Word: leos
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...medieval Germany, debtors were locked up in a tower in the center of town, so their neighbors could witness their disgrace. More recently, executives declaring bankruptcy traditionally wore a black suit symbolizing the death of their firm. Following the insolvency declaration by the German broadcaster KirchMedia last week, founder Leo Kirch failed to show up for work for the first time in living memory. But thanks to a 1999 revision of the bankruptcy law there was a chance that the company could emerge from bankruptcy relatively intact, unlike many previous failures that were shuttered and sold. "It's a turning...
...Sweet Smell of Success, a musical adapted from the cult favorite film of the same title. Its protagonist, Sidney Falco (assayed by Tony Curtis on film and the up-and-coming Brian D’arcy James onstage) is a youngster consumed with a lust for power. Much like Leo Bloom in The Producers, he wants everything he’s ever seen in the movies. His key to the bright lights is the most powerful gossip columnist in the country, a vicious, preening Walter Winchel-like monster named J.J. Hunsecker (Richard Lancaster on film and Lithgow onstage). In order...
...blond cigarette girl who has a few miles on her hips. Sidney has occasionally shared her bed; now he sees a way he can help Rita and, always more important, himself. She's in danger of losing her job because she said no to one of J.J.'s rivals, Leo Bartha. Sidney needs a third columnist, Otis Elwell (David White), to print the slur about Dallas, thus currying J.J.'s favor. So when Elwell also promises to get the cigarette girl her job back, Sidney pimps Rita to him. The three of them wind up in Sidney's office, with...
...Sidney, whom Susie rightly pegs as having a "clever little mind," is always being outsmarted: by Rita, by a columnist (Lawrence Dobkin as Leo Bartha) whom he tries to blackmail into running an item, by Hunsecker and finally by J.J.'s sister. Sidney - who we know is making a hefty $250 a week, just from two clients we hear complain to him during the movie, so is probably earning much more - is a cheapie who won't wear a topcoat on a winter night: "And leave a tip in every hat-check room in town?" But his thrift earns...
...schemers almost worthy of Shakespeare, as if Richard III (J.J.) were married to Lady Macbeth (Sidney, rubbing those hands to get the stain out, or spark fire). Lehman built a formicary of dark characters with weak dependents: Sidney with his secretary, J.J. with Susan, Susan with Dallas, the columnist Leo Bartha with his nagging wife, columnist Otis Elwell with a sexy cigarette girl. And he nicely establishes the final frame-up, where Susie shows she is her brother's sister. "The terrible thing about people like you," she tells Sidney, "is that decent people have to become like...