So, I didn't know all those horrible events were taking place in the opera. I just remember being thrilled when the gypsies performed "The Anvil Chorus." (lol)
At lunch today, a fellow asked the waitress what she saw in the guy she was dating. "What's so great about him?", he asked. Without a moment's hesitation she replied:
He's always available because he's
1. Kevin Bacon (one word) and Bob Hope (One word from title) + Edward Albert I (one word from title )
Physically he's
2. Joe E. Brown (One word from title) as a Tyrone Power (one word from title)
In business dealings, he's always been
3. Rex Harrison (One word from title) and Leslie Howard (one word from title)
but most importantly, everytime he sees me he says I look
4. Sally Kellerman (one word from title) than Betty Grable (one word from title)
He sounds like quite a catch!
He's always available because he's
1. Footloose (Kevin Bacon) and Fancy Pants (Bob Hope) + Butterflies Are Free (Edward Albert I)
Physically he's
2. Fit for a King (Joe E. Brown) as a Second Fiddle (Tyrone Power)
In business dealings, he's always been
3. My Fair Lady (Rex Harrison) and Berkeley Square (Leslie Howard)
but most importantly, everytime he sees me he says I look
4. Younger and Younger (Sally Kellerman) than Springtime in the Rockies (Betty Grable)
That's what I thought, too. You are absolutely correct, Bree.
I don't have a new question, but wanted to post this great review of Barbara Cook's new show at the Carlyle, from tomorrow's New York Times. If you read all the way to the end, I think you'll know why I liked it.
April 14, 2005
CABARET REVIEW | BARBARA COOK
Welcoming Spring, Recalling Old Friends
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Sidling among the tables at the Cafe Carlyle on Tuesday evening as she entered singing "I've Got the World on a String," Barbara Cook made it immediately clear that her return to the scene of many past triumphs at a time of sorrow was not going to be a wake. With the death last October of Wally Harper, her longtime accompanist and collaborator, Ms. Cook, now 77, lost the musical equivalent of her right arm. At the same time, the recent death of Bobby Short, an irreplaceable symbol of cultural continuity in Manhattan, has left the cafe reeling with uncertainty about the future.
For Ms. Cook, whose magnificent voice has the emotional viscosity of time in a bottle, it would have been easy to wallow in sadness, for no singer pours a richer mixture of wistfulness and resilience into a song. But this performer, whose get-up-and-and-go attitude exemplifies an all-too-quaint attribute called character, wouldn't dwell there.
With her new pianist, Michael Kosarin, and the bassist Peter Donovan, she set out to welcome spring and to remember her lost friends and colleagues in the happiest possible way. Mr. Kosarin's gorgeous, oscillating accompaniments brought a delicate orchestral intensity to the show's few ballads and a high-stepping lilt to its many upbeat show tunes. Only 4 of the 14 songs in Ms. Cook's new show, "Tribute," could be described as seriously introspective.
"I've Got the World on a String," offered as a centennial tribute to its composer, Harold Arlen, established the upbeat tone of her set on Tuesday. Out of a song that is often treated, Sinatra-style, as a rooster's crow, Ms. Cook extracted a deeper message about personal responsibility. "Life is a beautiful thing/ As long as I hold the string," goes Ted Koehler's lyric. "I'd be a silly so-and-so/ If I should ever let go." In more mundane terms, like it or not, we are our own puppet masters, and even in the best of times the power at our fingertips is precarious, held only by a thread.
Mr. Harper was celebrated as a show-tune composer with four selections he wrote with a variety of collaborators, including David Zippel, who supplied the lyrics for the strongest number, the pointedly Arlenesque "Another Mister Right Left." Mr. Short's playful side was evoked in two obscure nuggets, "Nashville Nightingale" and "Bojangles of Harlem," which he had introduced to Ms. Cook; their Southern inflections connected her to her own roots as an Atlanta ingénue.
Three songs from the show "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" paid tribute to the composer Arthur Schwartz, whose rock-bottom romanticism coincides with Ms. Cook's deep-seated core of yearning. Introducing the show's killer ballad, "Make the Man Love Me," she recalled singing it for Leonard Bernstein in her audition for "Candide."
