"It seems that in this country, you’re expected to be a specialist. People get used to you in a certain role in life, and they don’t like you to step out of it. In other countrie…
"We're all forgotten sooner or later. But not the films." Burt Lancaster, quoted in Alain Silver and James Ursini, What Ever Happened to Robert Aldrich?
Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas sing "It's Great Not to Be Nominated" at the 1958 Academy Awards ceremony. (The song was written for them by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen.) Neither man had…
"Whether you like it or not, when you're sixty-two you're fulfilled." Burt Lancaster, quoted in Photoplay (June 1975)
From 2003: I continue to see obviously excited concertgoers shamefacedly sitting on their hands at the very moment when they ought to be raising a ruckus. What’s more, the concert hall…
"I am reasonably happy, providing I keep busy." Burt Lancaster, in conversation with Ernest Lehman (quoted in Kate Buford, Burt Lancaster: An American Life
In today's Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column I write about jazz as a cultural signifier"and how Hugh Hefner's Playboy helped to shape that significance. Here's an excerpt. * * * Contrar…
' My theater-related travel and the resulting deadlines haven't left me with much spare time of late, but I've still managed in the past couple of weeks to consume and enjoy an album and two…
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Kiri Te Kanawa sing "Contessa, perdono," an excerpt from the finale of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), accompanied by Karl Böhm and the Vi…
"Laskell had made a stab at a station he could not usually get and by some luck of atmospheric condition he broke into the recorded Glyndebourne performance of The Marriage of Figaro. It was…
In today's Wall Street Journal drama column I write about a Chicago revival of The Rainmaker and the New York transfer of a very important regional production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. H…
I arrived at my New York apartment last night after a longish stretch of time on the road and found a pile of unopened mail on the dining-room table. Most of it was instantaneously disposabl…
Suzanne Farrell, Adam Lüders, and New York City Ballet dance the last section of George Balanchine's Vienna Waltzes, set to the waltzes from Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier. This perform…
"Unless one is a moron, one always dies unsure of one's own value and that of one's works." Gustave Flaubert, letter to Louise Colet, September 19, 1852 (trans. Francis Steegmuller)
Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wal…
"I care not to be his critic; but if he has learned his business he has still to learn that petulance is not sarcasm, and that insolence is not invective." Benjamin Disraeli, speech, House o…
Joni Mitchell sings "Night in the City" on the CBC in 1967: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.)
"You will have a little after you’ve sold everything, but in a country where every man is what he has, he who has very little is nobody very much. There is no such thing as genteel pov…
I've been reading Elijah Wald's Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties, which came out in July, with fascination and delight. Wald is one of the b…
From 2005: I expect a lot out of the books I read, and when they fail to deliver the goods, I toss them aside with a clear conscience and no second thoughts. Life is so very short"and so oft…
"In all my life, I have never met a single person who could, or would, precisely tell me what he wanted. I am, however, constantly meeting people who tell me what other people want." Artur S…
I reviewed Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s and 1950s, edited by Sarah Weinman, in Saturday's Wall Street Journal. Here's an excerpt. * * * The Library of America, whi…
"The Passing of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle," a 1930 British Movietone newsreel sequence in which the creator of Sherlock Holmes talks about his most famous literary creation: (This is the latest…
"'What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence,' returned my companion, bitterly. 'The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done.'" Arthur Conan Doyle, A St…
In today's Wall Street Journal I report on two out-of-town shows, a Chicago revival of The Price and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival premiere of Head Over Heels. Here's an excerpt. * * * For…