Word: ziegfeld
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Luise Rainer, who can be remembered for her portrayal of Anna Held in the motion-picture "The Great Ziegfeld," among other outstanding roles, is still no better decribed than by the adjective "captivating." During her longer speeches Wednesday night, particularly the lyrical but incomprehensible 'play-scene' in Act I, Miss Rainer held her audience spellbound by the sheer radiance she brought to the role. During this speech, she made fewer movements than a Madonna, but at other times she did things that no American-trained actress could possibly do and get away with--the mercurial changes of mood, the intense...
...wide open"), Wynn was onstage all but five minutes of the half-hour show, grimacing in a succession of funny hats, outlandish garments and size 13 shoes. The fluttery mannerisms, Rube Goldberg inventions and falsetto giggles were the Wynn trademarks made popular by a long succession of musical comedies (Ziegfeld Follies of 1914 and 1915, The Perfect Fool, Hooray for What...
Died. Al Shean (real name: Albert Schonberg), 81, apple-cheeked, amiable comic favorite in the oldtime vaudeville team of ("Positively") Mr. Gallagher* & ("Absolutely") Mr. Shean, which wowed audiences in the '20s (they played 67 weeks in the 1923-24 Ziegfeld Follies^ made their 500-odd verses household jingles) ; in Manhattan. A veteran of 60 years in show business, German-born Al Shean first turned to legitimate theater in 1912 (he also made some 20 Hollywood films), scored his biggest Broadway hit 25 years later as the Benedictine monk in Father Malachy's Miracle...
Died. George Moran, 67, straight man of the richly nostalgic radio and vaudeville black-face comedy team of Moran & Mack (The Two Black Crows); of a stroke; in Oakland, Calif. The act, belly laugh of the Ziegfeld Follies in the '20s, folded in 1934 when Charles E. Mack was killed in an automobile accident...
...calmly noted in Berle "a certain derivative exuberance." In 1934's Saluta, Atkinson found him running "the whole gamut from vulgarity to grossness" with "immense enthusiasm and no discrimination at all." Since then, Berle's theatrical record consists of two moderate successes (See My Lawyer and the Ziegfeld Follies of 1943) and, most recently, an immoderate flop (Spring in Brazil). He has also flopped several times as a producer and backer. As a producer, he did so much tampering with one show that, an observer recalls, "When it opened out of town, everybody on the stage looked...