A FINE ROMANCE WITH SILK STOCKINGS By Peter Filichia
Can you picture Alfred Hitchcock singing and dancing? In A FINE ROMANCE, Geoffrey Block’s excellent new book from Oxford University Press, he mentions that director Rouben Mamoulian actually considered Hitch for the role of a Communist commissar in the film version of SILK STOCKINGS. Of course, that discussion took place sometime after the early 1950s […]
UP WITH THE SUN AND MUSICALS, TOO By Peter Filichia
Sometimes we breeze past an “Author’s Note” because we’re so anxious to get to the meat of a book. Don’t do that with Thomas Mallon’s new 337-page tome. “UP WITH THE SUN,” he wrote, “is a fictionalized rendering of Dick Kallman’s life and death. It is inspired by actual events that have been considerably altered […]
KPOP MUSIC By Peter Filichia
Is KPOP the first cast album in which the booklet’s lyrics are printed in Korean? No. With all the American musicals that have proliferated and profited in South Korea – EVITA and MAN OF LA MANCHA among them – their cast albums have long had bi-lingual liner notes and lyrics. But yes, this two-language set […]
ALMOUS FAMOUS IS NOT FLEETING By Peter Filichia
And now for a very different homage to a 50th anniversary. Much has been made here in recent weeks of some great 1973 events in musical theater. Two involved a certain composer-lyricist whose first name is Stephen. His A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC opened 50 years ago last month, and SONDHEIM: A MUSICAL TRIBUTE was celebrated […]
SONDHEIM: A MUSICAL TRIBUTE By Peter Filichia
I don’t remember exactly where I was on March 11, 1973, but I certainly know where I wasn’t. Alas, you wouldn’t have found me at the Shubert Theatre in New York where SONDHEIM: A MUSICAL TRIBUTE was happening. That Sunday night, I was probably in my suburban Boston home watching M*A*S*H and Mannix when I […]
