Posted on 01/25/2018 4:51:01 PM PST by Captain Peter Blood
There’s a place for Steven Spielberg, and apparently it’s on New York’s Upper West Side in the 1950s. A casting call has gone out for a remake of “West Side Story,” written by Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner, author of Spielberg’s terrific “Lincoln” screenplay and, of course, “Angels in America.”
It’s a pro-forma casting call because, in the end, the new “West Side Story” is going to need stars. Big names. And because of the setting and the time we are in, it’s going to need actual Puerto Ricans or Latinos for the parts of characters like Maria, Anita, and Bernardo. There will be no fudging this in 2018. The casting call says in capital letters: MUST BE ABLE TO SPEAK SPANISH.
(Excerpt) Read more at showbiz411.com ...
I hope that you've now learned a much needed lesson.
As you now know, I do NOT take kindly to being excoriated, insulted, and impugned; nor, BTW, do I accept those things being done to someone I hold in high esteem.
I loved Oliver Twist as a book and Oliver! as a movie musical. For me, there will never be another Fagin as good as Ron Moody.
Yes, you worked in these summer stock theaters. Summer stock/straw hat has also gone the way of the dodo! So sad. Even people like Barbra Streisand started out that way. And let’s not forget Marjorie Morningstar!
Glad to know you’re a Louise fan. I’ve adored her since I was about 18 when I saw a photo of her. A very fine writer as well as a great actress and dancer. I’ve been lucky to see some of her American movies at Film Forum in Manhattan. Many people, sadly, can only see her German and French classics. One of the greatest beauties of the 20th century.
It's times like this, that I wonder just WHY I even bother to post my wee history lessons, on various topics, here. I'm NOT "showing off", as I have been accused of doing, nor putting anyone else down. I'm just trying to share knowledge, which I hope that might interest/help others, who may not know what I've posted.
And unlike some others ( far too damned many ! ), if I don't know much or anything at all about a topic, I'll ask a question/s or just read a thread...hoping to learn about that topic.
Well, keep posting because I enjoy them. It is only on popular arts threads that people get accused of “showing off.” You don’t see that on technology threads or weapon threads. Only on threads that start out about movies. It is because in America the arts are held in such low esteem as is a good liberal arts education. How many times have I been attacked by someone with an engineering or technology degree for writing that an art history class should be mandatory??? Art history encapsulates the history of the world but try telling that to someone who writes computer programming?
A CHRISTMAS CAROL, OLIVER TWIST, and DAVID COPPERFIELD are probably my most favorite Dickens' books, though I have read all of books, most several times over.
And we did the same thing ( search out special places ) for SHERLOCK HOLMES, on our first trip ever to London.
And then, there was our pilgrimage to dear Schwenck's home, Grim's Dyke, where this rabid Gilbertian shed tears, looking at the place where he drowned, trying to save a young girl in the troop.
Just want to say I love both of your posts on this thread. It is on my bucket list to one day see as much theatre as I can. I have no time to be a patron but it is my dream. And of course I grew up surrounded by the entertainment industry.
Yes, you’re a Hollywood baby! Not too shabby, Yaelle. You’ve got the Ahmanson Center there where they bring in tons of theater from around the world. I saw Michael Crawford in Phantom there many years ago (my brother loathed it!) But a beautiful forum.
NP might be interested to know that I once saw a musical about Lord Byron at the Henry Fonda theater on Hollywood Blvd (I think) starring DEREK JACOBI. Dear Derek, who could not sing, sang for two hours straight - even during the curtain call as I remember. I almost choked to death I was laughing so hard at the awfulness of it all. Not to many people saw that dog and some may think I’m making it up. But I’m not.
Yes, I’ve walked up and down Baker Street, lol. As a huge fan of Marie Belloc Lowndes’ brilliant novel, The Lodger, I’ve walked up and down north London looking for Mr. Sleuth’s (Jack the Ripper) lodgings.
