papeetepatrick

Reeves is never quite intense enough when he's intense (as when he's handcuffed in that one fragment in your montage--just short of going all the way, even in the face--you'd get more with Javier Bardem, wouldn't you?

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2296027392/nm0000849

More primordial, less Pepsi-Lite.

I'm not a Cruise fan, but he's got real fire sometimes--never subtle, but delivers all of it once in a while. Reeves reminds me of dozens of other people, including Jeff Stryker. Occurs to me that sidwich's 'good hit list' might have to do with the director's ease at working with him, though, and his ability to take direction. Probably, not sure.

Edited to add: Watched the montage again. Not 'handcuffed',but rather taken away by those two goons, or whatever the scene is. Net effect for me: goodlooking chameleon, never sexy.

Yes, very malleable face, would have been a good silent film actor, and reminds me of one in particular. Going to see if I can figure out which one, made loads of film, drank a lot and died young. Sort of hybrid of Richard Gere and Tom Cruise and a touch of Harrison Ford, maybe, too, not too much defined personality, so could be a 'blank'--sort that directors love.

Was thinking of Wallace Reid, but not sure if that's a good comparison:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0717468/

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3689519360/nm0000206

Pacino's extravagant and generous good looks make Reeves look a bit like Melvyn Douglas in this shot. It's probably the 'ungiving' aspect to Reeves that appeals to some: From this often follows an always non-reciprocal 'commercial ease' that doesn't necessarily coincide with beauty, but rather more with narcissism (and narcissists can be beautiful, but aren't nearly always.) From this shot, Reeves could definitely give good Gestapo middle management, or any number of twits that Rupert Everett has often been expert at--sort of thing Daniel Day-Lewis maybe used to do. Not like Jean-Louis Trintignant, though. He hasn't any range.

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I quite like his deeply precious wording, like a maiden aunt who's about to suffer a conniption.

lol, it also had an echo of Edward VIII, didn't he say that business on the radio? Don't think that "the woman I love" didn't go over a lot better here in the U.S., where it was just like a bad movie of the period.

Ashton loved her performances of SB, saying "no one had done what she did with that ballet in years. Ashton or Taylor? I know whose opinion I'd credit with weight.

Glad you put that, I hadn't known it.

My statement 'sad' or hers? Because if you or somebody else knows how it can be done in already racially-bristling high schools with the word 'nigger' in it, it's fine with me. I thought there was a serious social problem with this, and that's why this do-gooder type decided to use 'slave', which is just stupid. Obviously, my whole concern is not to change the text. As for reading it in college, I'm sure it's sometimes done, but it has not been done so in that specific way, insofar as it's considered a de rigueur thing for high school traditionally. Most people are not doing 'Twain courses' as a freshmen or sophomore thing, unless it has to do with their major.

It seemed Ms. Moore was both protecting the text and making it possible to prevent chaos in the classroom, which would surely ensue in many cases, lots of hollering and screaming.

Thanks, Quiggin. I expect also that teachers may choose not to teach the book because they don't want to deal with the potential trouble from students and parents who don't get it, an understandable position if not a particularly heroic one.

I was responding equally to your quote here. That's true, but it's mostly understandable, because teachers don't have time to 'be heroic' about one controversial book--esp. in poor urban schools where there are full-time discipline and drug delinquency problems (think the Bronx, where a friend of mine taught for five years and barely got out alive, making every one of her friends miserable during those years as well--she talked to all of us as if WE were her students too, because you spend your whole time defending yourself in some of those slum schools); furthermore they don't know how to if they did, not nearly all the time.

