Word: crain
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Safe & Superlative. In both spectaculars, which went on the air within four days of each other, Susskind was backing a sure thing. Meet Me matched the light-fingered direction of George (Green Pastures) Schaefer with a cameraful of Hollywood glamour: Myrna Loy, Walter Pidgeon, Jeanne Crain, Tab Hunter, Jane Powell, Ed Wynn. The Browning Version was also star-packed: Sir John Gielgud, Margaret Leighton, Cecil Parker, Robert Stephens. With so much to offer, neither show could fail. And in the case of The Browning Version, Gielgud's superlative performance could have done the job alone. Sir John...
...Fourth Brandenburg Concerto, which conductor Michael Senturia kept at once precise and full-blooded, with especially rich, driving tone from the cellos. It was too bad the original idea of using recorders fell through, but no one could have wished for finer flute playing than that of Cynthia Crain and Fritz Kraber. Ruth Miller was mostly successful with the fiendishly difficult solo violin part, and the performance as a whole came within only a few slips in intonation of being masterful...
...however, the production was highly competent. The orchestra sat in the middle of the Sanders stage, while the singers, in modern evening dress, sang on all sides of it. Aside from a reluctance to act as lustily as the text indicated, the cast, headed by Gloria Lane and Jon Crain, gave a good account of itself. The voices were sonorous and the singers pronounced Chester Kallman's translation very carefully. The opera's closing duet, "O Beloved," is one of the most lovely lyrical pieces ever written...
Most everybody proclaims taciturn Glenn a local hero except his wife (Jeanne Crain), who mutters darkly of Glenn's troubled past (seems his father was shot by a fast gun) and the evils of gunslinging. Next day Glenn offers up his weapon on the church altar, explaining that he must skip town because "trouble collects around a fast gun." Too late. Enter bellicose Brod, hankering to drill Glenn. As the congregation sings Holy, Holy, Holy, Glenn dutifully straps on his holster for the showdown. As Miss Crain mumbles after the fireworks, "I guess that takes care of everything...
...Romantic idiom with a flawless performance of Brahms' Screnade in D, a work written very early in the composer's career. The Serenade has a very pleasant pastoral character, using four French horns, but suffers from extreme lengthiness. Backed by such first chair palyers as flutist Cynthia Crain and cellist Stephen McGhee, conductor Greene baum exacted a virtuoso performance from the orchestra. It is a pleasure to have a local group with the ambition and the prowess of the Bach Society...