Tennessee Williams | Tennessee Williams
Jan.01.2013
Revival productions are on tap in 2013 along 42nd Street. The works of Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, William Inge, Frank Wildhorn, and Rodgers & Hammerstein seldom gets tired. Broadway is attracting the star power of Laurie Metcalf, Scarlett Johansson, Mare Winningham...
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Dec.03.2012
"What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains.” - Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
Today is the 55th anniversary of the Broadway opening of "A StreetcarNamed Desire," which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize...
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Aug.16.2012
Does knowledge of the artist affect the perception of the art?
Have you ever watched the superbly crafted horror film “Rosemary’s Baby”? Does your enjoyment of the movie change when you learn that the director, Roman Polanski, was arrested for and plead guilty to statutory rape? ...
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Apr.27.2012
Madeleine Sherwood in Sweet Bird of Youth
Yesterday, I watched Sweet Bird of Youth on Turner Classics, part of their Tennessee Williams festival.
It reminded me of 1982, when I worked as a copywriter at a radio station in Montreal. I guess Tennessee died in 1982, because one of the...
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Mar.07.2012
Nancy and I drove down California’s Salinas Valley yesterday, into South Monterey County, by or through the towns of Gonzales, Soledad and Greenfield, then further south by King City and San Lucas and into San Ardo and Bradley and even into San Miguel in San Luis Obispo County.
Although this is the...
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Jan.24.2012
Book titles are tricky. Sometimes they come to you naturally and easily and sometimes (most of the time) they’re more evasive. John Steinbeck said, “I have never been a title man. I don’t give a damn what it is called.” But I do. I think titles are important.
Tennessee Williams said, “The...
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Oct.15.2011
Some months back I wondered what happened to a portrait of Count Tolstoy by Jean Mannheim I had seen years ago. It has reappeared. A man walked it in through the door a few weeks ago and you can see it on this page.
It shows Tolstoy standing before a darkened forest in a peasant's tunic, his right...
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Mar.27.2011
When the Puritans closed the theaters in 1642, they destroyed a theatrical world we have since come to cherish. With the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, play going resumed but the age of Faustus and Hamlet had come to an end. An artistic community is a living entity and two decades of...
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Oct.07.2010
A VERY SHORT REPRIEVE/Part 4
Like a condemned man I've learned to savor my reprieves. To relish that moment of bliss before my misdeed is punished.
The criminal knows he'll be caught, but wants the champagne and dancing girls. As a kid I lied about my grades so my mother would let me go...
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Aug.14.2010
Continued from Part 1 of Author Gore Vidal and the Sexual Signs of Our Political Times
These biographies on Tennessee Williams proved particularly vulnerable to the blade of Vidal's wit because of his friendship with the playwright, whom he nicknamed "the Glorious Bird." Such intimacy...
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