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Journalism of Courage
The Pen is Mightier than the Sword
Mel Brooks was once asked what he thought of critics. quot;They are very noisy at night,quot; the comic replied at once. quot;You can8217;t sleep in the country because of them.quot; When the interviewer tried to explain that he was talking about critics, not crickets, Brooks went on: quot;Oh, critics! What good are they? They can8217;t make music with their hind legs.quot;
Critics! Reviews! These words conjure up excitement, anticipation and abject fear in the heart of every actor. Many a Hollywood film or Broadway play has been made or broken by a few choice words from these omnipotent scribes.
There are the discerning, objective ones who really serve to point the public the right way; and then there are those with a poisoned pen who delight in cruel witticism, unwarranted satire or sheer, unadulterated bitchiness, with no thought of the lives and careers they are destroying. A disgruntled actor once referred to dramatic criticism as quot;venom from contented rattle-snakesquot;. And in a moreprosaic way, the drama critic has been defined as quot;a newspaperman, whose sweetheart ran away with an actorquot;.
But painfully accurate or not, their reviews can make for some interesting reading8230;
Stark Young, a famous American Drama critic in the 8217;30s, watched with great disfavour a modern dance recital by Martha Graham, and then refused to go backstage. quot;I8217;m so afraid,quot; he explained, quot;she is going to give birth to a cube.quot;
Tallulah Bankhead, the famous Hollywood and Broadway star, got the worst reviews of her life when she played Cleopatra in Shakespeare8217;s tragedy. quot;Miss Bankhead was more a serpent of the Swanee than of the Nile,quot; wrote Rocjard Watts jr in the New York Tribune. George Jean Nathan called her, quot;Queen of the Nil.quot; Perhaps the most descriptive one came from a critic who stated that, quot;Tallulah barged down the aisle and sank.quot;
Walter Winchell tended to praise, no matter what, the first show he saw in any theatrical season. Asked about this predictable benignity, he responded: quot;Who am I tostone the first cast?quot;
Kelcey Allen developed the not uncommon critical habit of falling asleep during shows. One night before a performance, an actor saw him at a restaurant, and teased him with, quot;What8217;s the matter, Kelcey? Aren8217;t you asleep yet?quot;
quot;You are not on stage yet,quot; the critic parried back.
Percy Hammond fiercely disliked chorus girls in show: quot;The producers seem to forget that the female knee is a joint and not an evening8217;s entertainment.quot; About a vapid show, he observed, quot;I find that I have knocked everything but the chorus girls8217; knees, and there God anticipated me.quot; On another occasion he commented that, quot;The costumes looked as though they had been selected by Helen Keller.quot; The most famous blind person in the world used to quote with delight this line to any reporter who was connected with the entertainment industry.
Willela Waldorf, critic of the New York Post in the 8217;40s, was particularly scathing of talented women. When the then popular Murtah Sisters appeared to sing in a review,Miss Waldorf remarked, quot;The Murtah Sisters murtahed several songs.quot;
Pithy one-liners can also sting. Kyle Crichton8217;s comment on a dramatisation of Henry Fielding8217;s Tom Jones was: quot;Good Fielding. No Hit.quot; A critic who disliked an adaptation of Isherwood8217;s Berlin stories I A Camera just wrote, quot;No Leica.quot; George Jean Nathan demolished a play called Tonight or Never with the single sentence: quot;Very well, then, I say, Never.quot; John Chapman described a melodrama as: quot;It is enough to make your flesh crawl right out of the theatre.quot; David Lardner, when describing the plot of a play, stated that, quot;it was designed in a light vein that somehow became varicose.quot; Even the Greats like Katherine Hepburn were not exempt. After her performance in a play called The Lake, Dorothy Parker wrote that she quot;played the whole gamut of emotions from A to B.quot;
Occasionally actors have their revenge. After actress Sylvia Miles had been brutally savaged in print by critic John Simon, she met him at a party and emptied a plate of foodover him. quot;I8217;ll send you a bill for the suit,quot; said Simon. quot;Good,quot; said Sylvia, quot;it8217;ll be dry-cleaned probably for the first time.quot;
8212; Sohrab Ardeshir is an actor.
