dirac

I'm looking at The Golden Notebook on my shelf as I write. For some reason I had thought Lessing was already dead.....I'm pleased she wasn't, and sorry to hear she's now gone. The Guardian

I think the 1941 Waterloo Bridge is a lovely movie of its kind and Leigh is lovely and terrific in it. Obviously not a ballet dancer but she has a neck befitting any Swan Queen. She wanted Olivier to play Roy and got Robert Taylor instead so we can only dream of what might have been, sigh. There's an earlier version of the story with Mae Clarke (best known today for getting a grapefruit in the face, courtesy of James Cagney). I think there have been a total of 3. It's pre-Code and directed by James Whale, but not as interesting as you might think, although Clarke is excellent. Comparing and contrasting the plot line in both pictures is an interesting exercise.

Photo gallery from CNN. Slide 3 is a rather neat color photo taken at the Oscars for 1939, with Jock Whitney (I think), Olivia de Havilland, David O. Selznick, Leigh, and Olivier all looking like very happy campers. And I learn from this that Waterloo Bridge was/is huge in China.

I suspect Filin's lawyer may have deliberately reacted with less composure....

Agree in full. It sounds as if Womack had a tough time after great financial sacrifice from her family and one wishes her the best in future, but allegations of widespread bribery and/or attempts at extortion are not small potatoes and I would expect Urin and Filin to treat them seriously. The Bolshoi has enough problems as it is. If Womack didn't expect any mention of legal action her parents (and any more sophisticated advisors she may have) ought to have done.

Thanks for that link, Dale. You are right, men tend to get a pass in these matters. For a time Tarquin Olivier was much closer to Leigh than he was to his father, and he's always been very kind about his second first stepmother. Olivier was also young and inexperienced when he married for the first time, however - his first wife played for the other team, if you catch my drift. Everyone seems to have ended up on decent terms after it was all sorted out. Which reminds me that I would really like to see the first film version of The Deep Blue Sea again.....

I wouldn't be too hard on her. She married for the first time at 19. Not unusual in those days but still very early and she was not cut out to be a wife and hostess only. Later in life she miscarried several times. Motherhood and a full-throttle career are rarely easy to combine but female stars of Leigh's generation seem to have had it particularly tough. Few of them were winning Mother of the Year awards....

Australian dancer Laurel Martyn is dead at age 97.

I also like That Hamilton Woman. So did Churchill, for reasons that are clear when you see the picture, and reportedly Hitler liked it too. Leigh was also a popular Soviet pinup girl during the war, so it looks as if she had both the Allies and the Axis bases covered.

Sidewalks of London is easily her best early performance, I think, Buddy. And Laughton is very touching. It's a nice little movie.

This week, Vivien Leigh would have turned 100. A happy birthday from PBS. A new exhibit at the V&A Museum. Related.

Thanks, sandik. I haven't yet listened to the whole thing but what I've heard so far is instructive.

The giving of a lecture is indeed part of the deal in receiving the prize. It doesn't have to be made at the ceremony itself but recipients are generally expected to make one at some point. I would think that it would be nice for recipients whose personal circumstances allow them to do so to appear. It's a big award. Too bad. I wish the Committee hadn't taken so long to honor Munro. Maybe this will teach them to get to deserving recipients in a timely fashion.... Pamela, as I remember it wasn't only a question of Jelinek being "too shy" - I have read that she suffers from agoraphobia and related problems. If that's the case, a week of celebrations would be very difficult for her. She did present a lecture, although not at the ceremony, obviously.

What is notable is that the "situations," by and large, didn't explode. In her Balanchine book Moira Shearer pointed out the low levels of jealousy among the wives and lovers in the company. (Which is not to say that jealousy or upset was nonexistent by any means. Tallchief wrote that she'd regarded Le Clercq as a friend and confided her marriage troubles to her and didn't twig to her husband's burgeoning involvement with Le Clercq till fairly late in the game. Le Clercq herself was said to be under great emotional pressure at the time she fell ill.) But the women remained loyal to the master and maintained a remarkable and unusual degree of collective discretion. From what I've been able to glean, Adams and Balanchine were on-and-off before and after Le Clercq's illness and Adams eventually took herself off the menu with marriage. At the time Le Clercq contracted polio her marriage to Balanchine was in serious trouble but perhaps not fatally so, it's hard to know how such things will play out. I suspect Balanchine stayed married to Le Clercq for reasons beyond loyalty, at least until Farrell arrived to fill and then shatter the muses' mold.

