The spectator

“Telling portraits of a wide range of artists in conversation with a passionately involved, prodigiously well prepared interlocutor.” Booklist.
Overture — Prologue: morning, noon, and night (with Jack Kirkland) — Act One. Beginnings. In the wings (with Francois Truffaut). Buster Keaton. Lillian Gish. King Vidor. Vittorio De Sica — Say it with music. Eubie Blake. Agnes DeMille. Carol Channing (and Talluah Bankhead) — Hard Times. Arthur Miller. Eva LeGallienne. Hiram (Chub) Sherman. E.Y. (Yip) Harburg. Harold Clurman. — Chicago Boom-Boom. James Cagney — War. War movies. On seeing The Deer Hunter. Pauline Kael — O Death. Lila Kedrova. Reflections on The Last Mile and Watch on the Rhine. John Randolph on Alfred Lunt –Kindness of strangers. Tennessee Williams (and Claudia Cassidy). Geraldine Page. Marlon Brando — Act Two. Ways of seeing. Federico Fellini (and Marcello Mastroianni and Alain Cuny). Rene Clair. Satyajit Ray (and Ravi Shankar) — Ways of doing. Francoise Rosay. Ruth Gordon. Simone Signoret — Ways of seeing II. Ian McKellan. Jonathan Miller — A touch of Shaw. Sybil Thorndike. Robert Morley — Bert and Sam: Brecht and Beckett. Kenneth Tynan (and Peter Hall). Lotte Lenya (and Arnold Sundgaard). Joan Littlewood. Alan Schneider. Gilbert Moses (and Joe Lattimore). Rick Cluchey. E.G. Marshall — Act Three. Solo flight. Ruth Draper. Emlyn Williams. Hal Holbrook — Out of the shadows. Moms Mabley. Lorraine Hansberry. James Baldwin. August Wilson (and Clifford Burke) — Success. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Uta Hagen — Winners and losers. William Saroyan (and Bill Veeck). Jose Quintero. Jose Quintero and Jason Robards. E.G. Marshall. Edward Albee — The Clowns. Marcel marceau. Jacques Tati. Zero Mostel (and Eugene Ionesco) — Epilogue. Burr Tillstrom