While watching "Tribute," I thought back to the Broadway anthology unleashed on the April 5 edition of "American Idol," whose nine contestants struggled to articulate fragments of songs like "The Impossible Dream," "People," "My Funny Valentine" and "Hello, Young Lovers." The paradox of this toxic singing contest, which is the rough equivalent of the old "Ed Sullivan Show" in suggesting the median level of mass musical taste, is that it has the power to canonize songs, which its clueless judges then go on to treat as stunts in a gymnastic competition that rewards crude physical prowess.
To listen to Simon Cowell dismiss the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic "Hello, Young Lovers" as a "mind-numbingly boring" song that belongs on "a washing powder commercial in 1965" was to hear an ill-willed philistine sneering through a cloud of his own noxious vapors.
The contestants are urged not to be "pitchy" (the program's favorite pseudo-technical word for off-pitch, which they usually are), and are congratulated for their high notes and telegenic appeal. ("I admit I'm falling in love with you," Paula Abdul gushed to one. "When you smile you melt America's heart," she blubbered to another.) The third judge, Randy Jackson, doesn't know the difference between a dude and a "dogg" (his two favorite words).
Let's not kid ourselves: the ascendance of "American Idol," and its turning of music into sports, signals the end of American popular song as we know it. Its ritual slaughter of songs allows no message to be carried, no wisdom to be communicated, other than the screamed and belted song of the self.
Ms. Cook, who gives master classes in how to sing and tell the truth, could talk herself blue in the face to these people and never be understood. What a stunning loss we face.
As always, thanks for posting the article. I appreciate it when you bring interesting articles to my attention!
I can't bear American Idol. The article only confirms my feelings.
But I'm not sure which bit from the end you're referring to...
I can't believe Barbara Cook is 77. I think of her as maybe 50! (but I know better)
GREAT Review, Bree. Thank you for posting it. I sadly agree with the last two paragraphs. Three cheers for Ms. Cook.
But, I must admit that in the days of yore, I really looked forward to The Ed Sullivan Show It was on his show that I saw Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza performing selections from South Pacific, and Julie Andrews and Richard Burton in Camelot, and opera's Richard Tucker, Robert Merrill, Roberta Peters, Leontyne Price, et al.
Looks like that tree in Brooklyn is here to stay, doesn't it?
I had a question, but I lost my notes. I'll try to remember what I jotted down. (lol)
mac, I meant the whole discussion of American Idol.
And I liked the Ed Sullivan Show too (let's not forget it was where the Beatles were first seen in the U.S.)
Hey, I loved The Beatles.
OK, I've got one.
Each of these actors was in a movie that has a link to a certain real-life individual. I do hope I composed this question clearly enough.
Holly Hunter
Joan Caulfield
Peter Lawford
Marilyn Monroe
Danny Kaye
I think you did, but just to be sure: the same real-life individual for all five actors?
I'll compose it a different way.
All five movie titles have a connection with the same real-life individual.
Intriguing ...
I'll work on this after lunch.
Good one!
Each of the five actors was in a movie, the title of which is also the title of an Irving Berlin song:
Always (Holly Hunter)
Blue Skies (Joan Caulfield)
Easter Parade (Peter Lawford)
There's No Business Like Show Business (Marilyn Monroe)
White Christmas (Danny Kaye)
You got it, Bree. I thought you might catch the hint from my usage of "composed".
Do you have a question or would you like me to ask another one?
I completely missed "composed" (unless it had a subliminal effect). Holly Hunter was the most difficult one to get, because at first I couldn't see any song titles in her movie titles except "Home for the Holidays", and I was pretty sure that wasn't written by Irving Berlin. I was about to go search to see if Irving Berlin had written it under a pseudonym, when I spotted "Always"
I'm out of ideas at the moment, so if you have another one ready, why don't you go ahead?
OK, and since I still feel like singing, I composed this one:
Priscilla Lane
Ann Sothern
Lena Horne
Margaret Sullavan (substitute "My" for "The")
Jean Benguigui
Yeah, you and Harold Arlen:
Blues in the Night (Priscilla Lane)
Hooray for Love (Ann Sothern)
Stormy Weather (Lena Horne)
My Shining Hour (Margaret Sullavan)
Over the Rainbow (Jean Benguigui)
I'm trying to think of one, too, but having no success ...
Got one:
Zsa Zsa Gabor
June Haver
Elizabeth Taylor
June Allyson
Robert Young (Change one word in title)