But I'm out of this conversation, and have nothing further. It's important, but not that important. Not everybody even thinks it's that all-important a work, and it's not necessarily a greater masterpiece than all other American literature, even with the plaudits of Hemingway and whoever else. After all, Susan Sontag even expects people to accept that Hemingway is actually 'bad' as though you couldn't argue with it, as though she was somehow authoritative on Hemingway's 'badness', which is as typical of her as it is insane. All you have to do is pick up one of her novels to find out what 'bad' might really be. So if some 'celebrity intellectual' says Hemingway is 'bad' and Hemingway says all American literature, etc., then it's still all just opinions. I don't care that much after a certain point.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/opinion/16moore.html?hp

Ultimately, I agree with this author that this is the only practicable solution: "Huckleberry Finn" does not have to be seen as a high school text just because it has for generations, and it certainly can easily be made into a college text. Lorrie Moore points out that it can't be used in high schools, in fact, because times have irreversibly changed. She also points out things other than the word 'nigger' that are racist on Twain's part, like making fun of Jim because he's a black man. I'd forgotten these things, because I haven't reread for 30 years:

EVER since NewSouth Books announced it would publish a version of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” with the “n-word” removed, reaction has split between traditionalists outraged at censorship and those who feel this might be a way to get teenagers, especially African-American boys, comfortable reading a literary classic. From a mother’s perspective, I think both sides are mistaken.

No parent who is raising a black teenager and trying to get him to read serious fiction for his high school English class would ever argue that “Huckleberry Finn” is not a greatly problematic work. But the remedy is not to replace “nigger” with alternative terms like “slave” (the latter word is already in the novel and has a different meaning from “nigger,” so that substitution just mucks up the prose — its meaning, its voice, its verisimilitude). The remedy is to refuse to teach this novel in high school and to wait until college — or even graduate school — where it can be put in proper context.

Chabon's use of 'negro' is a private thing, and could never be used in public school, especially since it's also considered by now a racist term. These change with generations: 'Coloured people' is not now acceptable, but 'people of colour' is considered proper.

What I love about this interview is the total disregard for protocol or discretion that comes with age, after all the main protagonists are now all dead.

Are you kidding? I don't think he cared if they were dead or not. This is some of the best talk I ever heard. I read it, just like anybody else (if a little more hesitatingly lazily) for the big-name nuggets, but HE is what's interesting. Oh man, this is my kind of guy, natural wit every few phrases or even words, I was practically crying from laughter this guy is so heaven. Perfectly wicked. The interviewer himself peters out a bit in the last 1/5 or so of the piece, surrendering to the boxer, I guess, although I loved Jones's answer 'They didn't get on, did they?' Oh man, this is THE salty guy. Wouldn't even know where to start with such long list of Immortal Sayings, from Ninette's whiskey-drinking (love that photo of her with Turner--made me think of Blackpool, although I've only heard and read about it) and the early 'paedophile teacher' (well, I guess he was worried about her status).

And to think that something so sublime would be linked by one who pimps jedward...

Looked back, these are just inimitable:

She was a strange woman but rather nice. I mean, she used to like East Enders like me. She was Irish of course, and used to drink a lot of whiskey, which we never knew about at the time.

and

So we got on the France, and we were first-class - it was beautiful. But he was there with James Baldwin, the writer, amazingly gay.

and this one the best

No, I hated the army. It was like ballet, actually, but much worse. I became acting sergeant, and we’d get invited to do physical demonstrations. All I had when I left was two demob suits, dreadful things.

A bit like leaving jail.

Yes, it was like jail. You couldn’t run away or you’d be in prison.

papeetepatrick, please understand that my questions about the state of her voice are based solely on her last album; I'd otherwise more or less lost track of her singing career since "The Broadway Album," so perhaps I'm underestimating her powers.

--Anthony

Thanks, Anthony, I just put a hold on it and should have it in a few days, will report back. I imagine that was quite enough to judge on, though, but I'll make sure. In those concerts, everything is enhanced since they are always huge halls, and they have been as far back as the Madison Square Garden. And even so, it was still the unique power of the voice that was apparent: She was NOT like an opera singer in the sense that her voice was kept 'in perfect tune' from practising and regular performing. Most of the sound still was there on the 2006 CD, but the pitch is off more than it used to be even in 2000, and that's because she is not interested in it in a single-minded way, has a lot of other interests, and mostly does those concerts for the money. There's a limit to which I can admire her compared to other great pop and jazz singers, although admittedly her talent is unique--it's just not necessarily 'the greatest', and I think she has been heavily hyped from the beginning (not that the extraordinary potency wasn't there, of course it was). But if there's an obvious difference on the recorded object from what there was on the Broadway Album, that does mean that even with the studio enhancements, the voice has thinned.

