Monday, July 13, 2020
“He measured all his fellow workers by the test of professionalism, and a professional is a man who can do his best work when he doesn’t feel like it.”
Alistair Cooke, Six Men
Continu…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, July 10, 2020
Oscar Levant is the guest on an episode of The Jack Benny Program. The co-stars are Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Mary Livingstone, Frank Nelson, and Don Wilson. This episode was original…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 09:11AMIn Friday’s Wall Street Journal I review two important theater webcasts, the National Theatre’s 2016 revival of Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea and the Mint Theater’s 2014 reviv…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:04AM“I had discovered that a person does not have to be this or be that or be anything, not even oneself. One is free.”
Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
Continue reading Almanac: Walker Percy on…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, July 9, 2020
“I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business,…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, July 8, 2020
William Holden appears as the mystery guest on What’s My Line? The host is John Daly and the panelists are Bennett Cerf, Arlene Francis, Dorothy Kilgallen, and Robert Q. Lewis. This episod…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“Holden has turned down Toulouse shedding light as he goes. An aura of heightened reality moves with him and all who fall within it feel it. Now everyone is aware of him. He creates a regu…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, July 7, 2020
In my Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I pay tribute to Ennio Morricone and Johnny Mandel. Here’s an excerpt.
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“Writing a good movie brings a writer about as much …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:03AMFrom 2010:
Mr. Harriman—I never got used to calling him Dick, not even after I grew up, moved to New York, and became a full-time critic of the arts—was the most genial of impresarios,…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“As for hobbies, people with stimulating hobbies suffer from the most noxious of despairs since they are tranquilized in their despair.”
Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
Continue reading Alm…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, July 6, 2020
Frederick Fennell leads the Tokyo-Kosei Wind Orchestra in an undated TV performance of John Philip Sousa’s “U.S. Field Artillery March”:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“In a strange way, I had fallen in love with my depression. I loved it because it was all I had. I thought depression was the part of my character that made me worthwhile. I thought so lit…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, July 3, 2020
Louis Armstrong plays “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” (interpolating “The Star-Spangled Banner”) on The DuPont Show of the Month: Crescendo, originally telecast live by CBS o…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“It is a trite yet urgently true observation that if America is to remain a first-class nation, it cannot have second-class citizens.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., address to the National Ur…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, July 2, 2020
“Depression is melancholy minus its charms—the animation, the fits.”
Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor
Continue reading Almanac: Susan Sontag on depression at About Last Night.
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, July 1, 2020
Lilli Palmer interviews Thornton Wilder in an extremely rare TV appearance on The Lilli Palmer Show. This clip was originally telecast on NBC in 1952:
(This is the latest in a series of …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.”
Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
Continue reading Almanac: Dodie Smith on depression at About Last Night.
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, June 30, 2020
The last play I saw on stage, Katori Hall’s The Hot Wing King, had a short off-Broadway run before New York’s theaters were closed down in mid-March. Earlier that same week, my beloved w…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:02AMFrom 2010:
Today’s episode of Fresh Air is all about the history of songs in Hollywood, and the producers invited those who follow the series on Twitter to vote for their favorite movie s…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known—no wonder, then, that I return the love.”
Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or
Continue reading Almanac: Kierkegaard on depression a…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, June 29, 2020
John Steinbeck talks to the Voice of America about how America has changed since he wrote The Grapes of Wrath. This radio interview was originally broadcast on February 11, 1952:
(This is …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“That terrible mood of depression of whether it’s any good or not is what is known as The Artist’s Reward.”
Ernest Hemingway, letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (September 13, 1929)
Conti…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, June 26, 2020
I’ve written an essay for Saturday’s Wall Street Journal about the history of summer movies in America. Here’s an excerpt.
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Summer is here—but there are no movies to mark …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:03AMIn today’s Wall Street Journal I review an Original Theater Company/59E59 Theaters webcast of Alan Bennett’s The Habit of Art. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
Except for “The History…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:02AMRichard Burton talks about Dylan Thomas and Under Milk Wood in a BBC interview originally telecast on February 15, 1971:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“Depression is the inability to construct a future.”
Rollo May, Love and Will
Continue reading Almanac: Rollo May on depression at About Last Night.
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, June 25, 2020
“As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth.”
Edward Abbey, A V…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, June 24, 2020
Johnny Cash performs his “Big River” on an episode of Pet Milk Grand Ole Opry originally telecast on February 12, 1962:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related vid…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:02PM“The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.”
Edward Abbey, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
Continue reading Almanac: Edward Abbey on wit at About Last …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, June 23, 2020
From 2005:
Very few people who don’t write for a living understand that writing is work, much less that a writer who is sitting in a chair, reading a book or staring absently into the dis…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“Any innocent pleasure is a real good; there are not so many of them.”
Patrick O’Brian, Post Captain
Continue reading Almanac: Patrick O’Brian on pleasure at About Last Night.
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AM 
