American comedian Gilbert Gottfried, whose most celebrated role was the voice of the parrot in the Disney movie Aladdin, brought his quirky brand of stand-up humor to Canada recently (1997) for two sold-out shows at Yuk Yuk’s Comedy Superclub as part of the Toronto Comedy Festival. Gottfried responds to the audience’s welcoming applause by pleading…
Tag: American
Conversation with Red Buttons
by •
As he prepares to bring his recent smash Broadway revue to Toronto, stage and screen veteran Red Buttons, who is 76 and lives in Los Angeles, joked that he was contemplating taking French lessons just in case the Yes side won the Quebec referendum. “I might even bring my wife along, and introduce her as…
Politically incorrect and loving it
by •
Jackie Mason, who performs his one-man Broadway show in Toronto on Monday Oct. 7, 1996, says he was ordained as a rabbi but was laughed out of his first synagogue in Weldon, North Carolina, in the 1950s. “As far back as you can go, they were all rabbis in my family,” the celebrated stand-up comic…
Drabinsky protects Showboat with legal action
by •
Entertainment mogul Garth Drabinsky has filed a legal notice of claim against the Ontario government after learning that the provincial Anti-Racism Secretariat allegedly funnelled $200,000 to various groups that were part of an organized campaign to stop the musical Show Boat from opening at the North York Performing Arts Centre in October 1993. “They have…
The making of Ragtime the musical
by •
Last week in Toronto (1996), arts journalists were given an exclusive first peek at four stage numbers from Ragtime, the musical-in-progress that Livent Inc. is developing from the best-selling 1975 novel by E.L. Doctorow. Given that the show isn’t set to open at North York’s Ford Center until next January, the pieces seemed surprisingly polished.…
Grace Paley, Ariel Dorfman, Thomas Keneally at IFOA
by •
Numerous writers of special interest to the Jewish community appeared recently at the Harbourfront International Festival of Authors, Toronto’s pre-eminent literary event. Their presence insured that Jewish themes were well represented. American Jewish writer Grace Paley, interviewed publicly by Toronto newspaper columnist David Lewis Stein, spoke engagingly about art and politics, the two activities to…
The art of magazine profiles
by •
The New Yorker or Maclean’s Magazine: which has perfected the art of the magazine profile to a higher degree? Magazine lovers will recognize that the question is rhetorical and doesn’t require an answer. After all, it was the New Yorker that invented, about 1927, the modern intimate journalistic essay we recognize as a magazine profile.…
Rill’s thrillers
by •
“I write to entertain, I don’t write to preach,” said Eric Rill on a recent visit to Toronto, during a publicity tour (2004) for his latest book, The Innocent Traitor (Georgetown Publications). A former top executive in the hotel industry originally from Montreal, Rill’s first novel, Pinnacle of Deceit, a political thriller, was a surprise…
Blurb about ‘Times Square Rabbi’
by •
Proferring an eight-step program for recovery based on the teachings of Maimonides, Rabbi Yehudah Fine prowls the mean streets of Manhattan, seeking young people to redeem from their chosen hells in his book Times Square Rabbi (Hazelden). Fine’s gritty, true-to-life realism rings completely true — and it is: this is a non-fiction account of the…
The Family Orchard, family history novel
by •
Nomi Eve, author of The Family Orchard, has taken sections of her family history, as supplied to her by her father, a genealogist, and used them as the foundation for a novel that spans two centuries and the familiar Jewish terrain from Eastern Europe to the land of Israel. As she advises, references to actual localities…
