Word: showfolk
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Sometimes oral history is an art; sometimes it is merely mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. It depends as much on the interviewee as the interviewer. In this exhaustive grilling of showfolk past, Film Historian John Kobal has chosen his subjects artfully, and he has edited ruthlessly. Conversations with Bette Davis, whose dramatic biography has been overexposed, are omitted. June Duprez (The Thief of Bagdad) is included precisely be cause of her failure to ascend in Holly wood. With the British actress's help, and some probing questions, Kobal traces "what happened to her career after the film premiered in America...
...called it Easter Parade. Two years later, it was on to Hollywood, where Berlin wrote many of the tunes that sent % Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers flying into celluloid legend. Back on Broadway in 1946, he achieved his greatest success with Annie Get Your Gun, which gave showfolk their brassy anthem, There's No Business Like Show Business...
...When Showfolk Business Manager Neal Levin needed investors to bankroll a Chinese dim sum diner named Bao Wow in Los Angeles, he naturally turned to clients, including Olympic Gold Medalist Bruce Jenner, Singer Melissa Manchester and Satirist "Weird Al" Yankovic. The first Bao Wow in Beverly Hills was a dog with the dinner trade and closed after a year; the second, in Encino, is a noon and nighttime hit, prompting dreams of a nationwide chain. The Hard Rock Cafe, which offers young Manhattanites an eclectic menu topped with a hefty dollop of rock-'n'-roll memorabilia that includes Elvis Presley...
...Valley, ski resort to upscale downhillers, schussed past 50 last week, and as prelude to the birthday, dozens of showfolk showed up in Idaho for the second annual Sun Valley Celebrity Ski Invitational. The highlight of the event: a charity auction presided over by Paul Newman that raised an estimated $140,000 for the Scott Newman Foundation for drug rehabilitation, established by the actor following his son's 1978 overdose death. Setting some kind of record for psychiatric fees, Brooke Shields' mother Teri bid $12,000 for a one-hour "consultation" with TV's Dr. Ruth (Good Sex) Westheimer. Asked...
...understood as the Fool. But Ronald Harwood's adaptation of his own play does not force these comparisons too hard. It is perfectly possible to enjoy The Dresser simply as a backstage fable, rich in the full-tilt emotional exaggeration of plays and pictures that try to catch showfolk off guard, offstage. Or as a fairly acute study of the master-servant relationship. Or simply as an excuse to give two splendid actors (Tom Courtenay as the title figure, Albert Finney as Sir) a chance to strut their stuff...