The air is like a draught of wine.
The undertaker cleans his sign,
The Hull express goes off the line,
When it’s raspberry time in Runcorn.

Noel Coward (1899-1973)
On With the Dance, ‘Poor Little Rich Girl’

ARE THE STARS OUT TONIGHT?: Yes, and most of ‘em are working on and off Broadway. Liev Schreiber and Scarlett Johansson are currently in

JOHANSSON: room for A View

rehearsals for the revival of A View From The Bridge, still regarded in some circles as Arthur Miller’s most passionate drama. They start previews right after Christmas, then open at the Cort Theatre on Jan. 24 … Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury are the hot-ticket duo in the revival of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music down the street at the Walter Kerr Theater. Previews start tomorrow night, less than three weeks before their Dec. 13 opening … Emmy Award winners James Spader and Richard Thomas are already in previews for David Mamet’s

ZETA-JONES: opening tomorrow night

new sizzler, Race, directed by Mamet himself, for a Dec. 6 opening … veteran New York broadcaster Pat Collins calls her the funniest woman on Broadway, and audiences must agree, because Carrie Fisher’s one-woman show, Wishful Drinking, originally slated to close Jan. 3, has been held over another two weeks, to Jan. 17… Victor Garber will celebrate New Year’s Eve, then go right into previews for the revival of Noel Coward’s Present Laughter, set to premiere Jan. 21 at the American Airlines Theatre … 2001: A Space Odyssey alumnus Keir Dullea, who actually worked with Noel Coward, will return to Broadway this spring in a revival of Robert Anderson’s

SPADER: Race card

I Never Sang for My Father. Years ago Dullea and Coward co-starred in a London-made thriller called Bunny Lake Is Missing. After shooting a difficult scene together for director Otto Preminger, Coward turned to the young actor and chirped, “Keir Dullea, gone tomorrow!” Happily his ad-lib was not prophetic … and Tony Award owner Matthew Broderick has taken his act off-Broadway. He opens tonight at the Acorn Theatre in Kenneth Lonergan’s The Starry Messenger, about an astronomy teacher’s affair with a younger woman.  Academy Award nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full of Grace) plays the younger woman to Broderick’s married academic.

SMITH: backing B'way newbie

ANOTHER OPENING, ANOTHER ADOPT-A-SHOW: It took volunteer executive producers Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry to put Precious on the map — and did they ever. Now Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter and Will & Jada Pinkett Smith have become first-time Broadway producers, putting their considerable showbiz weight behind the new Broadway musical Fela! which opens tonight at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre after a month of previews. Directed and choreographed by Bill T. Jones, Fela! portrays the extravagant world of controversial music pioneer and Afrobeat legend Fela Anikulapo-Kuti in a hybrid of concert, dance and musical theater. Will audiences buy in? Stay tuned … and Tony winner Susan

BRODERICK: opening tonight

Stroman will direct the first-ever production of The Scottsboro Boys, an unproduced Kander & Ebb musical, off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre. The show will begin previews on February 12 and open on March 10. The Scottsboro Boys explores the infamous Scottsboro case of the 1930s, in which a group of African-American teenagers were unjustly accused of attacking two white women, and the boys’ attempts to prove their innocence.

And yes, it’s a musical.

TOMORROW:

Fangs for the Memories.

Edward Woodward in The Wicker Man

Mike Collett-White – HollywoodReporter.com

Nov 16, 2009. LONDON (Reuters) – British actor Edward Woodward, best known for roles in 1973 cult classic “The Wicker Man” and U.S. television series “The Equalizer,” died Monday aged 79.

His agent Janet Glass said the veteran of stage and screen had been ill for several months and passed away in hospital surrounded by members of his family.

“I knew him a very long time and he was a superb human being,” Glass told Reuters.

“That integrity shone through in the roles he played. I can’t ever remember, in all the productions he undertook, anyone having a bad word to say about him and he never had anything bad to say about anyone else either.”

Woodward played police sergeant Neil Howie in occult thriller The Wicker Man, a story of his search for a missing girl on an isolated island.

Edward Woodward

The movie, famous for its final scene in which Howie is burned alive, also starred Christopher Lee and Britt Ekland.

That part came in the wake of his appearances in the British spy series “Callan,” Woodward’s big breakthrough into television and movie acting.

In the series, which ran from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, Woodward played a rebellious British secret agent in a role that echoed his most successful U.S. venture, playing Robert McCall in the hit 1980s show The Equalizer.

The show won him a Golden Globe in 1987 for best performance by an actor in a television drama series, although according to the BBC, the actor regretted making The Equalizer because of the toll it took on his health including a major heart attack.

Woodward also earned acclaim for the 1980 Australian film “Breaker Morant,” about the murder trial of a lieutenant serving in the Second Boer War.

As well as on-screen success, Woodward was a proven singer and stage actor, and was singled out by Laurence Olivier to appear in the title role of a National Theater production of “Cyrano.”

According to Glass, Noel Coward also chose the actor to star in the Broadway show “High Spirits,” the musical version of “Blite Spirit,” and Woodward recorded 12 solo albums.

The actor’s final on-screen appearance was earlier this year in the popular British soap opera “EastEnders.”

Woodward is survived by his wife, the English actress Michele Dotrice, and four children — one by Doltrice and three from a previous marriage.

Amazon Specials!

He had eight last night. His desire for Johnny Walker black label with two ice cubes (certainly no more, occasionally less) had been nagging all day. It wasn’t a sloppy binge because he forgot his dignity and self-control somewhere between #5 and #6. Truth is, he hadn’t had more than one or two together for almost a month and he’s supremely suspicious of any habit, even sobriety. Besides savoring the smokey taste, it was an accessible way to stick it to the man, or men, guzzling watermelon vodka with raspberry what? And his body needs, even craves the sickness and ache in the lowest pit of his stomach, and the associated disorienting spins are together the closest form in which he experiences the concept known as “masochism.”

Of course the following morning’s purification process is equally ritualistic and unplanned to meet the pain. Today it is as follows:

Walks as upright as possible to the nearest STORE 24 with a stack of ones. Amasses a cache of Arnold Palmer Half and Halfs. Lines them up on the counter with the images of A. Palmer all facing out. Methodically pops open every last top with great satisfaction. He wonders if this will be enough to last him till the afternoon. 

Amuses himself with abstract and witty quotes from short plays by Noel Coward to restart his own creative process: “Some women should be struck regularly, like gongs.” and “Extraordinary how potent cheap music is…” while remembering that urban vernacular (“see them ice, see them cars”) over a heavy beat on the 2 and 4 can make a home-schooled white boy want to sway his skinny hipbones. 

Compares the tragic virtues of Ophelia and Juliet over BBM and decidedly favors the side of Ophelia. Sure they both die for love on the surface. But Ophelia dies alone, crazed, distrusted, senseless. Juliet simply gets too much play. Pun intended. 

Washes himself with the soul of Odetta and wonders in awe at her bark and moan. Fantasizes about locking up Creed and Godsmack and forcing them to listen to Odetta sing “Waterboy” on repeat until they stop pretending to cry because they’re rocking so hard. Pearl Jam is over, let it go. 

And this entry must end – he’s out of Half and Halfs. -AR

From the Tripped over Something Interesting department, filed under You Learn Something New Every Day:

Loelia Ponsonby

A website most of us, I suspect, would have little reason to visit is David Patrick Columbia’s New York Social Diary. It’s exactly what it sounds like — Mr. Columbia reporting on what happened at parties he’s been to, and what people in his orbit (and, presumably, the reader’s,) are doing. I’m sure it’s interesting stuff for its intended target.

His latest column will be of interest to James Bond fans. Through a chain of associations, Mr. Columbia comes to reflect on a person considered to be one of the Bright Young Things in 1920s Edwardian society: Loelia, Lady Lindsay, a.k.a. Loelia Ponsonby, wife of the 2nd Duke of Westminster, a.k.a. James Bond’s secretary in the Ian Fleming novels Moonraker and Diamonds Are Forever — yes, that Loelia Ponsonby!

In real life, she definitely did not need to work as a secretary. As Columbia writes,

Loelia Mary Ponsonby was born on Feb 6 1902, the only daughter of the courtier Sir Frederick Ponsonby, later 1st Lord Sysonby. ‘Fritz’ Ponsonby was assistant private secretary to Queen Victoria, King Edward VII and King George V, and wrote Recollections of Three Reigns.
Young Loelia once occupied the lap of Edward VII and amused His Majesty by seizing his beard and demanding: “But King, where’s your crown?”

