2,374 stories by "Terry Teachout"
"He was a bureaucrat, he lied effortlessly."
Richard Stark, Backflash
Continue reading Almanac: Richard Stark on bureaucrats at About Last Night.
Judy Holliday's last TV appearance, as the mystery guest on What's My Line? on April 28, 1963. (She died two years later.) John Daly is the host and the panelists are Shelley Berman, Bennett…
"A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-lived one."
Thomas Carlyle, "Richter" (courtesy of Richard Zuelch)
Continue reading Almanac: Thomas Carlyle on biography at About Last Night.
In today's Wall Street Journal I write about the 1955 TV version of Charles Laughton's stage version of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, starring Lloyd Nolan as Queeg. Here's an excerpt…
"Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, 'By jove! I'm being humble,' and almost immediately pride"pride at his own humi…
"Courage is a moral quality; it is not a chance gift of nature like an aptitude for games. It is a cold choice between two alternatives, the fixed resolve not to quit; an act of renunciation…
Leonard Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic perform the first movement of Beethoven's Fourth Symphony in concert in 1978:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related video…
"If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before th…
From 2010:
I watched Napoleon Dynamite last night for the first time since its original release, and was pleased to see that it holds up exceptionally well….
Read the whole thing her…
"There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed,…
Fred Allen and Oscar Levant star in "The Ransom of Red Chief," a 1952 dramatization of O. Henry's short story that was released as part of an anthology film called O. Henry's Full House.T…
"Very often when an actor forgets his lines, it is because a voice inside his brain has whispered to him, 'Wouldn't it be dreadful if you forgot the lines?' And that voice has generally ente…
In today's Wall Street Journal I review a webcast of the Lincoln Center Theater premiere of Dominique Morriseau's Pipeline. Here's an excerpt.
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If you're looking …
The Art Farmer Quartet, with Farmer on flugelhorn, Jim Hall on guitar, Steve Swallow on bass, and Walter Perkins on drums, plays "My Kinda Love" on a 1964 episode of Ralph Gleason's Jazz …
Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave,Is emulation in the learn'd or brave.
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man
Continue reading Almanac: Pope on envy at About Last Night.
In this week's Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column I write about the likely effects of social distancing on the arts in America. Here's an excerpt.
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With Labor Day i…
"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; …
Glenn Gould: Off the Record, a 1959 CBC documentary about the pianist's life in his lakeside cottage:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this…
"Few there are who can truly rejoice in their neighbor's good fortune. In most, envy and malice taint the spirit."
Aeschylus, Agamemnon (trans. David R. Slavitt)
Continue reading Almanac:…
From 2005:
I'm left-handed, with an ink-smudging overhand hook so exaggerated that my first-grade teacher, who in 1962 was already a thoroughly cranky old woman, tried briefly and vainly to …
"In jealousy there is more self-love than love."
François de la Rochefoucauld, Maxims, #334
Continue reading Almanac: Rochefoucauld on jealousy at About Last Night.
The Everly Brothers sing "Wake Up, Little Susie" and "Should We Tell Him" on an episode of The Big Record, hosted by Patti Page, which aired on CBS in 1958:
(This is the latest in a se…
Yet he was jealous, though he did not show it,For jealousy dislikes the world to know it.
Lord Byron, Don Juan
Continue reading Almanac: Byron on jealousy at About Last Night.
In today's Wall Street Journal drama column I review American Shakespeare Center's webcast of Othello. Here's an excerpt.
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Virginia's American Shakespeare Center was one o…
Rudolf and Peter Serkin play Schubert's G Major March, Op. 52/2, live in 1988:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wed…