I hope she does direct, that's the only way this spectacle will have the full Norma Desmond Effect it surely deserves IF we can get confidential reports of the inevitable backstage world wars.

I hadn't known Mama Rose had sent an agent to his reward by shoving him out the window. I guess that's after the party she attends with 'her daughter GYPSY'. Oh well, if Mama Rose is 'lovable', she is also more of a 'monster' than I knew--she's a homicidal maniac! Did she get jail time? What a horrible person--only Baby June Havoc really did well after all in this dysfunctional family, and she was furious at the made-up stuff and inaccurate portrayal of her by both Gypsy and the show. I recently saw an old 1950's Danny Thomas 'All-Star Revue' on VHS, with a bunch of comedy skits with Havoc and Eleanor Powell, and her early vaudeville technique and timing skills were fully intact as a mature woman--impeccable, as pro as possible. The stripper's main contribution is the musical about the mother IMO. I did see Gypsy in 'Belle of the Yukon' with Randolph Scott, and she is not a great screen presence, to put it mildly.

sidwich's comment about Minelli being a "needy" performer was what triggered my thought, although I think Streisand is different or has another flavor of it.

Normal that we'd perceive these things so differently, but I definitely don't see Streisand as a 'needy' performer like Minnelli. When she's great, as with 'Sleepin' Bee' in the early days and even in the super-rich days (as on the Millenium DVD or CD), she's really great, and sometimes she can even sell me 'Evergreen', which I basically find a repulsively mediocre song. And of course 'Don't Rain on My Parade' as good in recent years as before (I actually like that Millenium Concert quite a lot, including the opening 'Somethin's Coming' with Lauren Frost. Maybe you mean something specific, though, because if she were really needy, I think she would have wanted to perform before a live audience a lot more frequently than she has, and she sure hasn't much. She seems to me to be able to play her audience like a piano, is in total command, there's a total confidence and no 'begging'.

That Millenium Concert also early in the show had Miss Frost as the young Barbra with her own pushy stage mother (not like Mama Rose, but more than I would have imagined; I hadn't known about that). So maybe that's something to draw from. I think it's the same show in which she said 'she had a beautiful voice, my mother--very high, operatic'. I believe her mother had died by then, and had been introduced in the 1994 concert.

I don't believe in the project as an artistic venture at all. It's all about big names, a prestige thing, Big Business, or Patti Lupone is the obvious choice if they really want a good Mama Rose onscreen. She's still got the vocal chops, although I didn't know Streisand didn't till Anthony told us the voice was much lesser--because there's the 2006 concert that also sounds very strong IMO. I did wonder what she was doing with that odd appearance at the Vanguard to 'try out those songs' for that corny-titled album, 'love is the answer', or whatever it was. I have noticed, though, along the lines of what Helene is saying, that in all the concerts going back to the big first one in 1994, the touchy edge has been removed, she's not snooty to her audience at all, and is very charming with them. I have to say I have liked that, esp. since she could sell (in all 3 of them that I've heard) 'The Way We Were' and the rest--even that terrible 'Miss Marmelstein' song from 'I Can Get It For You Wholesale'. I do find it an interestingly strange adventure to hear about, though. But for it to work, she'd need to equal or outdo Merman, and I don't believe she can do that at this age. Just way too old.

Because of the timing of when Cabaret opened in mid 1966 , I wasn't following theater news and reviews, I only went to my first Broadway show late in 1966 . It was a very exciting thing for me and I immediately started going to lots of shows including Cabaret in early 1967. I had heard that the reviews were "mixed" but didn't really know of any specifics. So I was very, very impressed by Haworth as Sally, a bit less so by Joel Grey and disappointingly missed Lotte Lenya as she cancelled the afternoon I went.

Thank you, Richard. We're 'half-identical twins' on some of it, and 'identical twins' on

very, very impressed by Haworth as Sally, a bit less so by Joel Grey and disappointingly missed Lotte Lenya as she cancelled the afternoon I

Yes. She cancelled on me too...but I don't like to tell people about it...I usually smooth over it with 'yes, Lotte Lenya was in it, of course', and then don't specify I worked with Joel Grey in a benefit in 1972, and he was a sweetie.

But the NY critics take on the show was a non issue for me.

Half-identical here, and good for that, because you saw it without prejudice of any serious kind, and I saw it with prejudice, but this was immediately cancelled out by the vitality I saw onstage.

This has always been an important, if seemingly arcane to some, theater memory for me, and this thread has been very meaningful to me in realizing just how much. There was just something so unexpected and unpredictable about Jill (I remember seeing the first ads for it, and thinking "is that really starring the same girl who did 'Karin' in 'Exodus'? No, not possible", I said), and that probably accounts for a good deal of the reaction, positive and negative. I'm sure she was hurt by the singling-out reviews, but forgot all about them when she got out onstage.

Thanks again to all who contributed (and continue, of course, as you care to.)

This is as superfluous as remaking 'My Fair Lady' IMO (which has gotten nowhere but talk of cast changes), and I'm very much a fan of Streisand, at least as a great singer-musician. She's a good lightweight actress, but that's not what makes her great. This is like a big show-biz power-broker project for Laurents, Sondheim, but especially Streisand. Surprised Spielberg isn't involved in this one. Lots don't like the 'Gypsy' movie from the 60s, including Sondheim, but their 'for the historical record' won't erase the earlier one. A 'real historicl record' needed Ethel Merman to begin with, a mistake always made with her except for 'Call Me Madam'.

Of Streisand projects, this one strikes me at first as one of the 'big ego trip projects' like 'A Star is Born', a kind of 'One More Big Thing for Barbra'; although 'Yentl' is one of those, and I think it's good. But I won't see this one. Most of the big B'way filmizations go the Dinosaur Route, like 'Nine'. It'll sell, but I think we've had enough of 'Gypsy' by now, and there are definitely some musicals that actually need remaking--like 'On a Clear Day You Can See Forever' (but theoretically only: No matter who did it, it would have no audience) which is Streisand's most atrocious film, and in which she even sings miserably;and 'A Little Night Music', which could easily be remade (and would have an audience, most likely: This is the one that needs it the most that I can think of right now--and modern actor/singers would definitely be able to get this right. I'd imagine they eventually will remake this.) I also don't think she'd be able to get Momma Rose right as an actress--the other great Momma Roses all have had the ability to project failure and let Gypsy be the 'real star', even though she's not the star of the musical: At the end you do believe Roz Russell when she says '...and her daughter GYPSY!'..no matter how 'drama-queen' and silly it is. Is anybody gonna believe Babs when she says, in response to Gypsy says 'If I could have, I would have', about being a star herself? Same with Lupone, who's had her ups and downs as well. The only highly-visible embarassment I can think of with Miss Streisand is her chasing Andre Agassi around the world, unless you include the 'Fockers' movies. Otherwise, she's always projecting power and an almost sterilized success--and some of it is not good (just think of her version of 'Some Enchanted Evening' on one of the B'way Albums for something really lugubriously florid. Too much of the later work has the same quality as Fitzgerald said of Daisy: 'Her voice is full of money'. This is the case even on pleasant, sensual-sounding things like 'Something Wonderful'.)

And looking over the list of shows that Kander and Ebb collaborated on, it looked to me that their works really, really benefited from the kind of "concept" thing. By this I mean their works seemed to fit into a kind of mosaic of creative components rather than being the clear, primary creative driving force.

And as I already noted I'm not really comfortable with bringing too much "logic" and realism into the argument i.e. that because Sally Bowles is a mediocre singer that it's ok that the actress playing her be a mediocre singer. Things start going down the drain very quickly using that kind of rationalization.

But......

I hadn't listen to Jill Haworth or Liza Minelli sing the title song from Cabaret in a very long time. In Haworth's case, probably not since I last played the LP and I suspect that was REALLY a very long time ago.

I never really liked the Cabaret film all that much. I remember the original show as having a very gritty quality to it, on top of all the other components of the atmosphere, there was a threadbare seediness to it that was romanticized somewhat in the film. And I thought the first time I saw it (and the only time I watched it all the way through) that it sort of petered out.