Noel Coward and Ian Fleming were mutual friends of hers; Coward wrote the forward to her memoirs, while Fleming immortalized her in popular fiction as 007’s secretary. (Mr. Columbia mistakenly writes of her as the inspiration for M’s secretary, the famous “Miss Moneypenny.”) Sharp-eyed readers might also infer parallels between the story of her ruined marriage, and Fleming’s tale of a similarly toxic relationship, “Quantum of Solace.”

The whole story is included in his report Cooler but far from chilly for mid-November, and will add just a little bit more to your store of James Bond knowledge.

Most books I’m fine with checking out at the library. Then there are some books I must own. There is no real criteria, but I would imagine one would be the ability to find repeated enjoyment out of it. A book to occasionally show a close friend after a glass of wine. With that, I MUST have Poisoned Pens. I’ve alluded to it twice this week and after reading the review, I’m sure it needs to be with me. (The Telegraph reviews it with a book about literary hoaxes, which would interest me, too.)

As The Telegraph notes, Gary Dexter, the editor of Poisoned Pens keeps his examples at mutual authoricide.

The result is a particularly articulate catalogue of spite and spleen that becomes, when the focus shifts from the page to the person, a real bitch-fest. De Quincey goes for Wordsworth’s legs (‘not a well-made man’); DH Lawrence calls Jane Austen an old maid, and Charlotte Brontë, having written Jane Eyre, a pornographer. However, when Noël Coward says of Oscar Wilde, ‘what a tiresome, affected sod’, you can’t help thinking ‘takes one to know one’.

It is a delight to read Martin Amis at his most destructive because his ability to pinpoint the negatives in an author’s work amounts to criticism of positive value: ‘While clearly an impregnable masterpiece, Don Quixote suffers one fairly serious flaw – that of outright unreadability.’ His annihilation of Michael Crichton’s The Lost World is a masterpiece in itself: ‘Animals … are what he is good at. People are what he is bad at. People, and prose … Out there, beyond the foliage, you see herds of clichés, roaming free.’ It is entirely in keeping with the spirit of his enterprise, and very wicked, for Dexter to end with Tibor Fischer’s wounded, scalding fan letter to Amis himself: ‘Shoot me if I ever produce anything like Yellow Dog.’ No doubt Mr Amis has his imaginary rifle at the ready.

Telling Tales by Melissa Katsoulis and Poisoned Pens by Gary Dexter: review – Telegraph

WELSOCH chi’r stori sy’n honni bod y rhai sy’n cael eu geni o dan arwydd Y Saethwr yn y Sidydd yn ddwywaith yn fwy tebygol o fod yn llwyddiannus ac yn enwog na’r rhai gafodd eu geni o dan yr arwyddion eraill.

Lle mae’r prawf? Wel, beth am Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, a Scarlett Johansson. Hefyd, Donny Osmond, Jenny Agutter, a Jermaine Jackson, brawd Michael.

Wrth gwrs, mae’r stori’n honni bod “ymchwil yn dangos” mai hyn yw’r achos. Mae’r geiriau yma’n fêl i newyddiadurwyr. Maen nhw’n rhoi sylwedd i’r stori. Wedi’r cwbwl, dyma i chi ymchwilwyr gwyddonol yn cyflwyno tystiolaeth.

Wel, dim cweit . . .

Mae’r stori am lwyddiant Y Saethwyr yn dweud mai dim ond 100 o enwogion oedd yr ymchwilwyr wedi eu astudio. Fawr o sampl. A dim ond mymryn llai nac un allan o bob pump oedd wedi eu geni o dan arwydd Y Saethwr.

Ond yn fwy arwyddocaol, roedd yr ymchwil wedi ei gwblhau gan y sefydliad gwyddonol uchel-ei-barch hwnnw, y “Cartoon Network”. Wel, dyna chi: prawf digonol, bownd o fod!

Mae straeon fel hyn (straeon: “mae ymchwil yn dangos”) yn abwyd i bapurau newydd a chylchgronnau. Ddiwrnod wedi cyhoeddi’r stori yma, fe gyhoeddwyd erthygl nodwedd ar yr un pwnc.

Unwaith eto, defnyddiwyd y ffaith bod “ymchwil yn dangos”, ac “ymchwilwyr wedi darganfod” i roi bôn braich i’r stori, i’w pharchuso.

Ond dyw’r ffaith mai sianel deledu i blant gyhoeddodd yr “ymchwil” ddim yn cael ei grybwyll o gwbwl yn yr ail stori.

Felly, beth sydd wedi digwydd ydi bod yn datganiad hwn – mae’r rhai sy’n cael eu geni o dan arwydd Y Saethwr yn fwy tebygol o lwyddo – wedi dod yn ffaith, yn dystiolaeth, yn ganlyniad “ymchwil”.

Mymryn o hwyl, medda chi? Wel, ella. Ond yn anffodus, mae yna neges go ddifrifol yma. Mae’n dangos sut mae tystiolaeth yn cael ei gamdrin. Bydd yr “ymchwil” yma o hyn allan yn cael ei fesur ochor yn ochor ag ymchwil go iawn. Ac os ydi ymchwil sy’n profi, er enghraifft, bod rhyw feddyginiaeth yn gwella salwch yn cael ei dderbyn, pam ddim ymchwil sy’n dangos bod Y Sidydd yn gallu mesur llwyddiant?

Dwn i’m pam dwi’n cwyno, cofiwch. Dwi wedi fy ngeni o dan arwydd Y Saethwr. Taswn i’n aros rhyw fymryn, ewadd, ella y bydda innau’n ymuno efo Bruce Lee, Noel Coward, Ronnie O’Sullivan, a gweddill Y Saethwyr, yn ffurfafen y llwyddiannus. Wedi’r cwbwl, mae o yn y sêr, yn tydi . . .

“A gentleman never offends unintentionally.” Oscar Wilde

“It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.” Noël Coward

I had a dream that I was trying to provoke someone I know into showing some authentic emotion, because he’s always too nice to be real. I think I tried to smash up some of his stuff but to no avail, he just wasn’t getting the hint. In the end it was “me” that had the problem with anger and he was “so glad to have been able to help”, as if I was the one needing therapy! So patronising! So frustrating! And in my own dream too!

That reminds me of a discussion I had on a message board I was involved with, talking about how rubbish the state of the world is. People were leaving positive yet realistic comments saying “It’s bad but we’re trying to do something about it.” I felt positive, it felt like it was going somewhere, and then someone said something that just deflated the whole thing, something that finished off the conversation like a soggy balloon. It’s like a seed had just started to grow but was quickly crushed underfoot by someone that didn’t see it (from henceforth I shall call them BigBlindFoot).

So I got angry (on purpose), making a very sarcastic comment in response, which was invariably misunderstood by others as something unreasonable and even insulting. I even got a mild warning from the moderator (I have a little celebration when I get one of those, it means I’ve got somewhere near to the truth! hehehe) I wasn’t trying to start a flaming war, honest! My intention wasn’t a random explosion of anger but a conscious attempt to provoke some intense, yet constructive, discussion; anger that blows away cobwebs and brings focus to an otherwise random or deflated mess.

On the Internet? You must be joking! BigBlindFoot didn’t even respond, either they were intimidated by what I said (unlikely as they consider themselves a Warrior! RAAAH!!!), or they were hiding behind the shield of misunderstanding that others had created for them, or their comment was a Hit and Run comment, which they just left there for others to pick up the pieces. After my “explosion” I went into reasonable diplomat mode, which neutralised my earlier comment as I saw I was going nowhere except into a deeper hole.

I hate it when I make an impassioned comment and it doesn’t get answered (grrr anger grrr). I’ve noticed that when I write a response that is particularly clear and strong in meaning and feeling, people somehow “lose” the energy to respond, so they don’t respond. I get the feeling that sometimes what I’ve said is so accurate and to-the-point (on no! But I can’t say that, that’s conceited *gasp* shock-horror!) that people can’t find any way to disagree and yet they don’t want to agree, so they “conveniently” stay silent on the subject. Or if they do respond it’s a flippant joke used to deflate any potential seriousness and if I (rightly) get angry at that it’s because I “lack a sense of humour.” The Internet is a rabbit warren that houses some slippery inhabitants, I warn thee!

And then of course discussions are usually “played” like a round of opinion-tennis, comments go backwards and forwards but no one gets anywhere. It gets going and then ends when the balls drops because all people are trying to do is get points for being “right” or “wrong.” That’s how I perceive the nature of most (but not all!!!) message board discussions, where casual comments are preferred over sustained dialogue. But that’s only to be expected in large group settings where dialogue intent is often diluted. (Sometimes it’s funny (haha grr haha, oh I’m laughing, grr) to get a comment that is COMPLETELY out of context, because someone that doesn’t “get” what I’m talking about and instead picks on one little irrelevent detail).

One-on-one, now that’s usually interesting and it often goes somewhere! There’s a feeling of something being built, of a relationship growing from it (like the seed metaphor from earlier). The discussion’s energy is focussed, its evolution is clear yet organic, and usually not a random mess. Honest anger is not misunderstood or taken out of context but fuels the conversation in a positive way, if properly focussed.

Still, the chaos of some message boards is entertaining and educational. It’s a place to experiment, to learn how people tick and how many different ways I can be angry without breaching too many limits (oh what sport!). But wouldn’t it be nice if dialogues could grow, flower and fruit instead of just appearing and disappearing. I’m sure it must happen… somewhere…

So what now? These wise words were spoken to me once; light the blue touch paper and stand well back!

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be” [Socrates].

We’ve heard it since we were children. “Honesty is the best policy” [Shakespeare]. Were you aware the quote continues, “If I lose mine honor, I lose myself”?

I’ve been wondering if honesty is still the best policy?  Does anyone care if they lose their honor? Or lose themself?

I’m just asking because I see so little of honesty these days.

What I do see . . .

- Politicians who say they love their families but stash lovers across town or around the globe.

- Deceptive lending that has brought the housing industry to its knees.

- Small print. Long disclaimers. Full page apologies.

- Neglected safety procedures. Misplaced documents. Pleading the fifth.

- Big proposals. Multi-million dollar lawsuits. Bait and switch.

- Fact finding missions. Special prosecutors. Testifying before Congress.

- Falsehoods instead of facts. Corruption instead of conviction.

We nonchalantly read the stories and listen to the reporting, and with a bite of toast and a sip of coffee, we begin another day in paradise.

Where has all the honesty gone?

And why aren’t we more enraged at its absence?

Perhaps, we’ve become so accustomed to fraud and deceit, that Ponzi Schemes and corporate corruption and government  bailouts have *yawn* lost their ability to outrage.   “It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit” [Noel Coward].

Maybe honesty is “out of fashion” like gas guzzling cars, 8-track tapes, fur coats, and Tiddlywinks.

I hope not.

Honesty isn’t always easy, and at times it can be more costly than cheating. (I know this to be true from personal experience.) But I really like what Dr. Seuss said,

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.”

Regardless of what is being asked, or who is asking, or how it is asked, the correct answer is, simply, an honest one.

“The trite saying that honesty is the best policy has met with the just criticism that honesty is not policy. The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy” [Robert E. Lee].

Whatever you are, be a good one!

Deanna

In the darkest gloom of 9/11, in those days when it seemed like everything was collapsing – the stock market, the job market, the American infrastructure, my ability to pay my rent – in the short, short days of a Seattle winter when it seemed the world was coming to an end, day after day I remember going to work following not Survivor (for reality TV was a new thing) but rather NPR’s nightly reporting on the implosion of Enron, the company that seemed single-handedly responsible for the ruin of the American energy market, for the blackouts in California and the sudden huge surge of costs for tiny cities in Northwestern Washington.

I’d watched my industry, the dot coms, go belly up in a huge Tulip Madness balloon – but what was this Enron mess? Day after day the personalities played out over the radio like a strange soap opera told in three minute increments, a story that finally ended in jail and death … and, if I’m not mistaken, a sentence that actually allowed someone to alternate “being out of jail time” with his also guilty wife so their kids could have at least one parent raising them … yet somehow didn’t result in anyone being shot by stockholders or the thoroughly betrayed and ruined employees of this corporation. It seemed to almost be at the level of a Greek tragedy, a corporate scandal that was more than just a few lined pockets and a quick flight to Brazil, rather a Trojan Women-style tale of a civilization utterly destroyed.

For me, the concept of Enron seemed completely sensible. We had the larger than life figures (Mama Rose!), the great brought low – why not give it a score and toss in dance numbers? The whole thing was so ludicrous it deserved to be turned into something we could all laugh at. This thought in mind, I managed to (barely) get a seat some two months before it opened at The Royal Court (even that early there was hardly anything but obstructed view for a matinee) and was quite eagerly looking forward to seeing the play despite still suffering from a most persistent lung infection.

As it turns out, Enron is very much a theater piece driven by personalities and plot, with just a few surreal moments thrown in. The key drama is the relationship between arrogant industry climber Jeremy Skilling (Samuel West, rising nicely from newb to player to pathetic has been with delusions of grandeur), brilliant lady executive Claudia Row (Amanda Drew, perfectly capturing the Texas blonde in all her complexities), and Skilling and desperate math genius Andy Fastow (Tom Goodman-Hill, believably pathetic). Somehow their own desires to do well in their careers make them both look normal (and easy to relate to) while also believably blinding them to any ethics considerations about their behavior. Their various moments of desperation are all sharp and full of drama – although the arc of each of their stories peaks at different times.

The intervening explanations of how Enron was truly built on a house of cards (or empty boxes) and just how energy deregulation served almost immediately to bring down the power grid in California are interleavened in such a way as to be very much digestible, both easy to understand and important to the story. Of course, it helps that a lightsaber fight is used to illustrate the California debacle, serving also to emphasize they way the real life traders actually treated the whole thing as a game, despite being directly responsible for the deaths of many people.

Two and three quarters of an hour later, dancing mice, tame velociraptors, and Siamese twin bankers were feeling almost normal, proving that creating a fantasy world that seems a representation of reality isn’t really that difficult. Enron convinced heaps of people that it was a going concern that actually made money by selling nothing and telling people they were making a profit; it’s not really all that much different from many of the financial scandals going on today. In fact, with its core of hubris, it’s a tale that transcends its historicity just as easily as John Gabriel Borkman did. Plus: lightsabers! In short: it was a good night out and I recommend it.

(This review is for the matinee performance that took place on Saturday, October 3, 2009. Enron the Musical continues at the Royal Court through November 7th, 2009, but is about as sold out as it gets. It transfers to the Noel Coward theater January 16 – booking is now open, fyi. A better review is here)

Another quiz, I’m afraid.

Try to guess which politician, or, failing that, the politician from which party, answered thus to a question posed by a reader, apparently, in today’s Independent.

Q – Which [Conservative/Liberal/Socialist] philosophers do you most admire?

A. – I don’t have a favourite [C/L/S] philosopher as such and prefer to listen to a broad range of influences … So, for example, I am a fan of Malcolm Gladwell’s books (“The Tipping Point”, “Blink”), which tend to study human behaviour and have interesting things to say about what motivates us and how we make judgement calls.

This is, of course, Grant Shapps, Conservative Housing Spokesman – couldn’t be anyone else really, could it?  Or could it?

* From ‘Private Lives’ by Noel Coward.

A fraud’s life: New books on forgers raise provocative questions about the connections between authenticity and genius

Louis Bayard / Salon

All artists begin as forgers. They hear a chord progression, they see light splash on a canvas, they feel the pull of someone’s sentences … they fall in love. And it becomes the most natural thing in the world to write or draw or compose like the objects of their devotion.

Traditionally, this rite of passage is understood to be both necessary and necessarily brief. Growing up in the early years of the 20th century, for instance, a young painter like Han van Meegeren was expected to mimic the old masters as closely as possible, but only so that he could absorb their accomplishments and, one day, surpass them. What van Meegeren eventually realized — to his chagrin, probably — was that he was a much better artist when painting as someone else. So began one of the most audacious careers in the annals of art fraud, a journey superbly etched by Jonathan Lopez in his absorbing history “The Man Who Made Vermeers.” Taken together with Lee Israel’s eccentric affidavit-memoir, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” the book raises provocative questions about the links between authenticity and art. Is the “true” better than the “false”? Can art ever spring from a lie?

