Word: mankowitz
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...return to pre-eminence this year under a new artistic director, Lord Harewood, 38, music-critic cousin of Queen Elizabeth. With John Osborne's Luther (see above), he will present the Bristol Old Vic's version of Lawrence Durrell's Sappho and Wolf (Expresso Bongo) Mankowitz' adaptation of Friedrich Duerrenmatt's Frank V, described as the "musical history of a private bank." Then there is also the famed Edinburgh "Fringe"-small, independent productions that sprout by the dozen (about 60 last year), have no official connection with the festival, and often include some...
...good to see that people are still concerned about mass values, and no doubt Val Guest (who directed the movie) and Wolf Mankowitz (who wrote it) are serious in attempting to deal with an unquestionably important problem. But in Expresso Bongo they are caught in the same mire as their main characters...
Expresso Bongo is the slum to stardom story of a London Presley-in-the-rough, depicted with total amorality. Adapted from his own play by British novelist and playwright Wolf Mankowitz, the film removes the glittering facade of show business for a behind the scenes view of the world in its dog-eat-dog reality. The almighty pound weaves in and out of the script, permeating the atmosphere and the characterizations...
Flesh & Abstractions. Along with his other activities, Mankowitz' stage successes have brought him a handsome St. John's Wood house in London and an eight-acre, 16th century manor in Kent. His real rewards, says he, are to have achieved "independence, privacy and space." Despite such serene surroundings, he insists, "I have more in common with any other freelance, from a prostitute to a delicatessen owner, than the stiff, abstract tedious people from the literary world...
...contemporaries, sneers Mankowitz, "write about nice, happy, sexless people who lead nice, happy, sexless lives." "As for me," says he, "I love the flesh. I like to catch people at it. I love the culture that proceeds out of the physical life of people; people as they are, without snobbery or pretensions. I'm a Jew from Russia who was born in this country," he adds. "But I'm more English than the English have been for 100 years...