2,374 stories by "Terry Teachout"
I rejoice to report that the amazing John Douglas Thompson, who is currently starring in the American Conservatory Theatre's production of Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, has been nom…
Spike Jones and His City Slickers perform their version of "Cocktails for Two" in a 1945 theatrical short. Jones plays the bartender: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos t…
"The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February." Joseph Wood Krutch, The Twelve Seasons
In today's Wall Street Journal I review a show in Sarasota, Florida, Asolo Repertory Theatre's revival of Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness!. Here's an excerpt. * * * It's one of the American …
"Emeralds," the first act of Jewels, a three-act plotless ballet by George Balanchine. This act, set to the music of Gabriel Fauré, is performed by St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Ballet. The so…
"Attack is the reaction; I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds." Samuel Johnson (quoted in James Boswell's Life of Johnson)
My Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column (which now appears every other Thursday) is occasioned this week by Alicia Kopfstein-Penk's Leonard Bernstein and His Young People's Concerts. Here'…
Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant More learned than the ears. William Shakespeare, Coriolanus
I think it's fair to say that most people think of me as a highbrow-egghead type whose tastes in pop music are meticulously consistent with his tastes in the other arts. For this reason, I t…
Ethel Merman sings Cole Porter's "I Get a Kick Out of You" on NBC's Texaco Star Theater. She is introduced by Milton Berle, the host. Merman introduced the song in the original 1934 Broadway…
"She could never rid herself of the sense that unhappiness was a state of disease"of suffering as opposed to doing. To 'do'"it hardly mattered what"would therefore be an escape, perhaps in s…
Chicago's Court Theatre announced yesterday that its critically acclaimed production of Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, will extend its run through February 14 "due to overwhelming de…
From 2006: The age of mechanical reproduction, alas, has sharply diminished the value of the eyewitness account: I saw Count Basie in concert a half-dozen times when I lived in Kansas City, …
"A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he's not a man of action. It is as if a tennis player before returning a ball stopped to think about his views o…
Satchmo at the Waldorf opened in San Francisco last Wednesday. I flew back to Florida's Sanibel Island and my beloved Mrs. T early the next morning, having spent the preceding eleven days bo…
Baby Laurence does a tap-dance solo on an episode of The Hollywood Palace, originally telecast on ABC on September 26, 1967. This is one of the few surviving telecasts of Laurence's dancing:…
"Mark this well, you proud men of action: You are nothing but the unwitting agents of the men of thought who often, in quiet self-effacement, mark out most exactly all your doings in advance…
In today's Wall Street Journal drama column I review the Broadway premiere of Richard Greenberg's Our Mother's Brief Affair. Here's an excerpt. * * * I didn't have high hopes for "Our Mother…
Carl Perkins sings "Blue Suede Shoes" on The Perry Como Show in 1956: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.)
"The worker puts his life into the object; but now it no longer belongs to him, it belongs to the object." Karl Marx, "Alienated Labor"
"Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar." Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
John Douglas Thompson and I will be talking about American Conservatory Theater's production of Satchmo at the Waldorf (which opens tonight) on KQED's Forum. The program will be broadcast li…
Sid Caesar, Nanette Fabray, Howard Morris, and Carl Reiner perform "Gallipacci," a parody of I Pagliacci, on Caesar's Hour, originally telecast by NBC on October 10, 1955: (This is the lates…
"Unless one is already smitten with the author, one reads diaries, journals and collections of letters in search of small dazzlements or points of irritation." Patrick Kurp, "'I Would Rattle…
From 2006: I woke up this morning at nine-thirty, an hour later than my normal get-up-and-go time. As I descended from the loft in which I spend my nights, it struck me that I had nothing wh…
