Word: charleston
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Hercule Poirot and Miss Marples, Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade and Nick and Nora Charles, and Earl Derr Biggers's Charlie Chan are refurbished by Simon and his all-star cast, and introduced as Miss Marples (Elsa Lanchester), Milo Perrier (James Coco), Sam Diamond (Peter Falk), Dick and Dora Charleston (David Niven and Maggie Smith) and Sidney Wang (Peter Sellers). These, "the world's greatest detectives" have been brought together under one roof at the invitation of Mr. Lionel Twain, a fiendishly eccentric, rich, and rather repulsive murder mystery buff played by none other than Truman Capote. The occasion...
...fact that the screenplay leaves the actors with nowhere to go in their roles, the performances are virtually all first-rate. Especially enjoyable is Peter Falk as the hard-boiled Frisco detective, Sam Diamond, whose uncouth manner provides an entertaining contrast to the cocktailparty elegance of Dick and Dora Charleston, played to perfection by David Niven and Maggie Smith, and the genteel prissiness of James Coco as the corpulent Belgian detective, Milo Perrier. Peter Seller's performance as the continually proverb-coining Sidney Wang is decidedly bland, however, which comes as a surprise and disappointment, since his impersonations are often...
...Porgy and Bess as a real opera rather than a somewhat fancy Broadway musical. That meant restoring a good deal of rarely heard music. Gershwin's recitatives have traditionally been replaced by spoken dialogue. Most productions have entirely eliminated a brief, sensual scene showing the night life of Charleston, with the character Jasbo Brown playing some lowdown blues on a splendidly out-of-tune upright piano. They also usually omit Porgy's superstitious "Buzzard Song" ("Once de buzzard fold his wing an' light over yo' house/ All yo' happiness done dead") as well as several...
ARTHUR MIDDLETON WILLIAMS, 61, of Charleston, S.C., who is descended from Arthur Middleton of South Carolina, is less sanguine. He is convinced that his ancestor would be disturbed by "some of the restrictions that have been put on the powers of the states. I think America came into being as a country with very strong states' rights. The original signers would be very much concerned about [subsequent] restraints...
Then southward, first for a stop in antebellum Charleston, where Twain insists on renting an electric boat to tour the ricefield bogs; and Savannah, Ga., with its quaint cobblestone streets and a gracious populace that calls outsiders "visitors," not "tourists." In New Orleans they stroll through the somewhat scruffy but genteel French Quarter (prostitutes will stare from their wrought-iron balconies). Again, at Twain's insistence, they pause at a Dixieland jazz joint and later dine aboard one of the Mississippi steamboats...