dirac

I think it's good news that the book and subject have excited interest for a feature film. I hope Copeland got a nice paycheck for the movie rights. It's always best for a dancer to play a dancer. Given that this will be the story of someone who's still young and in mid-career, it would likely be ideal for her to play herself -- as an adult, of course; I expect there will also be scenes involving a very young Misty. All this assumes that the project comes to fruition in timely fashion, which isn't always the case.

She was played by Hope Davis in the Capote film starring Toby Jones, Infamous. It is an.....interesting book. Slim liked the good life and was unusually candid about marrying into it. Bacall is also very funny swooshing around as Barbra Streisand's mother in The Mirror Has Two Faces.

Hi, everyone. What are you reading this summer? Tell us about it here. I'm revisiting Shelby Foote's "The Civil War," a multilvolume work I like to dip in and out of. (I have it in a collection of smaller volumes, not the three-volume version.) Anyone else?

Williams' widow says he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's:

I guess you could say by marrying Bogart she vaulted instantly upward into Hollywood royalty much as her role model Slim Hawks did by marrying Howard. The guy gets a beautiful young wife and the wife gets a cushy lifestyle and famous friends without a slog through the showbiz trenches first. It had its downsides, as the Guardian article notes. But not the world’s most awful deal, or awful life. Bacall’s style was heavily influenced by the aforementioned Slim, aka Nancy Gross Hawks Hayward Keith, socialite and lifelong friend. Her character in “To Have and Have Not” was named for her, Bacall’s outfits were modeled on Slim’s (and a number of the outfits Bacall wears in that photo gallery (thanks, Kathleen) look very Slim).

Bacall's reputation is really down to two pictures - "To Have and Have Not" and "The Big Sleep." Those are the ones that people generally think of when they think of Bogart and Bacall. She didn’t have much range as an actor, it must be admitted. In those early appearances with Bogart her infatuated leading man handed her every scene and she was well protected by her director, Howard Hawks. She might have been able to assume Davis and Hepburn parts on Broadway, sort of, but to imagine her in those roles on film at any stage in her career is pretty ludicrous. Her initial impact had little to do with acting, of course, so it’s almost beside the point. There just hadn’t been anything quite like her before. Andy Williams did her singing for her in “To Have and Have Not.” Worked splendidly. She was a great natural beauty, too. I saw a couple of photos of her on location in Africa accompanying Bogart during the shooting of The African Queen. She was wearing a bathrobe and her hair was in a towel and she looked stunning. The camera loved her.

Thanks for posting this sad news, PeggyR. After Garner and Williams, this makes three. I hope that's it for awhile. The NYT obit has this tidbit. . More.

A story on Williams' stints performing for U.S. troops. The outpouring of public grief has been remarkable.

Regrettably, Williams seems to have been haunted by some of the same demons who plagued the comedian he most admired and resembled, Jonathan Winters. The two of them appeared on the cable show “Inside Comedy” a season or two ago and it’s depressing to think they are now both gone. It can be difficult for such wizardly improvisational talents to find a niche, but Williams established himself as a major star in both television and film. I didn’t care for many of his vehicles, particularly the later ones, but it’s still an impressive filmography. I’ve always liked Moscow on the Hudson and The Fisher King, the latter of which will now have a special poignancy. He had a great uncredited bit in Dead Again as a defrocked psychiatrist who dispenses advice from a grocery store freezer. I thought he was quite good in the otherwise routine One Hour Photo. And Dead Poets Society is one of those Good-If-You-Like-That-Sort-of-Thing pictures. Williams used to drop in on San Francisco comedy clubs to kibitz and try out new material. Years ago I went with some people from my drama class to a performance of an improv group as part of an assignment -- and Williams showed up. He jumped onstage with the performers and left everyone in hysterics. Afterward he came over to our group and asked us why we were taking notes. We explained. He chatted with us a bit and could not have been nicer, which seems to have been characteristic. Thinking wishfully, I imagine Winters and Williams on a cloud together somewhere, making the angels scream with laughter. I guarantee there won’t be a dry seat in heaven. RIP.

Not really surprising in a way, but even so, holy moley. Some insta-responses. Related. So sorry to hear this. A unique talent.

That's nicely put, mimsyb. True, Buddy, and in that respect a literal side-by-side comparison isn't necessarily helpful. But I don't think anyone expects Fairchild to replicate Kelly's style literally. I hope that Fairchild will make his own kind of impact. He has a boyish openness that's already quite different from Kelly. It is, to me, interesting to observe how Fairchild's classical training lends new accents and emphases to a different kind of choreography.

Things can change when a dancer really focuses on training classically, the way an opera singer who once studied pop music can lose some of his feel for pop style. Quiggin's phrase "sense of the vernacular" was what I was trying to get at (Quiggin just said it better). Kelly studied quite a bit of ballet, but iit wasn't his first dance language, as he would have readily admitted. Good point. None of this may make much difference in the new version of "An American in Paris," which will be staged by a ballet choreographer and danced by two ballet dancers, which may shift the show's balance decisively toward ballet.

