September 11, 2009
The autumn violins
The long sobbing of the autumn violins wounds my heart with a monotonous
languor...
~ Paul Verlaine's Song of Autumn
Mel is going to be honored in December at the 32nd Kennedy Center Honors Gala (here). Thanks to Tess for the heads up!
An interesting article about Maria and Louise Nevelson here.
Some of you had asked, as I was not clear last time -- yes, I had seen Garbo Talks before, several times, but it had been years since I'd seen it again, and certainly not since 2005. After my recent viewing of it, I'm not sure I will be able to watch it ever again, it's too painful and takes a great deal out of me. What a beautiful film, but it's too close to home, ya know?
I love it when you fannes share such things with me: Paul wrote,
9:44 is pure AB genius...I remember this moment as a child and was blown away...
(start around 8:45)
August 10, 2009
Isn't this the best way you can think of to spend a summer day?
As The Southampton
Review remembers writer and teacher Frank McCourt, here are some great
tidbits for you.
The first video, “The Hug," was the writer describing finding two unexpected students in his memoir class, actors Alan Alda and Anne Bancroft. In the video McCourt exclaimed, “Anne Bancroft - I had idolized her since The Graduate, ever since she showed us that leg. Even though it wasn't her leg." He went on to lament that with these two superstars in the class, he feared “all the oxygen would be sucked out of the room."
....
“Anne and I sat in the back of the class that year and we were both very excited to be there. We both wanted to learn how to write memoirs from Frank. Frank came into the first class and started telling stories. I had my notebook open on the desk and my pen in my hand and I was waiting for him to turn to the blackboard and write down the three indispensable things one needed to know to write a memoir, but he just kept telling stories, they were great stories, incredibly detailed stores. At the end of the class Anne, who was just glowing, turned to me and said, 'Isn't this the best way you can think of to spend a summer day?' I looked at my notebook and the page was still blank and I said, 'That was great, but when is he going to start teaching?'
Alda continued "It was about half-way through the second class that I put the pen down. He was telling a story that was so moving and so detailed that I finally realized that this was the teaching. This is what memoir is, this is how you teach it." Alda went to say that McCourt did indeed give some pointers on memoir writing, but he didn't think he ever used the blackboard. He also went on to speak of the generosity of McCourt, noting that the writer wanted to try to have a piece that Bancroft had written in the class published after her death. (link)
I would certainly love to read Anne Bancroft's memoirs.
This is so incredibly sweet.
Film critic Mick LaSalle sez:
...This is how you know you're getting old: I found Anne Bancroft -- even with the hag lighting inflicted on her -- a lot more attractive than Katharine Ross. The movies stand in place and we keep moving around them.
(more)
Excerpt from Mark Harris' book, Pictures At A Revolution:
"I dated Annie a little bit, long before this," Mike Nichols remembers, talking about casting Anne Bancroft in The Graduate. "She was certainly a beautiful, exciting, wonderful, angry young woman. Which I happened to like. But it took us a long time to think of her." Harris gets inside a paradox, the sometimes random way in which great movie art somehow inevitably happens.
A great read here, about Mel being honored by the Academy last month for his body of work. Great quote:
Of Life Stinks, Lesley Ann Warren recalled the wonderful dance scene her bag-lady shares with Brooks' tycoon-gone-homeless, and how Bancroft was so proud of her husband's fancy footwork she started crying:
And I loved this from the comments section:
The great thing about Anne, besides her transcendent beauty and her being a magnificent actress and a goddess, was that she found "funny" sexier than "sexy."
Interesting discussion thread at Broadway World here... Anne as Mama Rose in Gypsy?? I'd never heard this before. It's an interesting discussion, but I'm not certain we get any new info here (we already know about Funny Girl). I played Mama Rose, it's very hard work, but it's not climbing Everest. If I did it, Anna Maria Luisa Italiano sure as hell could have! Sheesh.
I finally got the courage to sit down and watch Garbo Talks. Oh, I cried my eyes out, it was heavenly.
Well, this is interesting.
Founded in 1953, the National Women’s Division of the College of Medicine has raised, to date, more than $100 million in support of biomedical research and medical education programs at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. The Spirit of Achievement Awards Luncheon, held annually in New York City, has honored individuals in the fields of philanthropy, the arts, business, government and journalism. At its first luncheon in 1954, the honorees included Marlene Dietrich and her daughter, Maria Riva. Among the following years’ roster of honorees were Ruth Bunche, Pearl Buck, Anne Bancroft, Helena Rubinstein, Helen Hayes, Rachel Carson, Oveta Culp Hobby, Gertrude Berg, Marilyn Horne, Lena Horne, Gloria Steinem and the now very-much-in-the news “Queen of Philanthropy,” Brooke Astor.
more
