Word: birdness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that went all the way down to the floor. Shortly thereafter she was a Sunday supplement cover girl possessed of "a dewy freshness that is a blessing to behold." But Shirley was also a natural actress before cameras. Before long she had earned two Academy Award nominations (for Sweet Bird of Youth and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs...
...pages, relatively few exhibit the vitality of Wharton's own characters. There are important exceptions, of course, like Lewis's portrait of Wharton's friend and mentor Henry James, who felt during her visits that he was "being seized and carried off in the talons of some monstrous female bird of prey." But, in general, Lewis spends too much time chronicling in remorseless detail the comings and goings of the Wharton set, obscuring his very real insights under a mass of minutiae...
...while she must be a charming hostess to many people she's never met. One frequent reception guest feels "she handles these people very well. She's simply a marvelous hostess." To others however Sissela is not so convincingly relaxed. "She's sort of like a shy, scared little bird about to be crushed by a falling ceiling or a rock," says one Harvard administrator...
...does it can often be as much of a show as what the audience finally sees. Take the time she gave Beverly Sills the bird. In Barber, Sills portrayed the young and lovely Rosina, who is being kept a virtual prisoner by her guardian, Dr. Bartolo. Caldwell first had the notion that Rosina's room should be a bird cage, complete with swing. Then to underline the metaphor, Caldwell decided that Rosina should carry a small song bird in a miniature cage. And so, one afternoon Sills found herself in a shop on New York's Madison Avenue...
...found a bird but it cost $185," remembers Sills. "At that price, I decided to call Sarah. Sarah said, 'Could you bring the bird close to the telephone?' So I brought it close and gave it a wind. Then she said to me, 'Now sing.' I said, 'Are you some kind of lunatic? I'm in a store full of people on Madison Avenue.' " What Sarah wanted was a bird that sang a cadenza Sills could imitate. And so Beverly chirped into the phone. The mechanical bird was bought and on opening night...