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Category Archives: movies
Lee Grant
One of the treats about living where I have (and do) on the upper west side is that, walking my dog, I kept (and keep) running into Lee walking her dog. We always stop and swap stories. One time, I … Continue reading
Posted in movies, New York, television
Tagged Ben Gazzara, Kim Novak, Lee Grant, Middle of the Night, Paddy Chayefsky, Sidney Lumet, Tennessee Williams, The Neon Ceiling
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Thoughts after watching THE VERDICT
Just watched The Verdict for the first time since it came out forty years ago in 1982. Sidney Lumet at the top of his game, a perfect damn script by David Mamet (I can’t say how much it owes to the … Continue reading
Posted in Chicago theater, drama, film adaptation, movies, off-Broadway, playwriting, Pulitzer Prize, Second City, Uncategorized
Tagged American Buffalo, Daniel, David Mamet, Duck Variations, Glengarry Glen Ross, Harold Pinter, James Mason, Jay Presson Allen, Julie Bovasso, Lewis Stadlen, Lindsay Crouse, Mike Nussbaum, Paul Newman, Prince of the City, Sidney Lumet, Slap Shot, St. Nicholas Theater, Stanley Richards, The Verdict, Village Voice, W.H. Macy
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Review: “The Visitor”
For about the first half of its 90-minute running time, The Visitor, the new musical playing at the Public Theater based on Tom McCarthy’s 2007 film, works very nicely indeed. Kwame Kwei-Armah and Brian Yorkey’s script effectively translates McCarthy’s screenplay … Continue reading
Posted in drama, movies, New York, off-Broadway, playwriting, Uncategorized
Tagged "David Hyde Piere", "The Visitor", Brian Yorkey, immigration, Kwame Kwei-Armah, musical, My Fair Lady, Tom Kitt, Tom McCarthy
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“Deep in My Heart”–Stanley Donen and Sigmund Romberg
Some years ago, I was at a memorial for a friend who had appeared at the Compass in Chicago. I saw a man standing to the side looking a bit perturbed. Elaine May was attending the memorial and, putting two … Continue reading
Posted in movies, Uncategorized
Tagged Aaron Copland, Al Jolson, Anne Miller, Bill the Kid, Cyd Charisse, Deep in My Heart, Elizabeth II, Fred Kelly, Gene Kelly, James Mitchell, John Travolta, Jose Ferrer, Princess Margaret, Rosemary Clooney, Russ Tamblyn, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Sigmund Romberg, Stanley Donen, Susan Luckey
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“People on Sunday”–a film of pre-Nazi Berlin
Have started reading Joseph McBride’s new book, Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge, which naturally led to my watching People on Sunday, a silent film co-directed by Robert Siodmak and Edgar Ulmer (with assists from Curt Siodmak, Fred Zinnemann and … Continue reading
Posted in Berlin, movies
Tagged Babylon Berlin, Curt Siodmak, Edgar Ulmer, Fred Winnemann, Joseph McBride, Nazis, People on Sunday, pre-WWII, Robert Siodmak
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Men in White, Sidney Kingsley, and Ancillary Thoughts
I recently read Sidney Kingsley’s play, Men in White (1933), and last night I watched the 1934 film adaptation directed by Richard Boleslawski. (Interesting that Boleslawski directed the film version of a work that had been directed on Broadway by … Continue reading
From “Crime in the Streets” to “West Side Story”
Watched a clumsy but fascinating film called Crime in the Streets. It started as a 1955 live TV play by Reginald Rose presented by the Elgin Hour, directed by Sidney Lumet. A young John Cassavetes starred as Frankie, a member … Continue reading
Posted in 1950s TV Drama, Broadway, film adaptation, Golden Age of Television, movies, New York
Tagged 12 Angry Men, Crime in the Streets, David Winters, Dead End, Don Siegel, James Whimore, Jon Cassavetes, Mark Rydell, Reginald Rose, Robert Preston, Sidney Lumet, Street Scene, The Defenders, West Side Story
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Encountering Rose Franken
Continuing to wander through obscure corners of American playwriting, I have stumbled across a forgotten phenomenon. A writer named Rose Franken created a character who appeared first in a series of stories for Redbook, then in a series of eight … Continue reading
Wandering Through History
Sometimes I think of the past as a huge black box, and any time you read a book of history or a biography or a historical novel it’s like shining a concentrated beam of light through that darkness, briefly bringing … Continue reading
Posted in film adaptation, movies
Tagged A World to Win, Alan Brinkley, Amazon streaming, Babylon Berlin, Berlin, Beyond the Fringe, Father Coughlin, FDR, Henry Ford, Hotel Adlon, Huey Long, John le Carre, John Osborne, Labour, Lanny Budd, Meyer Levin, Nazis, Netflix, postwar England, the Beatles, the depression, The Old Bunch, Tory, Traitors, Upton Sinclair, Voices of Protest, WWII
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Jeffrey Sweet--Making the Scene 