Oh, and you know all the G&S places while I’m an ignorant bastard! But at least I got to see poor John Reed, exiled from his English home to the Upper East Side of Manhattan, in Pinafore!
As great an actor as Ron Moody was, and he was...not only in that role, Alec Guinness' Fagin is historic.
The movie is great; however, the stage play was a marvel and if not the first ever, one of the very first to use a revolving scene, on stage, to change the place of action. And seeing it in London, was magical!
Do you like any other books by Dickens?
Holy cow...MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR! I LOVED both the movie and the book, as a teen and was just thinking about trying to get a DVD of the film. :-)
I "found" her through the movies on channel 9, as a teen. IIRC, her name was also mentioned in a book about...hmmm...maybe the dance group Dennis-Shawn, that I read when I was perhaps 15 or so? Anyway, yes, I've seen her films and she was ravishingly beautiful, as well as a a great actress and dancer.
I think there was an episode of Frasier about something like that. An ancient stage hero who had lot all his skills... the Crane boys had produced his comeback... so funny.
I love that my last 2 kids both are at schools at have a huge arts focus. I do feel that the arts are as important as the sciences.
How true...it's ONLY on threads about movies or paintings or books, that some people "feel" that "opinion" takes pride of place over FACTS; sadly. :-(
Sadly, the theatre is now crap. :-(
The David Lean film is superb. American film censors cut some close ups of Guinness because they thought it verged on the anti-semitic. What is left is not. And he was only in his late 20s! What an actor.
Ron Moody is very good - I saw him in a revival in the late 70s in London. In his last years, he seemed to go off the rails and claimed HE wrote the musical and Lionel Bart simply stood by as a stenographer, lol. He also wrote that the great Georgia Brown was a monster. She may have been but, Good Lord! What a voice. I still cry at her torchy rendition of As Long as He Needs Me.
I’m off to dinner now! I could talk about this stuff forever.
It does make me sad. I knew even if I had the opportunity to see the Book of Mormon I wouldn’t go. One of my dear friends is Mormon and I don’t think plays should mock religions, even religions one doesn’t like. There are too many other subjects to write about.
I have a friend here who spends 3-4 weeks every year in NYC just going to broadway plays. How fun that would be.
Alec Guiness was great for sure but of course the movie he was in was not a musical. What I loved most about Ron Moody was his true lovableness as Fagin and his incredible dancing. He was not a young man when he was in the Oliver! movie, and yet he nimbly danced and leaped like a 20 year old.
The other day one of the cable channels showed the nonmusical remake of Oliver Twist with Ben Kingsley as Fagin. It was very good. But it seemed to me Kingsley was clearly inspired by Ron Moody in his interpretation of Fagin.
I haven’t read a lot of Dickens, but I have read Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations, that is all.
I am a HUGE fan of musical theatre, even bad musical theatre LOL. I am also a huge fan of Renaissance art, have been to Italy six times to see the antiquities and museums. In particular, I love Michelangelo, Botticelli, Giambologna, Bernini and Samartino.
By the way I have a master’s degree in engineering and I have been a professional engineer for 33 years. Without engineers, there would be no civilization as we know it. But without artists and musicians, civlization would be a darker, sadder place.
I am laughing my socks off, now at the thought of dear Derek trying to sing! *guffaw*
See, Yaelle...you DO have theatre there to! :-)
I am Roman Catholic, and I really don’t get a lot of things regarding Mormonism.
But on principle, I will NEVER go see “The Book of Mormon,” a musical based on demeaning, ridiculing and insulting a particular religious faith.
This thread is the quintessential turning lemons into lemonade. I’ve enjoyed talking to you and Yaelle. I’m preparing dinner and trying to figure out what movie to watch tonight. We couldn’t find West Side Story in our basement and ended up watching Fiddler on the Roof last night. I had forgotten Jerome Robbins did the choreography for the ecstatic and moving “bottle dance.” And there it was in all its recreated glory! Mazel Tov.
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