2,374 stories by "TERRY TEACHOUT"
From 2004: If you're going to make a stage or screen adaptation of a familiar work of art, you really only have two viable alternatives: try to reproduce the original as closely as possible,…
"Important writing, strange to say, rarely gives the exact flavor of its period; if it is successful it presents you with the soul of man, undated." George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of …
Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss) is the mystery guest on To Tell the Truth. This episode was originally telecast by CBS on April 29, 1958. The host is Bud Collyer: (This is the latest in a series…
The Mosaic Theatre Company's production of Satchmo at the Waldorf closed yesterday afternoon in Washington, D.C. It's always bittersweet when a show comes to the end of its run, but this par…
"There's nothing sadder than an old hipster." Lenny Bruce, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People
In today's Wall Street Journal I review Chicago Shakespeare's Tug of War: Civil Strife and the Broadway premiere of Simon McBurney's The Encounter. Here's an excerpt. * * * The most importan…
Orson Welles takes questions from a panel of British reporters on Press Conference, originally telecast by the BBC on January 14, 1955: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos…
"'I never understood the theater until last night. Please forgive everything I've ever written. By the time you read this I'll be dead.'"Clive Barnes" David Mamet (originally published in Ma…
"One can never pay in gratitude; one can only pay 'in kind' somewhere else in life." Anne Morrow Lindbergh, North to the Orient
The Kinks perform Ray Davies' "Sunny Afternoon" in a 1966 promotional video: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Frid…
"Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive." Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
From 2006: The first item is a picture of me taken at ten-fifteen on the evening of February 6, 1956, thirty minutes after I was born. I weighed eight pounds and one-and-a-half ounces, and h…
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is fam…
Oscar Levant appears as the mystery guest on What's My Line? (Levant's segment starts 21:52 into the video.) This episode was originally telecast by CBS on October 17, 1965. The panelists ar…
"Snobs are always insufferable, even when they're right, though holding strong opinions is not the same as snobbery. Some ideas and tastes are worthy only of contempt." Patrick Kurp, "'Sandi…
In today's Wall Street Journal I review an important off-Broadway revival of Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey. Here's an excerpt. * * * Shelagh Delaney wrote her first play, "A Taste of Ho…
A Party with Betty Comden and Adolph Green, a 1979 TV version of the 1977 revival of their two-person 1958 Broadway revue. Paul Trueblood is the pianist: originally telecast in 1979: (This i…
"'I never know why self-sacrifice is noble,' said Miss Burke. 'Why is it better to sacrifice oneself than someone else?' "'It is no better,' said Hester, 'and it is not really held to be.'" …
Mrs. T and I just watched Conquest, a delicious 1937 movie in which Charles Boyer and Greta Garbo played Napoleon Bonaparte and the Countess Marie Walewska. Seeing Conquest reminded me that …
"It is no good to think that other people are out to serve our interests." Ivy Compton-Burnett, Elders and Betters
Chuck Berry sings and plays "Maybelline" in an undated, unidentified telecast: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Fr…
"People don't resent having nothing nearly as much as too little." Ivy Compton-Burnett, A Family and a Fortune
My "Sightings" column for this week's Wall Street Journal, which appeared on the paper's website over the weekend, took note of the death on Friday of Edward Albee. It is running in today's …
From 2006: As I was soaring through the skies of Pennsylvania the other day, my iPod served up Leopold Stokowski's 1937 recording of Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice (not currently available…
"The people sinned against are not always the best." Ivy Compton-Burnett, The Mighty and their Fall
