Word: mostellers
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Actor Zero Mostel, blacklisted during the 1950's for being pro-communist, told 300 students in Lehman Hall last night, "They couldn't even call me a red--I was deeply hurt...
...show. But Eddy does not possess the polished energy needed to maintain two solid hours of high-flying farce. The part crys out for Jim Dale in a very special way. While certain parts have been stamped by the individuals who made them famous--Liza Minelli in Cabaret, Zero Mostel in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, to name two--rarely is a part actually created for a specific stage personality. Jim Dale co-authored Scapino, and certain bits and lines seem to be there because he knew he could make them work. The task...
...counter-plotting all the moves to freedom. His role is the centerpiece of the musical, and he adds direction and keeps the musical teetering somewhere out on the brink, where, of course, it is supposed to be. The trouble with doing Forum is that the shadow of Zero Mostel looms over this central part like a chicken hawk over the barnyard, ready to swoop down on young actors. Zax stacks up--he won't make anybody forget Mostel, but he will make a lot of people laugh...
...chance to show a class of Martians any ten American comedies, this would be included in the green syllabus because, as Alex Haley might point out, of its roots. Like tumescent udders (ech!) