Archives for 2021

“But I think the secret of playwriting can be given in two maxims: stick to the point and whenever you can, cut.”

Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up

From 2017:

My mother, who grew up during the Great Depression, never quite got over the miracle of canned vegetables. While my family must have eaten fresh corn on the cob at one time or another, I can’t remember our doing so. Most of the corn I ate back then—always with extreme reluctance—was spooned out of a dish….

Read the whole thing here.

“Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that Humour excites in those who lack it.”

George Saintsbury, A Last Vintage

Fredric March appears as the mystery guest on What’s My Line. John Daly is the host and the panelists are Steve Allen, Bennett Cerf, Arlene Francis, Dorothy Kilgallen, and Margaret Truman. This episode was originally telecast by CBS on March 21, 1954:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“To remember everything is a form of madness.”

Brian Friel, Translations

From 2005:

To make it a bit more generally accessible, what music do you listen to when the world is way, way too much with you?…

Read the whole thing here.

“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.”

Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo van Gogh (October 22, 1882)

Miklós Rózsa leads the Pittsburgh Symphony in a suite drawn from his score for Ben-Hur on TV in 1979:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)