Kelly's widow, Patricia Ward Kelly, takes her show on the road. She's been promising a book for years. I wonder if it'll ever see the light of day.

It’s also interesting to see how Fairchild’s intense classical training lends a different accent to his (charming) rendering of Kelly’s choreography (as staged by Woetzel). His feet are distinctly pointed when it’s not really called for, his turns and poses just a shade too precise when they should look tossed off. He could also work on prop use – the hat could play a bigger role here.

Memories from George Chakiris.

Well....those would be big handicaps in an evening-length live show. I add my thanks, Buddy. A charming clip. Kelly, who was such a dedicated proselytizer for dance and ballet, would be delighted.

Thanks for the post, California. Interesting. I think they could have saved themselves a world of hurt by casting a few Asians in the production...... That is a potential problem, and not only in ballet.

There was an earlier book. I don't think it was all that hard to know the general outlines of Curry's ( mostly sad) story, at least for skating fans who followed his career, but that's IMO. Tango-Tango survived to make it into some of Curry's later shows. I would have liked to have seen it live. I tend to like Curry skating Curry best - I think the tape of his Olympic SP to Scheherazade, which he also performed in Ice Dancing and later, is extraordinary in its intensity, such beautiful skating. To this day I don't understand why other skaters bother using the music. (Unfortunately he chose to get an unflattering perm that year, in the belief that it would minimize his slenderness, and it makes him look kind of like Barbra in "A Star is Born," although at least he eschewed her peasant tops.) I still have Keith Money's book somewhere, which has some nice photos of his British skating show. It was during the run of that show that he fell victim to that ghastly mugging. Curry had some awful luck......

Not a lot of new information for followers of Curry’s career, if the Daily Mail article is accurate. The bitterness was evident quite early on and not without reason – Curry had a tough time ascending to the peak of his sport and by the time it happened it was a bit late and didn’t give him much time to do what he really wanted to do. Added to that a troubled family background and personality issues and you got an extremely difficult and unpredictable boss inclined to take his frequent mood swings out on his skaters. Psychiatric help and possibly medication were probably in order but I don’t think he ever sought it seriously. His Olympic LP remains marvelous to see, although it is very evidently skating from another era. Particularly touching because he looks so free and so happy to be out there, which is not always true of other footage I’ve seen. His attempts to impose the structure and ethos of a dance company on a skating troupe were interesting experiments. Possibly if Curry had had a better head for business his troupes might have survived longer than they did, but Iin the long run I don't think the formula would have worked out. At least his skaters did get a taste of working with artists they probably never would have encountered save for Curry’s ambitions. Peter Martins once did a witty little routine for Curry and Jo Jo Starbuck, "Tango-Tango," which is available on the old video of "Ice Dancing." Thanks for the heads-up about the book, Lynette. Should be interesting reading.

No, it wasn't a very pretty vehicle. And of course Ford had to name the car after his son, as if poor Edsel didn't have enough problems.

And a lot of the people who see MMSL now won't realize that she was Arthur Freed's Edsel.

And Yolanda is a terrible character to have to play - for plot purposes she has to be naive to the point of idiocy. Still, Bremer shows little in the way of charm or appeal as an actor and not much more as a dancer. I did like her sister Rose in MMSL.( "I can't handle twenty men alone. I admit it!")

It would be hard to know what to do with McCracken. Her pixie looks are at odds with the brassy voice, she was primarily a ballet-trained dancer but doesn’t have a glamorous ballerina look with her small stature and sturdy legs – not a Zorina or Charisse, and not a waif like Leslie Caron. Sagolla says in the bio that McCracken was offered the role of the older sister in “Meet Me in St. Louis” and turned it down. The role went to Arthur Freed’s “protegee” Lucille Bremer, who wasn’t so bad in MMSL but was notoriously pushed well beyond her limits later on. It’s an interesting exercise to speculate on what-if. Sagolla treats this as a great blunder by McCracken, and as things developed I suppose it was, but the role probably didn’t look so great on paper (Garland didn't want to do the picture either, initially regarding the role as the kind of lovesick teenager part she was then trying to get away from). In the end it may not have made any difference, at least as far as McCracken and Hollywood were concerned. Would have been very interesting to see McCracken and Judy together, though. And McCracken would have had a role in a certified classic film and might be slightly better remembered today.

There are some odd judgments and infelicitous editing choices, but overall Sagolla's bio is a good one. She's stronger on the dance world than on Broadway or Hollywood, but she makes an honorable effort to address all aspects of McCracken's career. Could be. And/or maybe they just didn't see a need or niche for another dancing man. He did a wonderful softshoe to "By the LIght of the Silvery Moon" in Babes on Broadway.

An interview with Anne Olivier Bell, aged 97, the only female member of the team.