Born in 1887 to Jewish parents in Kalamazoo, Mich., American novelist and playwright Edna Ferber was a hardworking, overly modest, frequently self-effacing writer who read the critics too carefully and was too easily wounded by their sloppily-aimed slings and arrows. Convinced, for instance, that no one would want to read her novel So Big, she advised…
Category: Movies, Theatre
Gas lights and radiant stars in Toronto’s old Grand Opera House
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•THIS story, highlighting Toronto’s fabled old Grand Opera House on Adelaide Street, has been reprinted from the Toronto Telegram of 1924. * * * Glamor and Magic of the Great Old Days in Toronto, when Footlights Flickered While Real Brilliance Held the Stage A THEATRICAL SERIES Reminiscences of Thos. H. Scott, Sr., Who Was for…
William Fox: forgotten movie mogul
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•Review of The Man Who Made the Movies: The Meteoric Rise and Tragic Fall of William Fox, by Vanda Krefft Theda Bara (nicknamed ‘The Vamp’), one of Fox’s biggest stars, in a lavish 1917 production of Cleopatra. No known copy of the film survives. From the Canadian Jewish News, 2019 Although his surname appears in…
Broadway’s newest Fiddler is one for the ages
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•Wonder of wonder and miracle of miracles, the new production of Fiddler On The Roof at the Broadway Theatre in New York — directed by Bartlett Sher and freshly choreographed by Israeli choreographer Hofesh Schechter — is good enough to make seasoned theatregoers forget that they ever saw a previous production of Fiddler or…
Judy Holliday, top actress of 1950, had IQ of 172; career all comedy, later private life all tragedy (1965)
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•JUDY HOLLIDAY OBIT, 1965 From the Canadian Jewish Review, June 18, 1965 Judy Holliday, an actress whose professional career was all comedy and whose later private life was all tragedy, introduced the word “couth” to the English language. The etymological creation was part of her portrayal of one of the most memorable of a noted…
THE YIDDISH THEATRES: Three thriving playhouses in the Jewish quarter (New York, 1896)
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•Devotion of Workers in Sweat Shops and Other East Side Hebrews to the Drama – The Productions of the Official Playwrights – Ways of the Yiddish Actors. From The New York Sun, October 18, 1896 New York is the only city in the world where the Jewish stage has achieved anything like prosperity. While in…
‘Bushmeat,’ documentary by Dawna Treibicz (2001)
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•From Canadian Jewish News, October 22, 2001 Bushmeat, an hour-long television documentary soon to air on the Discovery Channel, is a riveting, tautly-edited expose of the illicit trade in gorilla and chimpanzee meat in Cameroon and other countries of Central Africa. Toronto filmmaker Dawna Treibicz defied the odds to make this film about a subject that…
Repentant: A new role for the divine Sarah Bernhardt (1922)
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•From the Canadian Jewish Review, September 8, 1922 It will be remembered that Sarah Bernhardt was born in Paris in 1844 of Dutch Jewish parents and was received into the Roman Catholic Church at the request of her father. She has recently given an interview to Miss Elsie Roow, of the New York Herald, in…
Screenwriting guru Syd Field fades to black
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•From the Canadian Jewish News, February 2014 As announced in obituaries in Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, the New York Times and other publications, screenwriting guru Syd Alvin Field died last November in Los Angeles at the age of 77. It’s been 35 years since Field’s book Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting was first published in…
Meeting Nehemiah Persoff at David’s Deli, San Francisco
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•The rumbling is sudden and loud and the floor vibrates intensely. Yet patrons in this darkened theatre on Pier 39 in the Fisherman’s Wharf district remain calm. And why not? They have paid $7 to attend the San Francisco Experience, a 28-minute multi-media show that promises that “you will feel the earth shake.” Utilizing a…