Word: besse
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...combined talents of George Gershwin as composer, DuBose Heyward as librettist and Rouben Mamoulian as director have been welded by the Theatre Guild's skillful wand into "Porgy and Bess" an "American Folk Opera" of unique distinction. Although it is essentially operatic material Mr. Gershwin has put his work upon the legitimate boards through a desire to give it broader circulation than it could achieve through operatic channels, and a good thing it is indeed...
Porgy and Bess, so named to prevent prospective customers from regarding it as a revival of the play, begins with droning "Do-doo-da's" interspersed with "wawa, wa-wa." Catfish Row will be on view, with its dilapidated tenement fronts, its old street lamps, its "Gawd-fearin women" and its "Gawd-damnin' men.'' As in the play, the crippled beggar Porgy drives his ribby goat, hunched in a cart made of packing box labeled "Wild Rose Soap, Pure & Fragrant." The whoring Bess again finds shelter and love with Porgy after the bullying Crown commits his drunken murder...
...lull their babies, keen over their dead. The men have their fishing, their crap games Saturday nights. Both cringe before the white folks' laws, the ill-omened buzzards, the lashing hurricane which provides the play's great climax. There are such numbers as A Woman is a Sometime Thing, Bess, You is My Woman Now, A Redheaded Woman Makes a Choo-Choo-Jump its Tracks, It Ain't Necessarily...
...were unable to read a note, to help some members of the cast decide on names which will look imposing in the program. Great advantage has been the fact that none of the singers was handicapped at the start by having real grand opera ways. The principals, Porgy and Bess, have never sung on the stage before. Bess is one Anne Browne, a product of the Juilliard School of Music. Porgy is Todd Duncan, a Gershwin discovery from Howard University in Washington...
...Mighty Barnum with his good friend, Author Gene Fowler. Publisher Covici secured rights to print the script of The Mighty Barnum in book form. The producers. Twentieth Century Pictures, Inc., asked nothing but the publicity from simultaneous release of book and film. Author Fowler and Co-Author Bess Meredyth were to split 15% of the gross sales...