Showing & telling the difficult: Laura Aguilar @ Vincent Price Art Museum
Sep
13
2017
The wonderful Vincent Price Art Museum on the campus of East Los Angeles College has as its Pacific Standard Time LA/LA exhibit, “Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell,” opening Sept 16, the first comprehensive retrospective of the challenging photographer’s works. A series of talks and community events accompanies the show. This exhibition tells the story of ...
Tales of neuroses from Roz Chast
New Yorker magazine cartoonist Roz Chast has a new book. That makes me anxious. It’s not that I’m jealous. I would be totally fine, but I couldn’t sleep last night. I think the waiter at that restaurant was looking at me funny. Then my neighbors were keeping me up … argh! Chast’s new book, Going ...
To be greedy or not to be greedy, that is The Actor’s Gang question
Sep
6
2017
In the photo, CBS Radio quiz show ‘Strike It Rich’ Program host, Todd Russell looks on as contest winner Joseph Snyder hands out dollar bills to men on a breadline in front of the Franciscan Monastery in New York City. Snyder, a winner of $230, reflected on his own breadline times. Dated: January 19, 1948 ...
Let Anniversary Classics entertain you … with GYPSY
Sep
5
2017
Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 55th anniversary screening of GYPSY, the 1962 film adaptation of one of the masterworks of the American musical theater, renowned for its hummable Stephen Sondheim-Jule Styne score. The film version stars Natalie Wood as burlesque queen Gypsy Rose Lee, Rosalind Russell as Momma Rose, the ultimate ...
Smart, independent, passionate: Jeanne Moreau’s film personae on view in Cinematheque series
Sep
1
2017
Well, I didn’t even know she died. I can be forgiven as my own mother died the prior day. I was preoccupied. Still this eternal artist was not meant to perish. The magisterial French actress, the queen of assertive intellect and a noble sensuality, film star Jeanne Moreau (Jan 23, 1928 – July 31, 2017) ...
Flamenco artist Jesus Carmona to punish new Ford floorboards Sept 8
A great flamenco show is an eyeful. But it’s also about sound—live music, thrilling singers, spontaneous shouts and claps, and scintillating footwork called zapateado. Making that zapateado clatter with further fury at the upcoming performance by Jesús Carmona will be the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre’s new floor. “We wanted a floor that would resonate for ...
Jack Jones: a lot of livin’ (and singin’) to do
Aug
31
2017
Frank Sinatra called Jack Jones, “one of the major singers of our time.” Mel Torme said he is “the greatest ‘pure’ singer in the world.” George Chakiris who himself recorded four memorable albums at Capitol Records recently said, “He has a wonderful voice and he never stopped working on it. The last time I saw ...
Willdabeast to NYT: ‘I’m a beast no matter what’ 1
Aug
27
2017
[excerpted] “People would tell me, you don’t look the way dancers need to look. You’re not tall enough, you’re darker skinned. It’s gonna be hard for you to get eye-candy jobs or Disney jobs.” His response: to bring together “the misfits of the industry,” he said, “and be the example — that I’m a beast ...
Ethel Martin water-dances in Billy Rose’s ‘Aquacade’ 1
From an interview with Jack Cole dancers George and Ethel Martin available on sound recording at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Ethel Martin shares memories of working in impresario Billy Rose‘s famed Aquacade revue at the 1939 World’s Fair. Martin found a way to double her income by performing both as ...
Parks & wrecks: Carlos Almaraz @ LACMA
The ‘Los Four’ exhibition at Los Angeles County Art Museum in 1974 put the local art establishment on notice that a thriving scene was taking place in East Los Angeles and elsewhere in the Southland. The Chicano art renaissance was represented by four artists — Carlos Almaraz, Beto de la Rocha, Frank Romero and Gilbert ...