Good morning and welcome to Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise
Here I am in a little adobe house in Taos, an artistic town high up in the mountains of New Mexico, in the American SouthWest. The air is so clear that it almost hurts to breathe (for lungs accustomed to London and New York) and at night the stars are close enough to touch.
Because of surgeries, overwork, and bad planning, this is my first holiday in many years and I’m enjoying it hugely. A dear musician friend is playing his retirement concerts here and a number of us have gathered to cheer him on his way and spend time together in this beautiful mountain retreat.
I’m still connected to the world, however, and to you, so here is this week’s Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise which includes some unusual offerings.
I’m still connected to the world, however, and to you, so here is this week’s Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise which includes some unusual offerings.
A film from the National Gallery is about ways of looking at art through the digital recreation of David Hockney's 1981 National Gallery exhibition ‘The Artist’s Eye’.
I found a documentary about the actor, James Dean, which goes some way towards explaining why this actor, who died at the age of 24, with only three starring roles to his credit, became, and remains, an international icon of the cinema.
Here too are two videos about the writer Truman Capote who would have been 100 years old today. One is an interview he gave to Dick Cavett’s television programme with insights into both his remarkable talent – he invented an entirely new literary genre, the “non-fiction novel” - and his very public downfall when he insulted, in print, the very friends whose relationships he valued most – and a short doc about his greatest social triumph, the Black and White Ball he threw at the Plaza Hotel for those friends.
My championing of Eleanor Powell as the greatest ever dancer in the movies has produced a delicious rivalry among my readers. You wailed in frustration that I ignored the glorious Cyd Charisse so, here, this week, are two movie clips so you can judge for yourselves who comes out on top.
It's Jewish New Year this week, the year 5785, and here is a beautiful new song to celebrate and look forward to the coming year. The music is new, the words are from an 11th century prayer which hopes for the return of hostages. We all hope for that.
All this is available at the click of a button below.
Truman Capote: Answered Prayers
Capote on Cavett
Click here to watch
The Black and White Ball
Click here to watch
Today would have been the 100th birthday of American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, actor, and socialite Truman Capote. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood.
Initially he was known as a short story writer. His sharply observed and carefully crafted stories were published in both literary quarterlies and well-known popular magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Bazaar, Harper's Magazine, Mademoiselle, The New Yorker, Prairie Schooner, and Story.
Capote is credited with the invention of the creative non-fiction genre with his novel, In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences (1965) This “nonfiction novel", as Capote labeled it, was a tremendous achievement which brought him literary acclaim.
In Cold Blood was inspired by a 300-word article that ran in the The New York Times in November 1959. The story described the unexplained murder of the Clutter farm family in their home in rural Holcomb, Kansas. With no advance knowledge of the case or any of the people involved, Capote travelled to Kansas.
He stayed for four years and interviewed everybody with even the most peripheral contact with the family without knowing who had committed the crime. But in January, 1960, the case was solved, “and then I made very close contact with these two boys and saw them very often over the next four years until they were executed….. It was a tremendous effort.”
Capote spent six years writing the book, aided by his lifelong friend Harper Lee, who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird. It became an international bestseller, but Capote would never complete another novel. This and many other Truman Capote works have been adapted into more than 20 films and television productions.
For some time after the publication of In Cold Blood, Capote was the darling of the talk shows. His fey, sophisticated and affected public persona and his high-pitched childlike voice was popular with the audiences and with the interviewers who knew they would get a quotable response from him no matter what they asked him.
The apex of his social success was the Black and White Ball, a party he gave in 1966 at the Plaza Hotel in New York which was the social occasion of the year. There’s a link to a video about it above.
His friends were the cream of New York society who adopted him as a kind of mascot until he came a cropper in 1975 by publishing an article in Esquire, the first chapter of his forthcoming and as-yet unfinished novel, Answered Prayers.
This was the catalyst of Capote's social suicide. Many of Capote's circle of high-society female friends, whom he called his "swans", were featured in the text, some under pseudonyms and others by their real names. It revealed the dirty secrets of these women, and aired the "dirty laundry" of New York City's elite.
As a result Capote, now drinking heavily and unable to finish the works he had been commissioned to write, was ostracized from New York society and from many of his former friends. Predictably, overnight he became a pariah in the circles that were most important to him. From all accounts, he was unable to understand why the Grande Dames of New York society had abandoned him.
Here is one of those television interviews, recorded in 1978 with Dick Cavett, which demonstrates that wit which made him such a favourite with talkshow hosts and audiences in which he discusses his fall from grace. But, as drink and drugs became ever more present in his life, the wit deserted him along with nearly all his erstwhile friends.
Re-Curated | Hockney: The Artist's Eye
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This a really wonderful film from the National Gallery about ways of looking at art through the digital recreation of David Hockney's 1981 National Gallery exhibition ‘The Artist’s Eye’.
National Gallery experts Daniel Herrmann, Curator for Modern and Contemporary Projects and Lead Curator, Susanna Avery-Quash retell the story behind the exhibition and its paintings.
The exhibition celebrates Hockney's lifelong relationship with the Gallery, the film bringing the story up to date, in the Gallery’s Bicentenary year, with insight into the forthcoming 2024 exhibition Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look.
This film is part of [Re]curated, a series of virtual exhibition recreations and films from the National Gallery exploring how digital tools can help us unveil exhibitions from the past, for both research and enjoyment.
Beyond the Image: The Legendary Life and Career of James Dean
70 years ago today, on September 30 1955, the American actor James Dean died in a car crash. He was just 24 years old. With only three films, and a career that lasted for just five years, he had made an indelible impact on the cinema that resonates to this day. James Dean was a rare original.
I came across this documentary about him which gives some insight into how that came about and thought you might find it interesting too.
Powell v Charisse
Click here for Charisse
and
Click here for Powell
A delicious rivalry has emerged among my dance-mad readers following my assertion that Eleanor Powell was the greatest movie tapdancer of all time, Fred Astaire included. Outrage in the ranks! What about Cyd Charisse?, you cried. Surely she was more beautiful, more elegant, more smooth, more balletic, and had better legs? Well, yes, she was all of those things.
But she couldn’t tap, her technique wasn’t up to a extended solo and, perhaps most importantly, she always had to have a male to lean on – Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly or a whole passel of fake boxers.
Eleanor Powell was more athletic, more complex, more acrobatic, more technically accomplished, could carry a long solo sequence on her own, choreograph it herself, and not even be breathing hard at the end. And there was nothing wrong with her legs either. As a dancer, Powell is in a class by herself.
On a scale of gorgeousness and charm, Cyd Charisse has it, no contest. And she’s no slouch as a dancer. She used her long limbs and beautiful line to give her choreographers the best moments of their lives. Here is a clip of some of her best dance numbers.
And I can’t resist giving you yet another clip of the great Eleanor Powell for comparison purposes even though you’ve had two in recent weeks. This time she’s brought a friend.
Bring Them Home - Acheinu – WLS
Click here to watch
It’s New Year, 5785, the start of the Jewish New Year, and I wish all of my wonderful readers, Jewish or not, Happy and Healthy 5785.
My New Year wish includes this beautiful original song. It has new music by Abie Rotenberg and ancient words from the 11th century, Acheinu, a 1000-year-old Jewish prayer for hostages.
The message is simple and heartfelt - Bring Our Hostages Home.
The are the performers are the choir and musicians of West London Synagogue, our four Rabbis, and the four hostages the congregation has adopted to emblemise the plight of those still held by Hamas since the atrocities of last October 7th 2023.