After listening to the Haworth clip, I dug out Liza [...]

There's no denying she has much more in the way of options as a singer that Haworth does. But Liza makes an meal out it with all kinds of effects. There is climax after climax and really I think she got slightly bogged down in all her own effects.

And her voice was far more softgrained than I remembered.

Haworth is weak as a singer BUT she has energy to compensate for the lack of things like singing in tune. And she drives the rhythms, not flawlessly, but relentlessly and this aids her characterization. As does her slightly clipped diction with a clear accent. (Liza's Sally does not sound like she came from London) And Haworth builds the song to two climaxes, the "going like Elsie" line and then the finale. I think there is a chance here that I was just very impressed at a very impressional age but I still think it's a very effective version of the song. To me Haworth just paints a more vivid picture, not so pretty but more striking, than Liza does.

Richard, I see that our perception on this is almost identical, that's a pleasure when one is a frequently disagreeable person like me. About the only difference is that I did like the film when I first saw it in 1972, but by now, the only thing that really stands out for me as a clear advance is Michael York. Bert Convy (before his game-show host period) was certainly perhaps even more convincing as a callow youth; but Michael York is definitely something of an irresistible smoothie, and is always close to peerless in everything he does IMO.

I would like to ask you, since we were both 'very young' (we don't have to specify, although I think mine's well-enough known), if you were also aware of those crucifying reviews, and then startled to find out that Haworth was 'very impressive'?

Because part of my reason for posting this is that I really don't think I have ever seen such dichotomy between insider and critic, and then (in my case, my accompanying friend's case, and your case, to begin with)between some audience and critic--because it was a veritable crucifixion, made all the more veritably surreal by your very articulate descriptions of the way both Haworth and Minnelli do the title song. I especially like

And she drives the rhythms, not flawlessly, but relentlessly and this aids her characterization

I remember that very evening in 1967, startled at her energy ('relentless drive' is exactly right, I think), and since I was so 'review-conscious' at the time, I recall even wondering why she went ahead and pulled all the stops out after this treatment by the critics--that's a real pro who will do that (and, as Prince pointed out, do it for 2 years after all that). Also

To me Haworth just paints a more vivid picture, not so pretty but more striking,

, agree again, and yet, while Liza is attractive in her exotic way, she's herself not nearly so 'pretty'--not that that matters so much, but that Haworth could find the grittiness looking like that at 21 was pretty impressive as well, and the 'clipped clear diction' is a good point too.

Yes, also, about the 'climax after climax' in Liza's version. When I wrote Monday, I later realized that I didn't remember that much failure to achieve line in that period, and that IS what 'climax after climax' is, each phrase made too much of and not related to the next and previous. This phenomenon was something I noticed when I listened to Susan Boyle's 'I Dreamed a Dream' audition, which I found dreadful--that sounds a little too harsh, but as she started in 2008 and 2009 to record, she was apparently coached some so that the more recent recorded performances come across as more of a single piece, instead of a series of half-connected fragments. But it's more accepted in Broadway to have this 'climax after climax' now, and is even written into much of the music--you'll hear the striving for constant visceral, near-physcial stimulation literally, overt manipulation, in Schonburg, Lloyd Webber, Mencken, and especially in scores like 'Wicked', which even Kristen Chenoweth couldn't cure; it comes across with the same weird bombarding quality that the 8 previews you see in a Cineplex nowadays do, each one of them proclaiming 'you've never seen anything like this before', without, of course, reference to the immediately preceding preview (and they all have 'soaring-sound music' of great self-importance in its sound, to accompany all that extreme aggressive hard sell.) Liza's rendition of 'Cabaret' doesn't have that loudness so much, but it does not have any subtle structure to it, and that it's on film doesn't mean anything--whether Sinatra, Horne, Streisand, Doris Day, and a host of others, songs have been sung in films that are shaped from beginning to end.

I think of Miss Minnelli as a very "needy" performer

Yes, and I thought it worked as such in the late 60s when she'd sing that song I think called 'There Is a Time', it's the one with 'this time, this time, let's don't hesitate', I couldn't find it googling, might be a Brel song. All the desperate histrionics worked in that, I think it was on an old 'Hollywood Palace' that I was very moved by her in a way I never have been since. Her Sally Bowles I liked a great deal when the movie came out, but am less convinced by now.

