Research Catalog

Title

Tales of a theatrical guru / Danny Newman ; foreword by Studs Terkel.

Author

Newman, Danny.

Publication

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2006], ©2006.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xii, 260 pages, 28 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations; 25 cm.

Summary

"In Tales of a Theatrical Guru, legendary showman Danny Newman brings together thirty-three profiles of key arts people he's known during his amazing career, many of them connected with Lyric Opera of Chicago."--BOOK JACKET.

Series Statement

Music in American life

Uniform Title

Music in American life.

Subjects

• Entertainers > Anecdotes
• Singers > Anecdotes

Note

• Includes index.

Contents

Introduction to a whip-cracking american showman's memory montage - covering more than seventy years of backstage and onstage involvements! -- 1. Milton Berle, show-biz whiz, wins $20,000 and I win $8 betting on General Mowley in the eighth race at empire! : the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s -- 2. Good night, Jimmy Durante (and Clayton and Jackson, too), wherever you are! -- 3. Vaudeville headliners Laurel and Hardy return to their roots; also about Roy Rogers, trigger, early-days movie Cowboy Buck Jones, and other show-biz exotica! -- 4. Harry Bloomfield, free-spending ticket-scalper/theatrical producer; the young, idealistic Frank Sinatra; and Peru's Alberto Vargas, painter of the Ziegfeld girls, the Varga girls, and the playboy girls -- 5. Tales of Chicago's all-day, all-night astor theatre and the peerless menu poet Dario Toffenetti next door -- 6. The fantastic sally rand : the 1933 world's fair lady Godiva and her trusty adding machine -- 7. Dynamic Sam Wanamaker from Chicago's West Side : a broadway star, internationally famed director/producer, theatrical force in the west end, and restorer of London's Old Globe Theatre -- 8. Francis X. Bushman, king of silent movies worldwide, earned multi-millions before income tax! -- 9. My romantic 1948 transatlantic call results in a fascinating forty-year, five-continent travelog with actress Dina Halpern -- 10. Russia's tempestuous Madame Eugenie Leontovich : actress, director, playwright, producer, teacher, and great artist -- 11. George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein's perfect partnership -- 12. Geraldine page, a brilliant young actress and casualty of the method -- 13. Samuel Goldwyn (Shmuel Gelbfisz) walks from Warsaw to Hamburg, is a blacksmith in England, a World-Champion Glove Salesman, and wealthy Hollywood producer in America -- 14. Carol channing parlays "diamonds are a girl's best friend" into a half-century career climaxed by her Hello, Dolly?! : mega-triumph! -- 15. Danny Kaye, the all-time great who felt that he must, wherever he was, wow everyone within range! -- 16. They loved me in Scotland (but I didn't love the deathly damp and dreary underheated winters) -- 17. Jan Kiepura, grand opera's high-D specialist, and his wife, the adorable operetta star Marta Eggerth, enchant sentimental audiences everywhere! -- 18. Yul Brynner, macho celebrity, and Dolly Haas, "wisp of a porcelain actress," star in touring Lute Song : thirty-seven days of passionate press-agentry -- 19. Richard Tucker, the great American-born tenor -- 20. Truman, Stalin, and a daring ticket sales strategy for Porgy and Bess -- 21. Audience agape as Don Jose leaves carmen in onstage lurch; cheapskate impresario evades payment -- 22. Ardis Kranik, the apple-cheeked, all-American girl and award-winning savior of lyric opera -- 23. Boyish Bruno Bartoletti joins lyric opera conductors dimitri mitropoulos and Georg Solti in 1956 to become artistic director for four decades -- 24. Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi : two donnas, both prima! -- 25. Giuseppe Di Stefano, Dapper, Dashing Bon Vivant and the tenor darling of opera lovers everywhere! -- 26. Baritone Tito Gobbi, lyric opera's godfather who made the huge civic opera house shrink to intimate size -- 27. Saving Roger Dettmer's life; or, hell hath no fury like a tenor panned! -- 28. The great Jussi Bjorling of the seamless voice (and a bone-crushing arm-wrestler as well) -- 29. Kiril Kondrashin gives puccini lessons, and adventures with the Russians -- 30. Plaicido Domingo : tenor, conductor, impresario, and dominant personality of the opera world -- 31. Paradise lost composer Krzysztof Penderecki and Pope John Paul II -- 32. The great Luciano Pavarotti, faithful lyric opera star, turns "serial canceler" and Ardis Krainik reacts -- 33. Tempestuous, controversial Carol Fox, who against all odds founded lyric opera of Chicago.

ISBN

• 0252031644 (cloth : alk. paper)
• 9780252031649 (cloth : alk. paper)

LCCN

• 2006006966
• 9780252031649

OCLC

• OCM64486697
• 64486697
• SCSB-5299924

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries