A festive fourteenth for arts•meme! Happy birthday, blog
May
3
2022
Look at Judy Garland. She was different. Not one of the glamour girls. But, oh, that voice. And at fourteen years-old, she was already belting like a torch singer, crooning like a warbler, and cooing like a nightingale. She was even Stompin’ at the Savoy! The happiest of 14th birthdays to you, dear blog. Your ...
New Year’s Eve 2020 with the great Judy Garland
Dec
31
2019
Madam, you are simply the greatest. In fact, you are ‘swell.’ Judy did this witty marvelous number to a song by Irving Berlin, coupled with Fred Astaire, in EASTER PARADE (1948). But she immeasurably upped the performance ante in this absolutely fantastic television rendition. Here it is (we love it) in EASTER PARADE.
Judy Garland plays The Barn
She pulverized the Palace, and made carnage of Carnegie Hall. She slayed in Las Vegas. But you ain’t seen nothing yet … till you see Judy Garland play the Barn. That is happening Wednesday June 12. And we’re going! Garland, known to be a droll wit, made numerous appearances on television in the ’60s that ...
REVIEW: Liza Minnelli, Michael Feinstein enchant at Segerstrom 5
I never saw Judy Garland in performance. I was fifteen in 1969 when she last played in Copenhagen. Now I wish I had gone. But Saturday night, I got a frisson of that Garland feeling, when in a first, I attended Liza Minnelli’s show at Segerstrom Center for the Arts. The legendary singer delivered a ...
Faster than a speeding bullet … Liza Minnelli soon at Segerstrom
That’s how she was marketed, in 1966, by The Persian Room at the Plaza Hotel — as the soaring star that she was. Liza Minnelli, born on March 12, 1946 to Judy Garland and movie director Vincente Minnelli, went on to a very public, very distinguished career as a singer/dancer/actress. We’ll catch up with Liza ...
Judy Garland’s admiration for Gwen Verdon’s husband
Feb
21
2017
Recently researching dance history at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, I came across this nugget from Gwen Verdon. In an interview, Gwen recounted a story with droll wit, Judy Garland once said to me, “Oh your husband has done such a marvelous job!” And I said who??? Because I really did ...
‘Pop’ goes the American Songbook, in Pasadena, under Feinstein baton 1
The Pasadena Symphony and POPS organization practiced what the Chinese call “double happiness” this week, announcing, in one fell swoop, the re-upping of conductor Michael Feinstein’s contract with the POPS (where he started in 2013) and the roll-out of a rich summer menu of American Songbook concerts at their bandshell digs in the Los Angeles ...
Thank you, Gene Allen
Saddened to learn today that the great Hollywood art director Gene Allen, the man who converted director George Cukor’s vision to rich mise-en-scene, died October 7 of natural causes in Newport Beach. Allen, who lived a long life, perished at 97. Yes, Gene Allen, the much hallowed Academy Award-winning art director of MY FAIR LADY ...
REVIEW: Maurice Hines tappin’ to mother’s heartbeat @ The Wallis 1
The act was called Hines, Hines & Dad. But song-and-dance man Maurice Hines, 70, rectified any oversight of his mom, Friday night, as he opened his one-man show powered by personal history, “Maurice Hines is Tappin’ Thru Life,” at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. The touching, classy, and beautifully staged cabaret program, ...
3-D Wizard of Oz at the Chinese 1
Sep
22
2013
We’re pleased to re-publish this wonderful essay by guest writer, Jan-Christopher Horak, Director of the UCLA Film & Television Archive, who first wrote it for his blog at the Archive. * * * Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Blvd. is an iconic landmark of the studio era. Any day of the week you can find ...