2,374 stories by "Terry Teachout"
Matt Dennis sings and plays "Violets for Your Furs" on The Rosemary Clooney Show in 1957. Dennis also wrote the music, and the lyric is by Tom Adair: (This is the latest in a series of arts-…
"There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism." G.K. Chesterton, G.F. Watts
In today's Wall Street Journal drama column I review a Connecticut revival of Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw. Here's an excerpt. * * * I keep two lists in the top drawer of my desk. The fir…
Orson Welles appears in a scene from King Lear on The Ed Sullivan Show, originally telecast on CBS on February 5, 1956. Welles' self-directed stage production of Lear, in which he played the…
"The critics, in their inevitable struggle for modernity for themselves, are abnormally sensitive to outmodedness in other people." Frances Donaldson, Freddy Lonsdale
"He had enjoyed his time at Cambridge; he had even liked the English. Their hypocrisy hadn't troubled him, only their ignorance that they were hypocrites." William Haggard, The Antagonists
Benny Goodman appears as the mystery guest on What's My Line? This episode was telecast by CBS on July 22, 1962. The host is John Charles Daly and the panelists are Bennett Cerf, Arlene Fran…
"Cynicism is intellectual dandyism." George Meredith, The Egoist
From 2006: Do I wish I lived in a simpler time? Occasionally"but I grew up in a much simpler time, and though I recall with nostalgia my days of slow-moving innocence, I can't begin to imagi…
"The cynic, a parasite of civilisation, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail. What would become of the cynic among a savage people where everyo…
Forgive my recent semi-absence from this space, but I've been inordinately busy of late, quite a bit more than I expected to be. Among other things, the Mosaic Theater Company's production o…
Louis Armstrong and the All Stars perform "Mack the Knife" in concert in 1956: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Fr…
Music resembles poetry: in each Are nameless graces which no methods teach And which a master-hand alone can reach. Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Criticism"
In today's Wall Street Journal I review the Mint Theater Company's off-Broadway revival of N.C. Hunter's A Day by the Sea. Here's an excerpt. * * * No drama troupe in America has carved out …
"Previews of Past Attractions: Ry Cooder," a 1970 Warner Bros. Records promotional mini-documentary about the singer-guitarist, produced by Van Dyke Parks: (This is the latest in a series of…
"No one understood better than Stalin that the true object of propaganda is neither to convince nor even to persuade, but to produce a uniform pattern of public utterance in which the first …
In today's Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column, I pay tribute to the underappreciated artistry of Perry Como. Here's an excerpt. * * * Sixty years ago, Perry Como cut a hit record of the …
"Human beings are difficult. We're difficult to ourselves, we're difficult to each other. And we are mysteries to ourselves, we are mysteries to each other. One encounters in any ordinary da…
Arturo Toscanini leads the NBC Symphony in a performance of the first movement of Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 555. This performance was originally telecast from NBC's Studio 8-H …
"Every moment is a new moment, failure our eternal friend. You think you are learning things but those could also be staleness traps, formula, hitting the same lever again and again." Whit S…
From 2006: As for me, I'm the gray-headed drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and a resident of the Upper West Side of Manhattan, none of which I anticipated when I was sixteen. Back the…
"Happiness in life is often constructed from tiny wonderful things"hot toast with butter"not big things." Whit Stillman, interviewed by Chris White (Curator, May 23, 2016)
Lotte Lenya sings "Pirate Jenny," from Marc Blitzstein's English-language adaptation of the Brecht-Weill Threepenny Opera. This performance was telecast on the BBC in 1962. Lenya created the…
"An extraordinary people and he wasn't yet at home with them. One half seemed caught in a caste system which defeated him, the other in a dislike of it which at times came close to malice. I…
In today's Wall Street Journal I review a New Jersey revival of Exit the King. Here's an excerpt. * * * Whatever happened to Eugène Ionesco? Nothing, really"he's still one of the most impor…
