2,374 stories by "Terry Teachout"
"Remember that hope is a good thing, Red, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."
Stephen King, "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" (from Different Seasons)
Continue …
In today's Wall Street Journal I review the off-Broadway premieres of new stage versions of Dracula and Frankenstein. Here's an excerpt.
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Ever since Hollywood put Bram Sto…
David Frost interviews Paul McCartney on the BBC on May 18, 1964:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and F…
"If there's one major cause for the spread of mass illiteracy, it's the fact that everybody can read and write."
Peter de Vries, The Tents of Wickedness
Continue reading Almanac: Peter de…
"The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs."
G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
Continue reading Almanac: Chesterton on the artistic temperament at About Last Night.
Howard Keel sings Cole Porter's "Where Is the Life That Late I Led?" in the 1953 film version of Kiss Me, Kate:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that a…
"The particular charm of marriage is the duologue, the permanent conversation between two people who talk over everything and everyone till death breaks the record. It is this back-chat whic…
From 2004:
I love parody and caricature, and it's one of my medium-sized regrets that I have no gift for either (though I can do adequate impersonations of a few of my friends). Alas, I find…
"Only when one's friends die and one accompanies them to the grave's edge does one realise precisely what they have meant to one."
James Lees-Milne, diary, March 25, 1977
Continue reading Al…
A new 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 on line for listening …
Jascha Heifetz plays the "Chaconne" from Bach's D Minor Partita for Unaccompanied Violin on TV in 1970:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in th…
"Some say never meet your heroes, but I say if you're really blessed, you get them as your parents."
Laura Dern, Oscar acceptance speech, 2020
Continue reading Almanac: Laura Dern on parents…
In today's Wall Street Journal I review the new Broadway revival of West Side Story. Here's an excerpt.
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Pop quiz, boomers: What's your favorite musical? If I had to guess…
A British Pathé newsreel story about the 1953 Covent Garden premiere of Benjamin Britten's opera Gloriana, commissioned as part of the celebration of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II…
"But I think he thought that the object of opening the mind is simply opening the mind. Whereas I am incurably convinced that the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is t…
In today's Wall Street Journal drama column I review the New York premiere of Pearl Cleage's Blues for an Alabama Sky. Here's an excerpt.
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It's February"or, as it's known …
In this week's Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column, I write about one of music's most mysterious powers. Here's an excerpt.
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Music is the most mysterious of all the …
I'm picking up a Zipcar and hitting the road later today for a three-night caregiver's holiday on Long Island Sound. During my absence, Mrs. T will be looked after around the clock by the do…
"All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself."
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Continue reading Almanac: Dickens on se…
In an excerpt from "Take 30," originally telecast by the CBC in 1967, Leonard Cohen talks about why he writes poetry:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos tha…
"Is it not miraculous that tears are given only to humans? Surely there is something divine in them, expressing as they do compassion, sorrow, love, anxiety and all feelings that associate u…
This is the third February in a row that Mrs. T and I have spent not in Florida, where we used to go every winter to see shows and travel around the state, but up north. Mrs. T's doctors ord…
From 2017:
It's as "normal" for the two of us to stroll up and down the beaches of Sanibel island in January as it is for us to turn up the heat in Connecticut, nestle on the couch, and watc…
"Though Anne was born in Alabama and schooled in Mississippi, she had traveled North, and, like many Southerners, gained a theoretical understanding of the concept of cold. But the mind is a…
De Ford Bailey plays "Fox Chase" on a 1967 telecast of National Life Grand Ole Opry:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monda…
