Wednesday 27 March 2024

This was a high water mark for musical theatre – for great American songwriting, even

In 1927, within a few blocks of Showboat you could have also seen George and Ira Gershwin’s Funny Face, Vincent Youman’s Hit the Deck or Rogers and Hart’s A Connecticut Yankee. This was a high water mark for musical theatre – for great American songwriting, even – but then two things come along to spoil the fun: the Wall Street Crash and talking pictures. In 1928 there were sixty-two shows along Broadway; this would decline to thirty-four in 1931. During the whole of the 1930s, the Great White Way would  host only sixty-eight new musical comedies.

With a very real lack of cash and opportunity for the New York songwriter, the lure of Hollywood – just about the only place in 1930s America where there seemed to be a silver lining – would prove irresistible.

B. Stanley, Let's do it: the birth of pop (2022), 110

Tuesday 26 March 2024

No-one had previously been aware that red-hot mamas were endangered

No singer was more indicative of America’s new found effervescence than the insatiable Sophie Tucker, who emerged in 1912, aged twenty-six, as ‘The Last of the Red Hot Mamas’, though no-one had previously been aware that red-hot mamas were endangered.

B. Stanley, Let's do it: the birth of pop (2022), 40

Friday 19 January 2024

The great epic tales stank, I think, more than the historians give them credit for

'But ... I'm totally unprepared! I have no luggage with me, no nothing.'

'None of us do. We none of us expected this. That is, in general, the nature of adventures. Adventurers tend to smell. The great epic tales stank, I think, more than the historians give them credit for.' 

K. Rundell, Impossible creatures (2023), 111-2

Thursday 18 January 2024

Some sentences have the power to change everything

Some sentences have the power to change everything. They are the usual suspects: I love you , I hate you , I'm pregnant, I'm dying, I regret to tell you that this country is at war. But the words with the greatest power to create both havoc and marvels are these:

'I need your help.'

K. Rundell, Impossible creatures (2023), 57

Wednesday 17 January 2024

He was flagrantly lacking in public spirit

The fact is that every large school requires an advocatus diaboli - and at Castrevenford Mr Etherege occupied this important post. He was flagrantly lacking in public spirit. He never attended important matches. He was not interested in the spiritual welfare of his boys. He lacked respect for the school as an institution. In short, he was impenitently an individualist. And if, at first sight, these characteristics do not appear particularly commendable, you must remember the context. In a school like Castrevenford a good deal of emphasis is necessarily laid on public spirit, and the thing is liable to develop, if unregulated into a rather dreary fetish. Mr Etherege helped to keep this peril at bay. 

E. Crispin, Love lies bleeding (1948), 22

Tuesday 16 January 2024

He seemed to see, ranked indomitably behind her, all those bold, outspoken, competent, middle-aged women whose kind is peculiar to the higher levels of the English bourgeoisie

He invariably found Miss Parry's efficiency a little daunting. He seemed to see, ranked indomitably behind her, all those bold, outspoken, competent, middle-aged women whose kind is peculiar to the higher levels of the English bourgeoisie, organizing charity bazaars, visiting the sick and impoverished , training callow maidservants, implacably gardening. Some freak of destiny into which he had never enquired had compelled Miss Parry to forsake this orbit in search of a living, but its atmosphere still clung to her.

E. Crispin, Love lies bleeding (1948), 8

Saturday 23 December 2023

His reputation for bravery was for him tantamount to a reputation for stupidity

Tiekoro had always looked on Tiefolo as a boor who covered himself with gris-gris to track down animals that had never done him any harm; his reputation for bravery was for him tantamount to a reputation for stupidity. But Tiefolo was the eldest son of his father's younger brother, and so he ought to try to get along with him.

M. Condé, Segu (1984), tr. B. Bray (1987), 355