Word: kurnitz
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Once More, With Feeling (by Harry Kurnitz) is a farcical assault on the world of music, not unlike the author's skirmish, in Reclining Figure, with the world of art. The method is to let fly now at chicanery and now at sham, and in between to go in for shenanigans. The central figure is an egomaniac orchestra conductor who, from shattering his musicians' fiddles and his trustees' feelings, can hardly find an orchestra to conduct. On one side he is Blanked by a shameless manager who ten times a day tries to save the day with...
Playwright Kurnitz has a gift for amusing gags, and his play is sprinkled with hem. Here and there, it has a funny situation also; moreover, the manager beyond being show-stealingly played by Walter Matthau-is a juicy character, and not by accident. His rich, lowdown nature is right up Kurnitz' alley, which is Shubert with a touch of Tin Pan. In the world of music, as of art, Playwright Kurnitz remains Broadway to the core, He is not the only recent playwright whose treatment of a stylish professional world, by comparison with The Man Who Came to Dinner...
Giddy Gelding. This, fall Arlene will star in a new Harry (Reclining Figure) Kurnitz comedy on Broadway called Once More-With Feeling, to be co-produced by her second husband, Actor-Director Martin Gabel. She will still do both her TV shows, look after her interest in a posh Manhattan saloon called Michael's Pub, raise some cows, and try to get Cut Purse, the horse that she owns with TV Critic John Crosby,* out on the tracks ("He's been spoiled for two years. We had to geld him, he was so giddy...
Conversation (Thurs. 8:30p.m.,NBC). Humorists S. J. Perelman and Harry Kurnitz join Host Clifton Fadiman to discuss "What I Would Do If I Had $10 Million...
...acts. The play's chief asset, its nimble wisecracking, is also a liability. For it impedes the farcical explosiveness needed for so plot-heavy a yarn, and-brash even where it is funny-the wisecracking prevents Reclining Figure from being elegant or urbane. Writing of 57th Street, Playwright Kurnitz has caught Broadway's tone while missing its tempo...