Han van Meegeren didn’t set out to be a forger. A small but elegant man with “a theatrically large presence,” he paid his dues in the art world: went to the right schools, courted the right figures. His original work was considered solid enough to merit two solo exhibitions, and his pencil drawing of young Princess Juliana’s pet deer (not as twee as it sounds) was widely admired and reproduced. During the 1920s, he made a fine living as portraitist of rich Dutch children.

But with his lifestyle demanding ever-larger infusions of capital, he struck up an apprenticeship with an art-world operator named Theo van Wijngaarden, who had devised a gelatin-glue medium that would simulate oil paint without dissolving under alcohol. (The alcohol test was then the most common tool for detecting forgeries.) Equipped with this new technology, van Meegeren soon began painting “previously undiscovered” variations of Franz Hals classics like “The Laughing Cavalier” and “Malle Babbe.”

But he found his truest fit with another old master. For a forger like van Meegeren, Johannes Vermeer had the advantage of being both highly fashionable and deeply elusive, with few works to his name and large gaps in his oeuvre. By recycling panels and canvases from period paintings, van Meegeren was able to create “new Vermeers” so persuasive and unimpeachable, they fooled some of the world’s most esteemed art appraisers.

Two of his earliest forgeries, “The Smiling Girl” and “The Lace Maker,” were acquired by Andrew Mellon and were still hanging on the walls of Washington, D.C.’s National Gallery well into the 1950s. In 1944, no less an eminence than Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering acquired the bogus “Christ and the Adulteress” (“the masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer of Delft,” declared one art historian) for an unheard-of 1.65 million guilders, roughly $1 million. Goering hung the painting proudly in his country estate, and when Allied soldiers began closing in, he wrapped the canvas around a stovepipe and gave it to his wife’s secretary, telling her she “would never have to worry about money again.”

Van Meegeren, too, was well above financial worries. By war’s end, he was one of the wealthiest men in Amsterdam, the owner of 57 properties, including a garage and a hotel, as well as countless jewels. “If van Meegeren had strolled into a bank vault with a wheelbarrow and a shovel,” writes Lopez, “he couldn’t possibly have walked away with more money than he made selling fakes during the war.”

That wealth, coupled with his history of trading with the enemy, made him hard for liberation forces to ignore. Imprisoned by the Dutch government as a Nazi collaborator, the wily van Meegeren soon found a way both to confess and to expiate his crimes. In a flash of inspiration, he re-created himself as “a misunderstood genius who had turned to forgery only late in life, seeking revenge on the critics who had scorned him early in his artistic career.” As for his dealings with Goering … far from impeaching him, they added to his appeal. Who couldn’t love the little guy who had swindled the big Nazi?

And so, against all odds, van Meegeren became a folk hero. In 1947, a Dutch newspaper poll ranked him second in popularity only to the newly elected prime minister and just ahead of Prince Bernhard. Although the state confiscated much of van Meegeren’s assets and sentenced him to a year of prison, he died without serving a day of his term. His mythos, meanwhile, lived on — until later generations of scholars began to uncover disquieting facts about him.

It turned out that van Meegeren was no amateur forger but a lifelong profiteer, as well as a Nazi sympathizer who received direct commissions from the occupying government and who gave generously to Nazi causes. In 1942, he dedicated a book of his drawings to “my beloved Führer in grateful tribute.” Even his later Vermeers, as Lopez’s astute analysis shows, bear elements of the Volksgeist that figured so prominently in Nazi-approved art. The paintings seem almost calculated to erase the gap between 17th century Holland and 20th century National Socialism.

Van Meegeren, in the final analysis, was “a truly brilliant fraud,” but Lopez believes he paid a large price: “He allowed an essential part of who he was, the genuine artist, to wither on the vine. It was a Faustian bargain, one whose consequences included a chronic drinking problem, a failed first marriage, and a series of tawdry affairs.”

Well, don’t discount tawdry affairs unless you’ve tried them. At any rate, the moralistic equation Lopez introduces here — between good conduct and good art — is more than a little simplistic. And it begs the question: If van Meegeren had never been a forger, would he have become a great artist? Not according to available evidence. Aside from his society portraits, his early work is derivative and drab, and the paintings he actually signed in later life — a Nazi allegory called “Arbeid”; a 1942 painting of a Dutch pianist imbibing the spectral influences of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt — are howlingly kitschy. One suspects that that van Meegeren had to lose himself in order to find himself.

The same trajectory can be seen in the not-so-cautionary true story of forger Lee Israel. The author of well-received lives of Tallulah Bankhead and Dorothy Kilgallen in the 1970s, Israel saw her fortunes quickly reversed and her book advances swallowed by stalled projects and a disastrous Estée Lauder biography. Within three years, she writes, she had “plummeted from best-sellerdom to welfare, with a couple of pit stops in between.” Behind in her rent, her phone disconnected, her apartment teeming with flies and her friends long since fled, Israel crawled, inch by inch, onto the ledge of misdemeanor and, ultimately, felony.

She began by embellishing some old Fanny Brice letters. Emboldened, she moved into whole-cloth forgery: Edna Ferber, George S. Kaufman, Tennessee Williams. Over a two-year period, Israel churned out hundreds of phony letters, selling them for $75 to $100 a pop. (She would later find them in stores, marked up as high as $2,500.) Using the backlight from her broken TV set’s electron tube, she was also able to trace signatures. One of her great coups was the John Hancock of Clara Blandick, best known as Auntie Em from “The Wizard of Oz,” whose death by suicide had made her signature “the Holy Grail of Oz autographs.”

When dealers grew suspicious, Israel graduated to outright theft, taking “a crook’s tour” of university library collections, where she replaced valuable letters with forgeries and then, through an associate, sold the originals on the open market. Soon enough, the FBI came a-calling, and while Israel avoided jail time, she was sentenced to five years of probation, including six months of house arrest. (“I was not braceleted because a home phone was needed for that, and I had once again lost my service.”) Looking back on her crimes, she can summon up at least some remorse: “I betrayed some people whom I had grown to like. With whom I’d made jokes and broke bread. And in doing so I joined, to my dismay, the great global souk, a marketplace of bad company and bad faith.”

Israel’s forgeries, of course, pale in scale alongside van Meegeren’s, but they were driven by comparable forces: the same toxic brew of creative exhaustion, anger, will to power and alcoholism. (Israel admits to being loaded up on gin during her criminal years.) Like van Meegeren, Israel was almost shockingly resourceful in her deceit, amassing an array of vintage manual typewriters, which she kept in a rented locker: “Royals, Adlers, Remingtons, Olympias, even a German model with an umlaut, which I had bought for Dorothy Parker, knowing that she would have fun with an umlaut.”

Neither forger was a mere copyist. Van Meegeren borrowed elements from genuine Vermeers like “The Astronomer,” “The Music Lesson” and “The Girl Asleep,” but he moved beyond preexisting notions of the artist’s career to create an entirely new “biblical phase.” The real Vermeer had painted only one biblical scene in his youth — a bad one, at that — but van Meegeren convinced a whole generation of scholars that the artist’s marriage into a Catholic family had made him a counter-Reformationist. This deception, writes Lopez, had less to do with van Meegeren’s artistic prowess than with his “use and misuse of history.” He succeeded in “bending the past to his will.”

Much the same can be said of Israel. The nominal writers of her faux letters live and breathe as vividly as fictional characters. Louise Brooks: old, ill, drunk, bristling with ancient resentments. Noel Coward, airing out the minutiae of his days: “The Ahernes came to dine on Wednesday and brought along Garbo. We jointed Bobby Andrews at Adrianne’s for a lovely buffet.” Lillian Hellman, rounding off a perfectly in-character kvetch with the earthy promise of “Come around and I will feed you.”

“My success as a forger,” writes Israel, “was somehow in sync with my erstwhile success as a biographer: I had for decades practiced a kind of merged identity with my subjects; to say I ‘channeled’ is only a slight exaggeration.” One of her most appealing works is a letter of apology from Dorothy Parker (to a nonexistent correspondent): “I have a hangover that is a real museum piece; I’m sure then that I must have said something terrible. To save this kind of exertion in the future, I am thinking of having little letters runoff saying, ‘Can you ever forgive me? Dorothy.’”