The ballet in the movie is choreographed and staged for the camera, like the ballet in "The Red Shoes," which also didn't contain a lot of sustained dancing and had many changes of scene impossible for a theater. It's unsurprising that Wheeldon would want to present his own choreography. As observed previously, it looks as if his leads will be doing an awful lot of dancing..... It also occurs to me that even though Caron didn't sing there's no reason why the new Lise(s) shouldn't -- particularly if they are adding more songs, which is likely.

I thought that was pretty clear in the film -- am I remembering a different movie? The same thought occurred to me, sandik. As sidwich pointed out earlier, Jerry is a war veteran. Lise is younger but she too is a kind of veteran -- she was orphaned by the war and Henri came to her aid (becoming her legal guardian), which is the reason she feels obliged to go through with her promise to marry him. So the movie characters have been through quite a share of "difficult situations." In addition you also have the implied affair of Jerry with the Nina Foch character (Milo), a rich woman "keeping" a poor artist. The relationship is handled frankly for the time. These are fairly dense relationships.

Astaire did choreograph his own material (not the chorus dances, perhaps it should be noted) and usually worked in collaboration - his most famous collaborator being Hermes Pan. I think the only picture where Astaire worked entirely alone was "The Sky's the Limit" (one of his lesser-known titles, but a good movie and not only in respect to the dancing). Lerner & Loewe were writing with a non-singer in mind, however. The Gershwin songs were written for real singers. As sidwich observes, Buddy, you have to take into consideration the long haul of a Broadway run. Only so much dancing you can put in without pooping out the cast, assuming you don't alternate. Kelly and Astaire wouldn't have made it as singers only, but both had pleasing voices, Astaire's being highly regarded by many of the composers he worked with. Kelly was a good actor and regularly performed dramatic and comedic roles.

Yep. I understand the limitations presented by the performance space, but it was still depressing to switch from clips of Farrell and Martins dancing like Olympian deities in "Chaconne" to.....that, although Veyette was charming and the bit was not-bad in itself. I thought it odd that Martins didn't introduce the other dancers in the piece as well, it's not as if there were a dozen of them.

I had the same thought, volcanohunter. We should have seen Perlman do a classical piece. It would have been a refreshing change from most of the rest of the program. I also thought Audra McDonald blew it with her two songs. The first from "She Loves Me" was all right, the second went in one ear and out the other, and neither was ideal for such an occasion.

Ms. Dunkel covers dance regularly for the Inquirer, a once very distinguished paper that's seen all kinds of trouble. I don't think she gets much space as a rule and I don't know how much background in dance she has, but she's done some okay pieces. Still miss Julie Diana in "Diamonds".......

This was broadcast in my area last night I watched the first hour. Apart from Perlman and the klezmer troupe, mostly disappointing. I couldn't help wishing to see more of the artists in the old clips and less of what was actually happening on stage. Did anyone else see it? It should be repeated.

Some nice pictures here, pherank. Thanks.

Fairchild and Cope are cast for the workshop only. No guarantees for the future. The ability to sing and act as well as dance are minimum requirements for the role of Jerry. (I don't remember Lise singing.) I note that Chris Fosse is bringing in Bartlett Sher for "guidance and consultation." Probably a good move.

Nice to hear from you, vagansmom, although the news you report is sad indeed. I've only read The Mambo Kings...., a very special book. He leaves us much too soon. NYT obit.

Interesting. "Cheek to Cheek" has always struck me as an almost ceremonial dance of passion and courtship. For Astaire and Rogers in happy feet mode, I'd select this one. (Note the dance contest context - the other dancers on the floor are not actors but "real people like yourself" as Lily Tomlin used to say, and they're not so bad. Then watch Fred and Ginger turn on the afterburners......