Very informative on 'concept musicals', thanks sidwich.

Was interested to read that Haworth's affair with Sal Mineo lasted a long time, was still going on after she was done with 'Cabaret'. She said his problems were more due to 'bad money management than his homosexuality' and I remember his murder very well. 'Exodus' isn't a great movie, but it has something. For me, it's mostly for Eva Marie Saint, who I've always found so luminous.

Thanks all for your comments

I think she sounds fresh, it doesn't matter to me with this song, which is serviceable and catchy, but pretty hackneyed (I used to play it in a lot of clubs myself, when I did that sort of thing for money, it always seemed inevitable, although I never thought it was beautiful). It's probably that I'm not a big admirer of Kander & Ebb, not that I dislike them so much as find them rather predictable and unsurprising. She's got some notes that aren't on pitch, yes, so that would matter to me more in Styne, Rodgers, Lowe, and some Sondheim. I thought the best song was 'Tomorrow Belongs to Me', and that's not even meant to be especially originally, but directly derived from Nazi fervour, military songs, etc. Jill sounds like a chippie, which is what Sally Bowles was, or was aspiring to be.

I just listened to Minnelli's version again for the first time in probably 30 years, expecting to be considerably more impressed than I was, but the main thing I noticed was how much less her voice sounded like Garland's than I remembered it--sometimes the vibrato will catch an echo, but the voice isn't as rich as I'd thought. Her phrasing is pretty choppy in this song, there's not much line to it the way Streisand would have made it (even if overdone.)

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2057148928/nm0004282

Gorgeous pic of Francis at her classiest, reminds me a bit of Hope Lange in this one. Liked her a lot in 'Blackboard Jungle".

Postlethwaite brilliant in Terence Davies's 'Distant Voices, Still Lives', an incredibly moving film.

I think Minelli managed to create a believable situation in the film (she'd rather be a queen in this dive than take a chance in a more challenging world)

Minnelli did manage to that, but that's not all the piece needs. She's got a naturally big personality, and had already done the Persian Room before this film--so that was her kind of 'cabaret'. You got the story all right, and Minnelli definitely has her fans, but this Berlin cabaret needed to be along the lines of 'Blue Angel', with a somewhat silly girl, not a diva (by then, Minnelli already was). I'm fine with her doing the movie, but I didn't like it nearly as well as the show, because Minnelli's is still just like a good musical comedy, but the whole production too big for the singular intimacy of that sort of cabaret. The B'way production was like a real cabaret inside a musical comedy, tinkly and cheap and vulgar, but vital--like the old Otto Dix painting. One of the reviewers even called Haworth a 'tin-tongued angel'--he meant it perjoratively, of course, and yet that was not far off exactly what was needed. Musical comedy varies in requiring fine voices or not, whereas opera must always have them; sometimes a B'way show needs a more 'characterful' voice than beautiful, with exceptions like 'Oklahoma' and 'Carousel', which in their film versions, for example, do benefit from the clear trained voice of Shirley Jones, but you have Nanette Fabray in a lot of shows, and Judy Holliday, and those are more 'character voices', as Rex Harrison, certainly, too, just to name a few.

but I wondered as well, how someone that smart could make some really stupid choices.

I never have thought Liza Minnelli seemed that smart, although she's talented and used to be a good singer (the voice is pretty gone when I've heard it in recent years). She definitely didn't seem smart in 'Cabaret', although her songs were effective in their way. I will say that in both show and movie, the 'dive' seems less seedy than the one in 'Blue Angel'.