“As I wrote it,” Israel recounts, “I imagined the waiflike Dorothy Parker apologizing for any one of countless improprieties, omissions, and/or cutting bons mots … apologizing with no intentions whatsoever of mending her wayward ways.” This letter is, in other words, the work of a novelist, who has submerged herself rather deeply in her subject. “I was a better writer as a forger,” Israel admits, “than I had ever been as a writer.”

A similar claim might be made for van Meegeren. Those early “Vermeers” — the plaintive “Girl With a Blue Bow,” the exquisitely placid “Lace Maker” — are ineffable in their charm. One could imagine Vermeer himself painting them, had he world enough and time. Only in the guise of another artist, it seems, could van Meegeren taste Promethean fire, but taste it he did. Through a combination of arrogance and humility and expediency, this scoundrel-thief managed to drink the milk of paradise.

September 14, 1934

Hollywood Gossip

EI = Evening Independent
LDN = Ludington Daily News
PPG = Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
TM = Time Magazine

Al Jolson, Ruby Keeler and Paul Whiteman are getting together for a one-night tour this season, similar to the Whiteman-Jack Pearl-Boswell Sisters enterprise early last year.  It’ll be arranged so that Whiteman and Jolson can get back to New York each Thursday night for their radio program. –PPG: 09-14-1934

If you remember Alan Hale driving down the road singing a nonsensical song which had little rhyme or reason, “It Happened One Night,” it may amuse you to know how the song was born.  When that particular sequence was being shot, Frank Capra, the director, told Hale to sing some old song.  Hale obediently started to sing, and selected a familiar tune. . . . . Capra said, “You can’t sing that, it’s copyrighted.  Don’t sing anything we’ll have to buy.”  Whereupon Hale started again, and each time they discovered that the song he was lustily rendering was something they couldn’t use without buying the rights for its use in the picture. . . . . Finally, at his wits’ end, Capra said:  “Sing anything—just make it up as you go along—but watch my hand.  When I raise it, sing high—when I lower it, sing low.” . . . . . Thus the origin of the crazy words and tune you heard as Hale drove his rickety Ford along that country road!   –PPG: 09-15-1934 (Virginia Helene)

Babe Ruth, having announced his retirement at the end of this season because he had reached the age of 40, received a birth certificate from his sister, learned that he was not 40 but 39.  –TM: 09-17-1934

Carole Lombard, the bravest lady we know, [has been] sending back encouraging messages to her worried friends.*   –PPG: 09-15-1934 (Louella Parsons)

Claudette Colbert, Eddie Cantor, the Gene Markeys, James Cagney, Bruce Cabot and Sally Blane [have been] getting writer’s cramp from obliging the youngsters.  –PPG: 09-15-1934 (Louella Parsons)

Newsreel audiences are snickering over that British accent brought back by Douglas Fairbanks.  –EI: 09-15-1935

The busiest brain in Hollywood belongs to Eddie Cantor.  Every time I talk with him I get dizzy keeping up with him.  Most of his ideas are good, too.  Next time I’ll take my typewriter along and borrow a few.  Eddie leaves Hollywood in 10 days for a radio engagement and a trip to Europe with Lynn Farnol, to be there when “Kid Millions” opens.  And while Eddie is getting the big hand from England and keeping his place in the radio sun he will invent a few gags for “Waiting at the Church,” his next musical for Samuel Goldwyn.  Meanwhile, Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin are getting the idea into shape.  –PPG: 09-15-1934 (Louella Parsons)

Fay Wray spends a lot of her spare time making sketches in charcoal and weaving tapestries.  She also collects rare perfumes.  –EI: 09-15-1934

Gayle Talbot, in a dispatch from London, points out the attitude at Elstree studios toward the “personal publicity” that is desired by most of Hollywood.  The studios there, the dispatch says, “Don’t think it is anybody’s business if their high salaried leading lady is going places with the latest juvenile importation from Hollywood.  Neither is it any concern of the public how much money little Sarah Twinkletoes, late of the ribbon counter, is making.” –LDN: 09-15-1934

Greta Garbo, reputedly so fond of seclusion, whould work in the English studios.  There, perhaps, she would find that freedom from publicity she so desires in Hollywood. –LDN: 09-15-1934

Harold Lloyd is one of the best of amateur magicians. . . And Clifton Webb paints in oils almost as well as he dances.  –EI: 09-15-1934

Hollywood’s most famous pair of “acting hands” belongs to Zasu Pitts.  An almost equally noted pair are at the disposal of Lee Tracy.  And not to be over-looked in the discussion is Helen Hayes, whose “talkative hands” helped her win an academy prize for acting. –LDN: 09-15-1934

Jane Wyatt, who made her screen debut recently in “One More River”—she played Diana Wynyard’s sister—is returning to Broadway next week for a role in Harry Segall’s “Lost Horizons.”  Rowland Stebbings in producing it. –PPG: 09-14-1934

Joe Penner [was recently seen] feeding his pals (40 of them) duck!   –PPG: 09-15-1934 (Louella Parsons)

On the rocky northern coast of Corsica sat Playwright Noel Coward, sipping a drink, waiting for his chartered yacht Mairi to pick him up. Two days before a Mediterranean squall had sent him scurrying ashore to shelter. As the storm abated he saw Mairi nose in toward shallow water, buckle up on a rock, spill her crew into the sea. Yachtsman Coward started to hike. Twenty miles down the coast he walked into the village of Ile Rousse, told his plight to a skeptical hotelkeeper, who cabled London. When Coward got back to the wreck he waded in to salvage what he could, then sailed to Nice, reporting: “All of the crew were saved. I went up to my neck in bilgewater on the wreck and managed to save my passport and the manuscript of my autobiography. I lost 14 suits of clothes. However, I saved my typewriter so I don’t have to worry about making a living.”   –TM: 09-17-1934

Walter Huston and Nan Sunderland frequently dine in quickie restaurants and chop suey palaces to escape the growing horde of autograph collectors.  –EI: 09-15-1934

William Seiter, director of “The Richest Girl in the World”, is an expert billiard player and can make a 5-cushion shot!  –EI: 09-15-1934

Hollywood is circus mad.  Film celebs, believe it or not, who visited Ringlings’ here are actually following the big show to Long Beach and Pasadena.  Wally Beery, the best patron of them all and by his own admittance a former elephant trainer, should get his fill of the big tent.  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has just bought a circus yarn, “O’Shaughnessy’s Boy,” by Mike Boylan and Harvey Gates for him and his boy friend, Jackie Cooper. . . . . It’s a natural for both of them.  Jackie plays the heir to an enormous fortune who runs away and joins up with the circus, while Wally is the elephant trainer.  First, of course, there is Beery’s “The Mighty Barnum” for Darryl Zanuck.  –PPG: 09-15-1934 (Louella Parsons)

There’s more ballyhooing these days about the child actors and actresses than there is about the grownup stars.  They declare on the RKO lot that Frankie Thomas, 13-year-old star of “Wednesday’s Child,” is second to none, and that when he is seen on the screen Shirley Temple and David Holt will meet their hottest competition.  Frankie is on the train now choo-chooing back to New York for a stage play; then he returns to make a picture for RKO.  His contract gives him permission to divide his time between New York and Hollywood so he must be good.  –PPG: 09-15-1934 (Louella Parsons)

One of the nicest things ever done by picture people was the marvelous co-operation they gave the Los Angeles Junior League in raising money for charity.  They agreed to play a pole game, and afterward arrange a barbecue under the trees near the pole field. . . . . Frank Borzage, the director; “Big Boy” Williams, Johnny Mack Brown and James Gleason made up one team, which was called the “Romancers,” while Walt and Roy Disney, Hal Roach and Raymond Griffith composed the “Funsters.” . . . . . Later Jack Warner substituted for Jimmy Gleason.  Spencer Tracy was to have played, but he was engaged in an important picture, and the Fox studio refused to let him participate in the game, as he held up production on a film not long ago due to an accident he suffered in a practice game. . . . . Eddie Cantor acted as master of ceremonies, and Jack Holt was referee.  Hundreds of tickets were sold and the day was a greater success than the Junior League had even hoped.  –PPG: 09-15-1934 (Virginia Helene)

Waiting on sets is tiresome for actors.  Even more so than the actual work they do.  It is so difficult to know just how long it is going to take to shoot a sequence, that all actors are required to be present most of the time, made up, and are sometimes not used for hours, or perhaps all day. . . . . Each time a new scene is photographed there must be rehearsals, the camera must be moved, and the lights arranged differently.  All of this takes so long that most players bring books, or knitting, or hook rugs to while away the hours.  Joan Crawford furnished her private theater with rugs she made between scenes on the set.  –PPG: 09-15-1934 (Virginia Helene)

Cemeteries are conspicuous by their absence in Hollywood.  It would almost seem that no one ever died here.  Someone said that the people who should have died long ago are still walking around, and that’s what is the matter with Hollywood!  –PPG: 09-15-1934 (Virginia Helene)

Four relatives of well-known stage people will dance in the chorus of “College Rhythm,” featuring Lanny Ross, Jack Oakie and Joe Penner.  They are Sally Rand’s brother, Harold; Russell Ash, son of Sam Ash, New York singer; Lee Middleton, daughter of Charles Middleton, Hollywood actor, and Jimmy Aye, brother of Marion, musical comedy star.  –PPG: 09-15-1934

*A Note from Vicki:  I can only assume that this bit of gossip is in reference to Carole Lombard’s recent loss of her fiance’, Russ Columbo.

The Crescent Theatre in Birmingham are currently staging Noel Coward’s The Vortex, a difficult play that has been revived a few times recently, notably at the Apollo Theatre in London last year, with Felicity Kendal as Florence Lancaster. First performed in 1924, it’s a play very much of its time, when many felt the whole world was caught in a “vortex of beastliness” as hedonism prevailed after the First World War. However, its characters, though difficult to like much, capture a feeling of emptiness, of “what is worth living for?” that chimes with most periods.

It’s certainly Coward’s darkest play. Opening with brittle social comedy, characters rush in and out exchanging cut-glass frivolities, until the cracks begin to appear in their relationships. The play centres on Florence Lancaster, cleverly seen first through the eyes of two of her friends, who mourns her fading beauty and takes younger lovers to satisfy her vanity. Her son, Nicky, played by Coward himself in the 1924 production (and here replete with Coward-style dressing-gown in the last act), arrives with a new fiancee in tow, but clearly has a strained relationship with his mother, who seems to see him as an accessory rather than a son. His hatred of her behaviour has caused him to turn to drugs, while Florence’s rejection by her latest young lover sends her spiralling downwards in a vortex of self-pity.

This production, though nicely staged with striking Modernist sets, was a little awkward in some places, and some of the accents were somewhat wobbly, but as I said, it’s a difficult play to stage, and by the final scene in which Nicky confronts Florence about her behaviour, the tension was built up well, and the closet drama – which reminds me of the scene between Hamlet and his mother, Gertrude - of the situation was played out nicely.

There are some notes on The Vortex here, which give an insight into what is undoubtedly an extraordinary play; it can be annoying, or difficult to get involved with, and then just when you least expect it, along comes some genuine emotion, something that strikes you as true. No wonder this play made Coward’s name.

Everyone enjoys a clever put-down now and then, but for insults that are truly biting, witty and devastating, you must turn to people of the theatre.

Playwrights, actors, and theater critics use words and language as their stock in trade, so their vocabularies tend to be pretty good, and they’ve been insulting each other for more than 2,000 years.

Actors on actors:

“Richard Burton is so discriminating that he won’t go to see a play with anybody in it but himself.” — Elizabeth Taylor

“Elizabeth Taylor has an incipient double chin, her legs are too short and she has a slight pot belly.” — Richard Burton

Elizabeth Taylor & Richard Burton

“An actor is a guy who, if you ain’t talking about him, ain’t listening,” — Marlon Brando

“Carol Channing never just enters a room. Even when she comes out of the bathroom, her husband applauds.” — George Burns

Advice to actors:

“You are too stupid to be much of an actress, but it will keep you out of mischief.” — The mother of the great actress Sarah Bernhardt

“If you really want to help the American theater, darling, be an audience.” — Tallulah Bankhead (to a young actress)

Tallulah Bankhead

And the critics rave:

“Marion Davies has two expressions — joy and indigestion.” — Dorothy Parker

“I saw the play at a disadvantage — the curtain was up.” — George S. Kaufman

“The best play I ever slept through.” — Oscar Wilde

“I’ve seen more excitement at the opening of an umbrella.” — Earl Wilson

Critiquing the critics:

“Critics never worry me unless they are right — but that does not often occur.” — Noel Coward

“The critic is often an unsuccessful author, almost always an inferior one.” — Leigh Hunt

“A drama critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car.” — Kenneth Tynan

Noel Coward

On directors:

“In the theatre the director is God — but unfortunately the actors are atheists.” — Zero Petan

“The only time the director is of any use to me is if I’ve left my script in the car, and he volunteers to fetch it.” — actor Wilfred Hyde White

On playwrights:

“There are no dull subjects, only dull playwrights.” — Robert Anderson

“An actor without a playwright is like a hole without a doughnut.” — George Jean Nathan

“Darling, they’ve absolutely ruined your perfectly dreadful play.” — Tallulah Bankhead to Tennessee Williams (after seeing the film Orpheus Descending)

Shakespearean slurs

When it comes to vigorously venomous verbiage, you simply can’t touch “the Sweet Swan of Avon,” whose insults include:

 Eloquent abuse:

“How foul and loathsome is thine image!” — Taming of the Shrew

“Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon!” — Timon of Athens.

“(You are) duller than a great thaw.” — Much Ado About Nothing

Name calling:

“Thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot!” — Comedy of Errors

“Wretched, bloody and usurping boar!” — Richard III

“… you starveling, you eel-skin, you dried neat’s tongue, you bull’s puzzle, you stockfish …” — Henry IV, Part One

“You witch, you rag, you baggage, you polecat, you runion!” — Merry Wives of Windsor

Shakespeare

“Thou art a boil, a plague-sore, or embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood.” — King Lear

“You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!” –Julius Caesar

“Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens!” — As You Like It

“The son and heir of a mongrel bitch.” — King Lear

And one insult that sounds curiously modern:

“Eat my leek.” — Henry V

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First, here are the answers to last week’s quiz, “Timeline History of Television”
1. Radio waves
2. Herbert Hoover
3. Schenectady, New York
4. “Mary Kay and Johnny”
5. “The Hank McCune Show”
6. 1972
7. 1955
8. 87%
9. 1972
10. M*A*S*H
11. $182 billion
12. CBS’s Gunsmoke

And now here is this week’s quiz in honor of National Going Topless Day:  “Breast Quotations…or That’s Saying a Mouthful!”
Identify which of the choices is the person for each quote about breasts.

[1] “People need to realize breasts are for more than selling beer.”
- Margaret Cho
- Jean Kerr
- Joan Rivers
- Trystyn Underwood
- Frank Zappa
 
[2]  “Whoever thought up the word mammogram? Every time I hear it, I think I’m supposed to put my breast in an envelope and send it to someone.”
- Candace Bergen
- Dyan Cannon  
- Nora Ephron
- Jan King
- Rita Rudner
 
[3]  “I was such an ugly baby, my Mother never breast fed me. She told me that she only liked me as a friend.”
- Woody Allen
- George Carlin   
- Rodney Dangerfield
- Steve Martin
- Steven Wright
 
[4]  “If a man is pictured chopping off a woman’s breast, it gets an R rating; but if God forbid, a man is pictured kissing a woman’s breast, it gets an X rating.”
- Bernardo Bertolucci
- Michael Caine
- Sally Field
- Russ Meyers
- Sally Struthers   
   
[5]  “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast.”
- W. H. Auden   
- Robert Browning
- William Congreve
- Noel Coward
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
 
[6]  “I think it’s about time we voted for senators with breasts. After all, we’ve been voting for boobs long enough. “
- Shirley Chisolm
- Hillary Clinton
- Star Jones  
- Claire Sargent
- Lily Tomlin
 
[7]  “My mother-in-law had a pain beneath her left breast. Turned out to be a trick knee.”
- Milton Berle 
- Phyllis Diller
- Totie Fields
- Bob Hope
- Henny Youngman
 
[8]  “Women are amazing multitaskers. I typed this list one-handed while breast-feeding a twenty-three-pound baby and watching Landscapers’ Challenge on TiVo.”
- Ana Gasteyer
- Kathy Griffin
- Debbie Harry
- Elizabeth Hasselbeck
 
[9]  “A few weeks after my surgery, I went out to play catch with my golden retriever. When I bent over to pick up the ball, my prosthesis fell out. The dog snatched it, and I found myself chasing him down the road yelling, ‘Hey, come back here with my breast!’”
- Linda Ellerbee
- Geri Jewell
- Rose Kennedy
- Victoria Principal
- Nancy Sinatra
 
[10]  “If they fine Janet Jackson, she should fight all the way to the Supreme Court. These people are trying to say that they’re smarter than Thomas Jefferson! If there was anyone who wasn’t afraid of a black woman’s breast, it was Thomas Jefferson.”
- Carrie Fisher
- Teri Garr
- Matt Groening
- Penn Jillette
- Chris Rock

The answers will appear next Monday, but if you just can’t wait til next week, you can find the answers here:
http://www.sploofus.com/triviaquiz/breast_quotations.html

It’s a great trivia web site, and if you join up please mention my user name “billkozy” as a referral, so that I get lots of points worth no money whatsoever. Just bragging rights I guess.

La pregunta es casi obligada. ¿Tiene algo que ofrecer The Italian Job (2003) más allá de las archi-conocidas escenas de acción con los Mini? En parte, la respuesta es no. Y eso que los famosos cochecitos no entran en escena hasta bien avanzado el metraje, y su puesta de largo queda reservada para la traca final.

Así que, hasta entonces, hay que “rellenar” con algo. Ese algo es una historia de venganza. Donde hay venganza ha habido previamente traición. El traidor es Steve (Edward Norton), y los traicionados son John Bridger (Donald Sutherland) y Charlie Crocker (Mark Wahlberg); sobre todo John, que acaba muerto. Charlie, el hijo que nunca tuvo, decide que las cosas no pueden quedar ahí, sobre todo tras un arranque tan espectacular en Venecia, con persecución por los canales incluida (y, sin duda, lo mejor de toda la cinta). Así que Charlie reúne al viejo equipo e intenta reclutar a la auténtica hija de John, Stella (Charlize Theron), legal a diferencia del ladrón de su padre, pero dotada del don de reventar cualquier caja fuerte. Sobra decir que cada miembro del equipo cumple una función específica, muy al estilo de esta clase de argumentos con golpes corales (véase: saga Ocean); así que por ahí campan también Jason Statham como Rob El Guapo, Mos Def como Oído Izquierdo y Seth Green como el nerd Lyle. Juntos intentarán devolverle la jugada a Steve, que se quedó con toda la pasta del botín veneciano…

Y ahí, en Venecia, radica todo nexo con la película en la que se basa esta The Italian Job, es decir, la homónima de 1969 en la que Michael Caine era Charlie (sí, la comparación con Wahlberg no puede ser más odiosa) y Noel Coward era el señor Bridger. En la cinta cuasi-setentera, el golpe maestro, el de los Mini creando un caos de tráfico, transcurría en Turín. Aquí el toque italiano lo aporta la ciudad de los canales, pero más como preámbulo para que echen a andar los acontecimientos. Así que pocas más similitudes. Un detalle revelador: los guionistas de la nueva versión sólo vieron la original una vez, según ellos para no copiar demasiado. Quizás fuera hasta preferible, aunque no deja de tener un punto de desfachatez.

Así que ahí siguen los Mini y la idea del golpe a toda velocidad, pero no está Michael Caine y en su lugar tenemos que transigir con el señor Wahlberg, uno de los leading actors menos dotados de Hollywood, con la única excepción de su brillante secundario en Infiltrados. Cierto que no es aquí donde Wahlberg debe marcarse un papelón, pero se agradecería algo de expresividad en esos rasgos de palo. Del resto, Theron se limita a lucir palmito (lo que hacía antes de Monster, todo sea dicho) y a Edward Norton se le nota a las leguas que hizo esta película obligado por la Paramount, con la que tenía un contrato para hacer tres cintas. Otro problema es que los dirige un tipo, F. Gary Gray, al que no le importa contar que llegó a esto del cine sin tener demasiado interés por la historia del séptimo arte…

En líneas generales, The Italian Job es entretenida y, a su manera, diferente, todo lo que puede serlo una cinta de gángsters con coches rápidos. Véase: 59 segundos. Véase: A todo gas. Al menos, aporta cierto gusto por el detalle e inetnta fabricar una trama mínimamente inteligente que no insulta al espectador. En este sentido, está por encima de la media. Como vehículo (nunca mejor dicho) de acción también cumple. Así que, ¿dónde está el reparo? En que podía haberse hecho algo mejor, más digno de compararse del original y con un protagonista con un pelín de carisma, exactamente lo que le falta a Wahlberg.

A fraud’s life: New books on forgers raise provocative questions about the connections between authenticity and genius

Louis Bayard / Salon

All artists begin as forgers. They hear a chord progression, they see light splash on a canvas, they feel the pull of someone’s sentences … they fall in love. And it becomes the most natural thing in the world to write or draw or compose like the objects of their devotion.

Traditionally, this rite of passage is understood to be both necessary and necessarily brief. Growing up in the early years of the 20th century, for instance, a young painter like Han van Meegeren was expected to mimic the old masters as closely as possible, but only so that he could absorb their accomplishments and, one day, surpass them. What van Meegeren eventually realized — to his chagrin, probably — was that he was a much better artist when painting as someone else. So began one of the most audacious careers in the annals of art fraud, a journey superbly etched by Jonathan Lopez in his absorbing history “The Man Who Made Vermeers.” Taken together with Lee Israel’s eccentric affidavit-memoir, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” the book raises provocative questions about the links between authenticity and art. Is the “true” better than the “false”? Can art ever spring from a lie?

Han van Meegeren didn’t set out to be a forger. A small but elegant man with “a theatrically large presence,” he paid his dues in the art world: went to the right schools, courted the right figures. His original work was considered solid enough to merit two solo exhibitions, and his pencil drawing of young Princess Juliana’s pet deer (not as twee as it sounds) was widely admired and reproduced. During the 1920s, he made a fine living as portraitist of rich Dutch children.

But with his lifestyle demanding ever-larger infusions of capital, he struck up an apprenticeship with an art-world operator named Theo van Wijngaarden, who had devised a gelatin-glue medium that would simulate oil paint without dissolving under alcohol. (The alcohol test was then the most common tool for detecting forgeries.) Equipped with this new technology, van Meegeren soon began painting “previously undiscovered” variations of Franz Hals classics like “The Laughing Cavalier” and “Malle Babbe.”

But he found his truest fit with another old master. For a forger like van Meegeren, Johannes Vermeer had the advantage of being both highly fashionable and deeply elusive, with few works to his name and large gaps in his oeuvre. By recycling panels and canvases from period paintings, van Meegeren was able to create “new Vermeers” so persuasive and unimpeachable, they fooled some of the world’s most esteemed art appraisers.

Two of his earliest forgeries, “The Smiling Girl” and “The Lace Maker,” were acquired by Andrew Mellon and were still hanging on the walls of Washington, D.C.’s National Gallery well into the 1950s. In 1944, no less an eminence than Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering acquired the bogus “Christ and the Adulteress” (“the masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer of Delft,” declared one art historian) for an unheard-of 1.65 million guilders, roughly $1 million. Goering hung the painting proudly in his country estate, and when Allied soldiers began closing in, he wrapped the canvas around a stovepipe and gave it to his wife’s secretary, telling her she “would never have to worry about money again.”

Van Meegeren, too, was well above financial worries. By war’s end, he was one of the wealthiest men in Amsterdam, the owner of 57 properties, including a garage and a hotel, as well as countless jewels. “If van Meegeren had strolled into a bank vault with a wheelbarrow and a shovel,” writes Lopez, “he couldn’t possibly have walked away with more money than he made selling fakes during the war.”

That wealth, coupled with his history of trading with the enemy, made him hard for liberation forces to ignore. Imprisoned by the Dutch government as a Nazi collaborator, the wily van Meegeren soon found a way both to confess and to expiate his crimes. In a flash of inspiration, he re-created himself as “a misunderstood genius who had turned to forgery only late in life, seeking revenge on the critics who had scorned him early in his artistic career.” As for his dealings with Goering … far from impeaching him, they added to his appeal. Who couldn’t love the little guy who had swindled the big Nazi?

