Word: berte
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Because of the shortage of fine workmanship, Hollywood is hard put to keep up with the tie-dye boom-which has spread to everything from long-John underwear at $10 a set to wall hangings at $500. After Annie, the West Coast tie-dyer most in demand is Artist Bert Bliss, who has been at it for more than 20 years. Bliss, who works with rayon chiffons, cottons and velvets, does his dyeing in the kitchen, like any housewife. And instead of Annie's concoctions of lye and anilines, he uses a home dyeing product called Rit, right from...
...Salter, working from an Irwin Shaw short story, has kept the plot simple, concentrating on nuance of character and atmosphere. Taylor (Sam Waterston) and Bert (Robie Porter) are two decidedly American college boys touring Europe during the summer in a beat-up Peugeot. One morning in Florence's Piazza della Signoria, Taylor meets a bored and footloose English girl named Marty (Charlotte Rampling) who is alone on holiday and obviously receptive to some attractive company. She takes the boys to visit some jaded Italian friends; they respond by inviting her along on the remainder of their trip...
...Taylor's idea. "She'll come as a friend, like one of us," he says, "with the understanding that she doesn't choose between us." Bert agrees, but it is a compact made to be broken. Taylor, longingly in love with Marty, clings to his word; he cannot bring himself to violate the agreement and "ruin the beautiful summer" by sleeping with her. Bert has no such scruples. The result is as inevitable as autumn...
...friends again gather in Oz on their annual TV rerun, only the singing of Over the Rainbow will be more fondly familiar to Americans than the sight of the Cowardly Lion in his boxer's stance, hopefully spluttering "Put 'em up. Put 'em uuuup." Bert Lahr played the lion, of course, and like all his performances, it bore the mark of a unique talent. Most comedians rely principally on their tongues, and Lahr's scratchy voice, wobbly warble and gnong, gnong, gnong earned their share of laughs. But his very special gift was a capacity...
...when unemployed so everyone will know he is in show biz. One is touched by the physical fact that his left wrist was permanently larger than the right from breaking repeated pratfalls. And a fine moment comes when a wino outside the theater holds out a dollar saying "Here, Bert, and thanks." As a young intellectual, John Lahr is eloquent, too, about his father's final sense that he did not understand the modern world around him. Unfortunately, such moments only emphasize the fact that the book never reaches the secret of the genius that prompted the drunk...