I liked that photo of Haworth in the Times, she's got a touch of the young Joanna Lumley about her, and from the same sort of background, it seems. I had remembered her from 'Exodus' and 'In Harm's Way'. Strange career. I just saw she did a couple of things at American Place Theater in the late 70s. A wise theater woman I once worked with told me 'these ingenue people have a hard time in life', and I've noticed how true this is over and over since she put the idea in my head. Haworth is a perfect example of that.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/theater/05haworth.html?ref=obituaries

I wish I'd known they felt this way before, and we've talked about 'Cabaret' a lot on here. The way Harold Prince describes what he wanted in Sally--and that he thinks he got--was exactly my experience when I saw this in 1967. The friend who accompanied was just as mystified as I was at the reviews, which seemed grossly unfair then, and now that Prince and Grey have spoken, it just seems as though it was something you either 'got' or didn't. I like esp. Prince's talking about her pluck after being singled out for what comes across as literal scorn like that:

Here's Kerr:

“ ‘Cabaret’ is a stunning musical with one wild wrong note,” Kerr began, later naming Ms. Haworth as the clunker and calling her “a damaging presence, worth no more to the show than her weight in mascara.”

And then:

Harold Prince, who directed the musical, recalled in an interview Tuesday that Ms. Haworth was remarkably steadfast and mature after the drubbing. She played the part for nearly two years and “never laid the weight of that on anyone,” he said. “We just loved her.”

“They underestimated her,” Mr. Prince said of the critics. “Sally Bowles was not supposed to be a professional singer. She wasn’t supposed to be so slick that you forgot she was an English girl somewhat off the rails in the Weimar era. When Jill came in and auditioned, she nailed it right away, walked that line. That’s what we wanted, and that’s what she delivered.”

“She was ‘let’s have a good time,’ ” Joel Grey, who starred as the master of ceremonies in the original “Cabaret,” said on Tuesday. “She had a wild abandon about herself and her life. I understood why Hal chose her. She was so Sally Bowles.”

They're both clearly quite saddened at her rather premature death. I knew two people who knew her, one Broadway actor who was very fond of her as a friend, and another who worked for her in an off-off B'way production in 1989--that was this actress's last performance on stage.

This was a good write-up, and does show that the public (which includes critics, and that is what is most informative perhaps about this particular article) sometimes does not pick up the very things that made something 'work' for its creators; there's a very bold line of demarcation between two worlds of a work described here--the insider and the outsider. Some similar things happened with all the difficulties of the musical of 'The Red Shoes' in the early 90s, and I do recall that, however, even after innumerable conflicts, that those involved in the making of the piece itself, actually thought they had ended up with something workable by opening night; although they may have just been exhausted and not seeing so clearly, because 'The Red Shoes' closed after 5 performances, I believe.

Thanks for that great performance, Miss Haworth. Some of us loved it.

Just finished Harry Mulisch's 'The Procedure'. Irritating for a good long 100 pages or so, then you get the rhythm and it's one of the best novelists of modern times you've got. I only heard of him upon his death a couple of months ago. One of the most prestigious Dutch novelists (if not THE most), and certainly better IMO than Rushdie and as skilled as DeLillo. Really just a brilliant work, and I'm going to read 'Siegfried' now. As I was getting close to the end, I looked at some of the blurbs on the back of the dust jacket, and Updike had called it 'an old-fashioned magnum opus', which I found quite astute (one would expect that, of course); he also said the novel it most resembles is 'The Magic Mountain', which I've never gotten to, and always been told to. There's a lot of Kafka in there, though. The first Dutch fiction I've ever read, and since one of my best friends is Dutch, I think there is something recognizably 'Dutch' in the intricacy of the style, its execution--very sturdy.

Thanks for posting the article, sounds like a most inspired idea, frankly. but with the real stars, not really 'NYCB Lite', except insofar as they have to adjust to small auditoriums and the like.

Ballet Chief Refused Breathalyzer Test

More follow-up from the WSJ -->here.

This one has more specifics. I hadn't known you could refuse a Breathalyzer, so I suppose, in doing so, one balances the advantages and disadvantages of doing so. But there was a 'sobriety test' he took and also what they saw of the car not being under control, so we'll see what the legal consequences are.

It wasn't even serious, it was just that the word 'chick' came to mind as a single word that she had objected to, but that was used in the periodz (mid-60s), and sometimes you still hear it, I imagine. I didn't care if she objected to it enough to make her not like it or even think it's a bad movie; I just think her objection makes sense in terms of 'not liking it', but not that it 'made it a bad movie'. Sure, they're lots of people that don't want to see 'Cabin in the Sky' and all those Hollywood usages of blacks and 'step 'n' fetch it' syndrome.

