Word: orchestra
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Dates: during 1940-1940
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Virginia Lewis might well have showed stage fright, but she didn't. When she stepped on the stage at Philadelphia's Robin Hood Dell one night last summer, before the Philadelphia Orchestra and Conductor Alexander Smallens, she had never sung with an orchestra. She had not been rehearsed for this concert. She had just been handed an unfamiliar arrangement of two songs from George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Someone had stepped on her gown and ripped it. But the chunky, dignified, dark brown Negro soprano let loose a voice for which everyone, including Conductor Smallens, predicted...
Benny Goodman wants to commission clarinet works by such contemporaries as Prokofieff, William Walton, Aaron Copland. But last week he was busy with his new orchestra. When he was ill last summer with sciatica, for which he underwent an operation at the Mayo Clinic, Goodman disbanded his men, starting rumors that he was through. The new 15-man band, now to be heard on Columbia records, has a new, richer style, which Benny Goodman says is not swing. But it is still Goodman...
Gruff, creaking old (62) Lionel Barrymore heard the Los Angeles WPA Orchestra perform his symphony, Tableau Russe, was so amazed he decided to finish another symphony he started a few years back. Grunted Composer Barrymore, who practices many arts: "It is not only amusing but pleasing to have all this happen...
...what it costs to ballyhoo Jell-O is something General Foods keeps under its hat. But no secret is the staggering gross that Benny will rake in this year for 35 half-hour appearances before an NBC mike. The take: $630,000, out of which Benny pays for an orchestra, announcer, gagmen and his cast, leaving a gratifying net before taxes of some...
...Angeles, Miss Livingstone, nee Sadie Marks, often depresses her fellow workers by the firmness she exhibits in advancing her convictions. So naturally, on the air, Benny plays a boastful but timorous character, who is a butt for everybody's gibes. He is badgered by Tenor Dennis Day, by Orchestra Leader Phil Harris, by Announcer Don Wilson, by Miss Livingstone-and by his valet Rochester. The Bennys have been married since 1927, have a six-year-old adopted daughter named Joan Naomi. Benny calls his wife "Doll"; she calls him "Dollface...