And so, against all odds, van Meegeren became a folk hero. In 1947, a Dutch newspaper poll ranked him second in popularity only to the newly elected prime minister and just ahead of Prince Bernhard. Although the state confiscated much of van Meegeren’s assets and sentenced him to a year of prison, he died without serving a day of his term. His mythos, meanwhile, lived on — until later generations of scholars began to uncover disquieting facts about him.

It turned out that van Meegeren was no amateur forger but a lifelong profiteer, as well as a Nazi sympathizer who received direct commissions from the occupying government and who gave generously to Nazi causes. In 1942, he dedicated a book of his drawings to “my beloved Führer in grateful tribute.” Even his later Vermeers, as Lopez’s astute analysis shows, bear elements of the Volksgeist that figured so prominently in Nazi-approved art. The paintings seem almost calculated to erase the gap between 17th century Holland and 20th century National Socialism.

Van Meegeren, in the final analysis, was “a truly brilliant fraud,” but Lopez believes he paid a large price: “He allowed an essential part of who he was, the genuine artist, to wither on the vine. It was a Faustian bargain, one whose consequences included a chronic drinking problem, a failed first marriage, and a series of tawdry affairs.”

Well, don’t discount tawdry affairs unless you’ve tried them. At any rate, the moralistic equation Lopez introduces here — between good conduct and good art — is more than a little simplistic. And it begs the question: If van Meegeren had never been a forger, would he have become a great artist? Not according to available evidence. Aside from his society portraits, his early work is derivative and drab, and the paintings he actually signed in later life — a Nazi allegory called “Arbeid”; a 1942 painting of a Dutch pianist imbibing the spectral influences of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt — are howlingly kitschy. One suspects that that van Meegeren had to lose himself in order to find himself.

The same trajectory can be seen in the not-so-cautionary true story of forger Lee Israel. The author of well-received lives of Tallulah Bankhead and Dorothy Kilgallen in the 1970s, Israel saw her fortunes quickly reversed and her book advances swallowed by stalled projects and a disastrous Estée Lauder biography. Within three years, she writes, she had “plummeted from best-sellerdom to welfare, with a couple of pit stops in between.” Behind in her rent, her phone disconnected, her apartment teeming with flies and her friends long since fled, Israel crawled, inch by inch, onto the ledge of misdemeanor and, ultimately, felony.

She began by embellishing some old Fanny Brice letters. Emboldened, she moved into whole-cloth forgery: Edna Ferber, George S. Kaufman, Tennessee Williams. Over a two-year period, Israel churned out hundreds of phony letters, selling them for $75 to $100 a pop. (She would later find them in stores, marked up as high as $2,500.) Using the backlight from her broken TV set’s electron tube, she was also able to trace signatures. One of her great coups was the John Hancock of Clara Blandick, best known as Auntie Em from “The Wizard of Oz,” whose death by suicide had made her signature “the Holy Grail of Oz autographs.”

When dealers grew suspicious, Israel graduated to outright theft, taking “a crook’s tour” of university library collections, where she replaced valuable letters with forgeries and then, through an associate, sold the originals on the open market. Soon enough, the FBI came a-calling, and while Israel avoided jail time, she was sentenced to five years of probation, including six months of house arrest. (“I was not braceleted because a home phone was needed for that, and I had once again lost my service.”) Looking back on her crimes, she can summon up at least some remorse: “I betrayed some people whom I had grown to like. With whom I’d made jokes and broke bread. And in doing so I joined, to my dismay, the great global souk, a marketplace of bad company and bad faith.”

Israel’s forgeries, of course, pale in scale alongside van Meegeren’s, but they were driven by comparable forces: the same toxic brew of creative exhaustion, anger, will to power and alcoholism. (Israel admits to being loaded up on gin during her criminal years.) Like van Meegeren, Israel was almost shockingly resourceful in her deceit, amassing an array of vintage manual typewriters, which she kept in a rented locker: “Royals, Adlers, Remingtons, Olympias, even a German model with an umlaut, which I had bought for Dorothy Parker, knowing that she would have fun with an umlaut.”

Neither forger was a mere copyist. Van Meegeren borrowed elements from genuine Vermeers like “The Astronomer,” “The Music Lesson” and “The Girl Asleep,” but he moved beyond preexisting notions of the artist’s career to create an entirely new “biblical phase.” The real Vermeer had painted only one biblical scene in his youth — a bad one, at that — but van Meegeren convinced a whole generation of scholars that the artist’s marriage into a Catholic family had made him a counter-Reformationist. This deception, writes Lopez, had less to do with van Meegeren’s artistic prowess than with his “use and misuse of history.” He succeeded in “bending the past to his will.”

Much the same can be said of Israel. The nominal writers of her faux letters live and breathe as vividly as fictional characters. Louise Brooks: old, ill, drunk, bristling with ancient resentments. Noel Coward, airing out the minutiae of his days: “The Ahernes came to dine on Wednesday and brought along Garbo. We jointed Bobby Andrews at Adrianne’s for a lovely buffet.” Lillian Hellman, rounding off a perfectly in-character kvetch with the earthy promise of “Come around and I will feed you.”

“My success as a forger,” writes Israel, “was somehow in sync with my erstwhile success as a biographer: I had for decades practiced a kind of merged identity with my subjects; to say I ‘channeled’ is only a slight exaggeration.” One of her most appealing works is a letter of apology from Dorothy Parker (to a nonexistent correspondent): “I have a hangover that is a real museum piece; I’m sure then that I must have said something terrible. To save this kind of exertion in the future, I am thinking of having little letters runoff saying, ‘Can you ever forgive me? Dorothy.’”

“As I wrote it,” Israel recounts, “I imagined the waiflike Dorothy Parker apologizing for any one of countless improprieties, omissions, and/or cutting bons mots … apologizing with no intentions whatsoever of mending her wayward ways.” This letter is, in other words, the work of a novelist, who has submerged herself rather deeply in her subject. “I was a better writer as a forger,” Israel admits, “than I had ever been as a writer.”

A similar claim might be made for van Meegeren. Those early “Vermeers” — the plaintive “Girl With a Blue Bow,” the exquisitely placid “Lace Maker” — are ineffable in their charm. One could imagine Vermeer himself painting them, had he world enough and time. Only in the guise of another artist, it seems, could van Meegeren taste Promethean fire, but taste it he did. Through a combination of arrogance and humility and expediency, this scoundrel-thief managed to drink the milk of paradise.

Assembly @ George Street (venue details)
6 – 31 Aug (not 17), 4:40pm (5:40pm)

Alistair McGowan is famous for his impersonations; he has made himself an impressive (boom-boom) career with them. For a man not particularly known for his acting or singing ability, this was a surprisingly polished performance, helped along ably by Charlotte Page. The collection of songs and poems by Coward is a delightful concoction, making this a classy and fun evening – and well worth catching, if just to see McGowan in a different light.

The collection of Coward pieces McGowan and Page have selected is a lovely little insight into the man’s thoughts, ideas and witticisms. The songs are wonderfully clever in construction and musicality, as are the poems; and the duets are like elegant games of badminton, the verbal command is passed back and forth with exceptional verve. The topics covered range from love to death to war, and are a collection of delightful bon mots. The pieces could not be better chosen, their interchange and cycle from one to the next effortless and fitting. This, combined with two excellent performances (three if including the piano player) and a simple yet effectively variable set (two chairs and two suitcases) makes for a pleasant evening’s entertainment.

McGowan is particularly enjoyable to watch, managing to capture Coward and his various characters quickly and ably. Even without the most confident of singing voices, he holds his own very well, and bounces through the songs and poetry with enthusiasm. He obviously cannot resist an impression or two, and they also go down a charm in context. Page also performs well, although her singing voice can be a tad too operatic and reverberating, meaning some of the precious wit is incomprehensible. This is a minor flaw, but unbalances the evening a little with Page overshadowing yet underperforming McGowan.

If you are a fan of Coward’s work in any way, this evening is a great experience, and the performances are excellent. A little more balance between the performers would only make this performance better: but as it is, it’s still a delight.