I probably just didn't see 'Blow-up' as obviously sexist as 'Rififi', which doesn't seem to me to be as obviously sexist as 'Birth of a Nation' is racist. It's difficult primarily with the latter, because we are both saying the Huckleberry Finn is not racist, despite the use of the N-word, whereas 'Birth of a Nation' clearly is (it just occurs to me that you definitely don't see the N-word printed in the subtitles to that film), and yet we know it's a great film, even those who hate it (usually, I'll add; this particular film is perhaps one of those that is deemed so ideologically untenable that it is, among libertarian thinkers, the one that they will just say is worthless, and at bottom, not to be seen as anything worth considering beyond its ideology). I'd say 'Birth of a Nation' is like 'Triumph of the Will', obviously Nazi, but considered even by Jews like Susan Sontag to be the 'greatest propaganda film ever made'. You could be right in the second paragraph, and the professor clearly is not someone of bad will, at least in any obvious way. I don't know if it's credible that they will seek out the original; probably some will, some won't. Unfortunately or not, I'll concede that doing things like this was 'bound to happen'. Probably my only real point (for myself, that is) in this discussion, in regard to Huckleberry Finn, is that if that word means that it can't be taught, then they just oughtn't to teach it. 'Vanity Fair' is full of racism, and the matter doesn't come across very strongly because the words aren't racist in the literal sense. And all sorts of English classics can be read as sexist and racist both. I consider all of it pretty much under the same umbrella Quiggin said with the clever phrase 'neutering history'.

Oh yes, right now, I'm working on some new writing based on one of the old 70s biker films, 'Angels Die Hard'. There is all sorts of class divide between the Angels and the townspeople of Kernville, but although the Angels are made out to have 'hearts of gold', they are quite overtly sexist in their treatment of the girls in the gang. It's even more explicit than the tough guys of Rififi. As you might expect, my fascination with the film is all about the bikes zooming through the mountains in the SoCal light, but I just put this in here because I'd recently been hearing discussions of class in which those in the underclasses are often spoken of by Marxists in particular as 'not guilty' of any of these bigotries, that it's all systemic with the ruling classes' model. This is off-topic, but the specific locus of this is some remarks made by Zizek after the business of the Roma/Gypsies in Frabce upon their expulsion--but that's too far afield. Maybe something can be done with this sanitized Mark Twain, I'm just by nature very suspicious of such things, I guess, and believe classic literature oughtn't to be tampered with.

No, a movie glorifying the Ku Klux Klan and the terrorizing of helpless African-Americans would certainly not go over well today. Some people just lack objectivity, I guess....

For the record, since you have 'cut-and-pasted' (not literally, of course) my remarks so that my thrust comes across differently from what I think it's clear I intended, I would just say that, of course they would not, and they should not. That would not be 'being objective' if they did accept a glorification of Ku Klux Klan, it would be obvious an indulgence in a renaissance of racism. Of course, it may not be that 'Rififi' is really misogynistic, though, in the same sense that 'Birth' definitely is racist, because although Mado les Grands Bras is brutally beaten by Tony, it may be an accurate picture of these 'tough guys', and one does easily and deeply sympathize with Mario's wife Ida, Jo's wife Louise, as well as Mado, if not quite so easily (for the narrative) with Viviane, who is made to seem on the sluttish side (although that characterization might be the very one that is most obviously misogynistic).

This does put me in mind that I think people wouldn't try to suppress 'Blow-up', but really might eventually try to suppress 'Birth of a Nation' and 'Gone with the Wind' even. This kind of thing has definitely been done in other nations and oppressive authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. The issue would be different from Huck Finn in that it's not a matter of young kids in teaching situations of high school classes (frankly, I think high school kids nowadays would be perfectly capable, as you point out, of being able to understand why Huckleberry Finn is not racist, by a competent and serious teacher. Leaving out the 'n-word' might even have the effect of making some of the students seek out original texts, just as one sought out the 'good parts' of sex novels in the old days. We don't seem to need to do that any more, can't imagine why not.)