Word: showmanly
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DIED. George Jessel, 83, comedian, singer and showman whose ubiquity as an after-dinner speaker earned him the title of America's Toastmaster General; of a heart attack; in Los Angeles. The New York City-born Jessel became a vaudeville headliner with a routine in which he held a telephone conversation with his mother. In 1925 he won fame on Broadway in The Jazz Singer, only to lose the film role-and a place in movie history -to Al Jolson. He went on to produce a string of Hollywood movie musicals before hitting his stride as a master...
...Gone By, Hollywood: the Pioneers), who spent a decade painstakingly collecting bits and pieces of film. It is appropriate, perhaps inevitable, that Brownlow's work should be presented by Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now), a modern inheritor of the epic tradition. He has brought a showman's flair to the project, commissioning a score from his composer father, Carmine, who led the American Symphony at last weekend's premiere. It is-as silent film scores always were-full of quotations from the masters and plenty of bombast. (After a few more special evenings in major...
...high sentiments of The Jazz Singer may be only a glossy reflection of Diamond's life and sometimes troubled times. But the movie does pull off at least one tricky proposition: it finally and snugly tucks Neil Diamond inside a tradition. He is revealed as a rouser, a showman, a kind of bandmaster of the American mainstream. Like Jolson's, even Diamond's slickest movements seem sincere. The stuff may be corny, but it's never prefab. Neil leans into the Kol Nidre as if it were a sacred version of his sound-track anthem...
...wields such influence over the stock market is a flamboyant showman who has become the Mick Jagger of investment. At some 200 speaking engagements a year, Granville peddles his advice amid a Barnum-like performance that includes ventriloquism, juggling and bikini-clad models...
NOBODY COULD FAULT Breuer on his showman's instincts, except maybe the blockish Cambridge bourgeoisie who have made walking out of Lulu all the rage. But all of this only makes Lulu a sort of elevated circus; a lot of the good things you could say about Breuer could be said about P.T. Barnum, with little modification. There is an awful lot of camp, and because of Breuer's theatre sense it almost always works. But it's still camp. And there are shock effects--I am thinking particularly of the murder at the end--that work as well...