Monday, July 13, 2015
The opening scene of George Schaefer’s TV adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, starring Hal Holbrook as the Stage Manager. It was originally telecast by NBC on May 30, 1977: (This i…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“But Laura laid awake a little while, listening to Pa’s fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, t…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, July 10, 2015
In today’s Wall Street Journal I report on three shows currently being performed at Ontario’s Shaw Festival, The Twelve-Pound Look, Sweet Charity, and You Never Can Tell. Here’s an exc…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMThe Teddy Wilson Trio plays “Honeysuckle Rose” on TV in 1963. The performance was telecast from Chicago’s Civic Opera House in 1963. The bassist is Jim Atlas and the drummer is Jo Jone…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“When you reread a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.” Clifton Fadiman, “War and Peace, Fifteen Years After”
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, July 9, 2015
This morning I fly from New York to St. Louis, where I’ll pick up a rental car and meet a friend for lunch, then drive south from there to Smalltown, U.S.A. My brother and his wife are hos…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:45AM• I recently read a very funny piece about tiny houses in which the author speculated that the ever-so-trendy residents of these miniaturized abodes might not be quite as content with thei…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:30AM“What was once thought can never be unthought.” Friedrich Dürrenmatt, The Physicists (trans. James Kirkup)
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:00AMWednesday, July 8, 2015
The Miles Davis Quintet performs “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down” at Rome’s Teatro Sistina in 1969. The other players are Wayne Shorter on saxophone, Chick Corea on electric piano, Dave Ho…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, journal entry, May 1849
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, July 7, 2015
From 2005: Sometimes I find myself hungering for solitude, and there are occasions when I’m almost painfully grateful to spend a night with my prints, my CDs, my iBook, and my trusty TV, w…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“There was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, July 6, 2015
On Friday I drove from Connecticut to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, home of the Shaw Festival, about which I’ll be writing in Friday’s Wall Street Journal. I made the seven-hour trip by …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMThe Louvin Brothers sing “Hoping That You’re Hoping” on TV in 1956: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.)
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“When it comes to regret, everyone’s a winner! It’s the jackpot you are guaranteed to win.” Geoff Dyer, “Over and Out”
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, July 3, 2015
In today’s Wall Street Journal I review a New Hampshire revival of A Garden Fête, one of the eight plays from Alan Ayckbourn’s Intimate Exchanges cycle, and the Lincoln Center Theater p…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:30AMAnd what color should he be? That’s the subject, more or less, of my “Sightings” column in today’s Wall Street Journal. Here’s an excerpt. * * * In this country, Steven Berkoff is …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:15AMAn excerpt from Abe Lincoln in Illinois, starring Raymond Massey as Abraham Lincoln. The film, released in 1940, was directed by John Cromwell and adapted by Robert E. Sherwood from his orig…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:15AMI’ve been reading All My Yesterdays, Edward G. Robinson’s posthumously published 1973 autobiography. Contrary to his celebrated tough-guy screen persona, Robinson was an exceedingly lite…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:05AM“It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide, by their conduct and example, the important question, whether societies of me…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:00AMThursday, July 2, 2015
My essay in the July/August double issue of Commentary is about Lincoln Center. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Lincoln Center, the first major urban performing-arts center in America, was well o…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 08:31AM“‘A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her,’ he said, ‘but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.’” Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpen…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, July 1, 2015
The opening of the twenty-fifth Academy Awards ceremony, the first to be televised. The ceremony, which took place on March 19, 1953, was introduced by Charles Brackett, co-author of the scr…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogether dislike anyone who makes me laugh.” Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, June 30, 2015
From 2005: For years my mother took care of me whenever I needed taking care of, wiping my brow and mending my scrapes, listening to me gripe about the slightest ache or pain (I was no bette…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“I don’t have an anger problem, I have an idiot problem.” Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland, “The Texas Skilsaw Massacre” (a 2002 episode of King of the Hill)
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, June 29, 2015
I have big news. The simplest and best way to break it is to reprint the following press release from Florida’s Palm Beach Dramaworks, which went out this morning. It speaks for itself, an…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 09:00AMAn excerpt from Peter Brook’s 1969 film of King Lear, starring Paul Scofield as Lear, Jack MacGowran as the Fool, and Irene Worth as Goneril: (This is the latest in a series of arts-relate…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Glamour is a trap if you go just for that. It does not develop the ability. At first when one starts acting one is really searching for an identity. Work is really the sole means of an ed…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, June 26, 2015
Time: Wednesday. Place: a rental car en route from Storrs, Connecticut, to Mountainville, New York. Scott Joplin on Guitar is playing on the stereo. HE Hey, what’s the name of that rag? Lo…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 02:36PMIn today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review Eric Tucker’s Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and an off-Broadway staging of Doctor Faus…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AM 
