2,374 stories by "Terry Teachout"
"You're only allowed three great women in your lifetime. They come along like the great fighters, every ten years."
Chazz Palminteri, screenplay for A Bronx Tale
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In today's Wall Street Journal I review American Players Theatre's webcasts of Arms and the Man and Julius Caesar. Here's an excerpt.
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Of the artistic havocwrought by the …
Milton Berle is the guest on This Is Your Life. This episode, hosted by Ralph Edwards, was originally telecast by NBC on June 6, 1956:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and histor…
"The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head."
H.L. Mencken, "A Time to be Wary"
Continue reading Almanac: H.L. Mencken on bureaucracy at About Last Night.
"Fear is like a giant fog. It sits on your brain and blocks everything"real feelings, true happiness, real joy."
Albert Brooks, screenplay for Defending Your Life
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Mikyung Sung and Jaemin Shin play Hindemith's Double Bass Sonata:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and F…
"How come in former lifetimes everybody's somebody famous?"
Ron Shelton, screenplay for Bull Durham
Continue reading Almanac: Ron Shelton on reincarnation and human vanity at About Last N…
From 2010:
Somebody compared me to a Holocaust denier the other day for having spoken ill of Elie Wiesel. While I wouldn't dream of dignifying such a remark by responding to it, I was …
NUKE That was great, huh?
CRASH Your fastball's up, your curveball's hanging. In the Show, they would've ripped you.
NUKE Can't you even let me enjoy the moment?
CRASH The moment's over.…
Stan Kenton and his big band make their TV debut on Toast of the Town (later renamed The Ed Sullivan Show). The trumpet soloist is Maynard Ferguson and the drummer is Shelly Manne. Thi…
"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
Continue re…
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 originally…
In 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 revival of Ge…
"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 i…
"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, t…
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 episode …
"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 regula…
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 muc…
From 2010:Â
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, a…
"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 Alman…
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 hist…
"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 littl…
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 on Septem…
"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 Urban …
"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.
