2,374 stories by "TERRY TEACHOUT"
We're back! The twenty-seventh episode of Three on the Aisle, the twice-monthly podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available …
The Hallmark Hall of Fame TV version of August Wilson's The Piano Lesson, adapted by Wilson from his 1987 play and directed by Lloyd Richards, originally telecast by CBS on February 5, 19…
"All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is…
In today's online-only Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column, I talk about Lincoln Kirstein, who is the subject of an upcoming exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Here's an excerpt. *Â…
Titus Techera, who hosts a podcast for the American Cinema Foundation on which he and his guests discuss important films of the past and present, invited me back earlier this week for the la…
"Woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against 'freedom of print,' it is the closing down of the heart of the na…
Harry Reasoner interviews Harold Lloyd on Calendar, the morning news program that he co-hosted with Mary Fickett. This episode was originally telecast by CBS on April 16, 1962: (This is the …
"Zealotry is when the letter of religion is mistaken for its spirit." Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics (trans. Peter Heath)
From 2009: I didn't have to drive anywhere to hear Paul Harvey News and Comment. I heard it every weekday morning on the kitchen radio as I wolfed down breakfast and prepared to go to sch…
"The fat Russian agent was cornering all the foreign refugees in turn and explaining plausibly that this whole affair was an Anarchist plot. I watched him with some interest, for it was the …
A scene from Targets, written and directed by Peter Bogdanovich and starring Bogdanovich and Boris Karloff. In this scene, Karloff delivers a monologue interpolated by Bogdanovich from Sh…
"Only those who doubt really believe, and those who do not doubt are neither tempted against their faith nor do they truly believe." Miguel de Unamuno, The Life of Don Quixote and Sancho …
In today's Wall Street Journal drama column, I review two off-Broadway shows, Marys Seacole and Merrily We Roll Along. Here's an excerpt. *Â Â *Â Â * It shouldn't be all that surpris…
At the Haunted End of the Day: The Life of Sir William Walton, a TV documentary by Tony Palmer, originally telecast on April 19, 1981, as an episode of ITV's The South Bank Show. In addit…
"You were made for enjoyment, and the world was filled with things which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased by them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot turn to o…
"For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man t…
I flew from Houston to New York last March, having just directed the Alley Theater's production of Satchmo at the Waldorf to mutually satisfying effect. Once I got back home, I went for a wh…
Nat "King" Cole sings and plays "It's Only a Paper Moon," by Harold Arlen, Yip Harburg, and Billy Rose. This performance, which has been colorized, was part of An Evening with Nat King Co…
"Nature has a great simplicity and, therefore, a great beauty." Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law
From 2009: Twelve hours later I was on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where the temperature was fifty degrees colder, the sidewalks were covered with sooty snow, and a bagful of mail awai…
"Behind the jokes, I try to talk about life in a serious way. I don't look at cartooning as just an entertainment. It's a rare privilege to be able to talk to hundreds of millions of people …
The obituaries for André Previn, who died last Thursday at the age of eighty-nine, were respectful, even admiring, in a way that they wouldn't have been had he died a quarter-century ago. I…
A Hallmark Hall of Fame telecast of The Lark, Lillian Hellman's English-language adaptation of L'Alouette, Jean Anouilh's 1952 play about Joan of Arc. This abridged version stars Julie…
"Might is that which makes a thing of anybody who comes under its sway. When exercised to the full, it makes a thing of man in the most literal sense, for it makes him a corpse." Simone Weil…
In today's Wall Street Journal drama column, I review an important off-Broadway revival of Lynn Nottage's By the Way, Meet Vera Stark. Here's an excerpt. *Â Â *Â Â * If you know Lynn…
