: (This is the latest…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving greater benefits.” François de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, November 24, 2016
“I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite,—only a sense of existence.” Henry David Thoreau, l…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, November 23, 2016
I recently reread a novel, Jon Hassler’s North of Hope, whose protagonist, Frank Healy, is a fortysomething priest without family ties. His mother died when he was twelve, after which his …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMAaron Copland leads the New York Philharmonic in his El Salón México, introduced by Leonard Bernstein. This performance was part of “Aaron Copland Birthday Party,” a Young People’s C…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Being in a garret doesn’t do you any good unless you’re some sort of a Keats. The people who lived and wrote well in the twenties were comfortable and easy living. They were able to f…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, November 22, 2016
From 2006: Can you seriously imagine a senator, or any other public figure, commiting suicide under similar circumstances today? In fact, let’s take it one step further: can you think of a…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Hollywood money isn’t money. It’s congealed snow, melts in your hand, and there you are.” Dorothy Parker, interviewed by Marion Capron (Paris Review, Summer 1956)
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, November 21, 2016
It doesn’t happen all that often these days, but I found myself home alone in New York last Friday night. Mrs. T was in Connecticut. I had no show to see that evening, nor was a pressing d…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMRichard Diebenkorn talks about starting work on a painting in an undated interview: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, a…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Let’s face it, honey, my verse is terribly dated—as anything once fashionable is dreadful now.” Dorothy Parker, interviewed by Marion Capron (Paris Review, Summer 1956)
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, November 18, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review the Broadway transfer of Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, directed by Rachel Chavkin. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Immersi…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMHoward Lindsay and Dorothy Stickney appear in a scene from Life With Father, a play adapted by Lindsay and Russel Crouse from Clarence Day’s autobiographical essays. The scene is introduce…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“What shouldn’t you do if you’re a young playwright? Don’t bore the audience! I mean, even if you have to resort to totally arbitrary killing on stage, or pointless gunfire, at least…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, November 17, 2016
My Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column is about Sweat, Lynn Nottage’s new play. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Here’s my number-one recommendation for life in the Age of Trump: Lynn N…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:02AM“There is, in fact, an element of sour grapes in Stoicism. We can’t be happy, but we can be good; let us therefore pretend that, so long as we are good, it doesn’t matter being…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, November 16, 2016
Donald Gramm and Richard Cumming perform Charles Ives’ “Two Little Flowers,” “Serenity,” and “Charlie Rutlage” on TV. The performance, originally broadcast on WGBH-TV in 1965 a…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some pol…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, November 15, 2016
From 2006: I especially appreciated the irony of seeing Rhett and Scarlett galloping toward Tara to the accompaniment of Miles Davis, whose opinion of Gone With the Wind is unrecorded but mu…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“The winds of gossip blow from the chests of people ventilating their opinions.” Augustine, Confessions (trans. Henry Chadwick, courtesy of Richard Zuelch)
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:05AMMonday, November 14, 2016
While renting a tux the other day, I got to chatting with the young woman behind the counter, a smiling beauty who had the most gorgeous set of dreadlocks I’ve ever seen. I happened to men…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMEdward R. Murrow interviews Noël Coward on Person to Person. This episode was originally telecast by CBS on April 27, 1956: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appea…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“One cannot have everything the way he would like it. A man has no business to be depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to make up his mind to get even.” Mark Twain, A Connecti…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, November 11, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the Irish Repertory Theatre’s production of a newly revised version of Finian’s Rainbow. Here’s an excerpt. * * * “Finian’s Rainbow” is …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:45AMI posted this for the first time on November 11, 2008. It’s still relevant, and (I suspect) always will be. * * * On October 9, 1918, an HMV sound engineer named Will Gaisberg set up a…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMWith the Marines at Tarawa, a 1944 Marine Corps documentary film directed by Louis Hayward. It won the 1945 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject: (This is the latest in a series …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward, it is not a compliment to say he is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of t…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, November 10, 2016
“The government of my country snubs honest simplicity, but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public serv…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AM 
