Another hundred people just got off of the train And came up through the ground, While another hundred people just got off of the bus And are looking around – ‘Another Hundred People’, Company, Stephen Sondheim The Clock is a New York story, even though the actors never set foot there. Practically everything, from Penn […]
Bread and Circuses: ‘Ben-Hur’ (1925)
No, not that Ben-Hur– the other one. Three decades before MGM’s mighty, Technicolor sword-and-sandal epic starring Charlton Heston, there was MGM’s mighty, black-and-white sword-and-sandal epic starring Ramon Novarro. Both are adaptations of the same novel, Lew Wallace’s 1880 best-seller Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ and, naturally, feature the most magnificent chariot races ever committed […]
Hooray for Hollywood
It’s eight o’clock on a Saturday night: a little girl huddles on the sofa, hands over her eyes, peering at the television. Rod Taylor is caught in a desperate battle against morlocks and if he doesn’t succeed, surely the monsters will break out of their cave to invade her living room. Yesterday she cheered as […]