2,374 stories by "Terry Teachout"
"A man has his beliefs: his arguments are only his excuses for them." George Bernard Shaw (quoted in Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw: 1856-1898, The Search for Love)
From 2006: When you cross the fiftieth meridian, as I did last month, you're more than likely to feel the need for some kind of change, especially if your life has been running fairly smooth…
"I'm going to see a play of mine day after tomorrow which opened about a month ago, and it will be full of things which will be different. And some of it will be slightly out of focus, and s…
Fred Astaire performs "One for My Baby," by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, in The Sky's The Limit, directed by Edward H. Griffith. This is the film in which the song was introduced. Robert …
"You cannot write tragedy without a sense of humor; the lack of it produces something turgid and dull. Wit must be the underpainting of all dark writing." Gene Lees, Portrait of Johnny: The …
In today's Wall Street Journal I review four New York shows, Familiar, Eclipsed, Blackbird, and Disaster! Here's an excerpt. * * * Danai Gurira is the zombie-whacking star of "The Walking De…
The James Brown Revue performs a medley of "I Can't Stand It," "If I Ruled the World," "Cold Sweat," "Try Me," "I Feel Good," and "There Was a Time" on The Hollywood Palace. They are introdu…
"I have got to where I should like for my work to be humane, and I do not much care if it even becomes sentimental." Fred Chappell, afterword to The Fred Chappell Reader
My "Sightings" column for today's Wall Street Journal is occasioned by Forest Whitaker's unsuccessful Broadway debut. Here's an excerpt. * * * Forest Whitaker's much-ballyhooed Broadway debu…
"There are already so many artists whom one admires more than he likes. Am I the only reader who finds in the achievement of James Joyce something that is"well, a little obtuse? Who sees Che…
Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic perform the "Scene d'amour" cue from Bernard Herrmann's score for Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo: (This is the latest in a series of arts-relat…
"Good craftsmen are not expressing themselves. They're expressing something outside themselves. In that sense, craft is not about selfhood. When somebody declares to you, 'I feel I have a no…
I'm a middle-aged semi-homebody whose chosen line of work requires me to spend a fair amount of time traveling. I don't do it resentfully (except for the time I spend sitting on airplanes an…
From 2006: I rarely go to classical concerts. It's not that I love the music any less, but over time I've become increasingly alienated from the experience of concertgoing: the noisy audienc…
"It is hate that unites people, whereas love is always individual, rather than collective. To this we may add what immediately negates whatever moral essence the purposes of class struggles …
Vivian Blaine sings "Adelaide's Lament," from Guys and Dolls, at the 1971 Tony Awards. The song is by Frank Loesser. Blaine created the role of Adelaide in the original 1950 Broadway product…
"One of the fundamental differences between extremes of Right and Left is this: in most instances hatred moves the former; fear the latter." John Lukacs, Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hat…
In today's Wall Street Journal drama column I review a Florida show, Orlando Shakespeare Theater's production of a new, modernized "translation" of Pericles. Here's an excerpt. * * * It's th…
Alfred Drake sings "Where Is the Life That Late I Led?" in the Hallmark Hall of Fame TV version of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate, directed by George Schaefer. The musical numbers were staged b…
Men tighten the knot of confusion Into perfect misunderstanding. T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion
"Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us." Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms
Peggy Lee sings Bart Howard's "Fly Me to the Moon" (originally titled "In Other Words") on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1960: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in…
"We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, what the French call his donnée; our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it. Naturally I do not mean that we are bound to like it …
From 2006: Alas, I've found over the years that many people (especially midwesterners, who are trained to say "sir" and "ma'am" and be polite to strangers) become uncomfortable whenever they…
"Nothing has instilled more melancholy in me than the discovery that the number of intelligent men is extremely small." José Ortega y Gasset, On Love: Aspects of a Single Theme (translated …
