Word: goode
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Shah? If the truth were known ... Reza Pahlavi's enormities had been chosen for this group's attention not just because he had an attractive country with an agreeable winter climate but for a still less pardonable motive: his regime was an easy target. Every good soul was opposed to torture, but it suited the Western soul's book to be able to attest to it in a distant land ruled by an oil monarch who was neither friend nor foe. A foe would not admit your committee, and to find fault with a friend would give...
...time and big parts in the small time. When he needs a disguise, Charles usually borrows a look or an accent from one of his flops, and Brett wickedly runs in a quote from one of his provincial reviews ("Had I not known it to be a good play, this production would not have convinced me of its merit"). Charles' personal life is no improvement on his professional one. There is a wife he has not lived with in years, and the odd one-night stands with preoccupied actresses; but Paris' routine is as hollow as Philip Marlowe...
...juiced comedian turns out to have been a nasty little sod, so there are plenty of interesting people with good reason to do him ill. As usual, Charles, who can never keep a good deduction to himself, wrongly accuses several people of the crime. This makes good fun, since doggedness rather than courage is his forte...
...host and creator, Sylvia Fine Kaye, is a songwriter (for her husband Danny) and a teacher (at the University of Southern California and Yale). Her TV special is a canny amalgam of entertainment and history. Over 90 minutes the audience watches 14 numbers from typical musicals of different eras: Good News (1927), Anything Goes (1934), Oklahoma! (1943) and Company (1970). In between, Kaye describes the genesis and innovations of each show, augmenting her observations with demonstrations at the piano and interviews with Broadway veterans who helped create the originals...
...times she even enlists the original performers: Ethel Merman belts Anything Goes and Gemze de Lappe dances Oklahoma!'s dream ballet as if these shows had never closed. Bobby Van and Bernadette Peters, who were not born when Good News opened, summon up the sentimental performing style of the '20s so well that their rendition of The Best Things in Life Are Free is surprisingly touching. There is also an unexpectedly fine turn from John Davidson, whose Vegas slickness dissipates when he leads the chorus in Oklahoma! Only Carol Burnett and Sandy Duncan disappoint: their broad delivery blunts...