AboutEnnis grew up in Cincinnati, the sixth of ten children. In his first life he was an actor and singer; embarking on his second, he completed his BA at Empire State College, where he was a Richard Porter Leach Fellow.
Read more
Along with her sister Anna, Kate McGarrigle’swas a wry voice dipped in sweet nostalgia. A friend gave me an album of theirs (Love Over and Over) when I arrived in NYC and I was immediately entranced. What was it about those seductive harmonies, often accompanied by an accordian peal? I suspect it tempered the big bad city’s influence–theirs was the sound of innocence melding into…
Continue reading
Donnelly as the drunken Freddie Malins in John Huston’s last film, The Dead (1987). RIP
Continue reading
One of the kings of the postwar Color Field School of Painting. Top, Early Fall, silkscreen. Below, the artist at work.
Continue reading
Some will go back to work, while others will return from long vacations, visits to family or friends, or the epic drunk they’ve been on since the office Christmas party. For most of us the Monday after New Year’s Day signifies the true turning of time, and a return to business as usual. I’ve long…
Continue reading
Best known for her Oscar winning turn in 1943’s The Song of Bernadette (at the age of 25), here’s Jones as the tempestuous Pearl in King Vidor’s 1946 horse opera Duel in the Sun. Underrated as an actress, possibly because at her peak she was also the wife of David O. Selznick, who shepherded her career. RIP.
Continue reading
In the winter of 1988 I was cast in a production of Wesley Brown’s Boogie Woogie and Booker T. The Off-Off Broadway company, Blue Heron Theatre, was new on the scene but their mission—providing theater that “stimulates audiences to think about the crucial dilemmas of our time – political and economic oppression, racism, and the struggle…
Continue reading
Barry, center, with Robert Stack and Anthony Franciosa in a favorite show from boyhood, NBC’s “The Name of the Game.” Check out their double-breasted style. I distinctly remember wanting to be all three of them–RIP.
Continue reading
Death shrouds Tom Ford’s adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel A Single Man. Its protagonist, George Falconer, is a rarity in fiction, and on film: a gay middle-aged academic who hides his grief under an air of poised inscrutability. He’s an Englishman in a southern California city who’s wrapping up the last day of his…
Continue readingPublished Attitude: The Dancer’s Magazine Winter 2009 This is the Rorschach: be born of more-or-less humble origins. Grow up, get the 1) acting, or 2) singing bug, and make your way to the big city. After a few stumbles and starts, your talent outs in a notable way and Hollywood takes the bait; go there…
Continue reading
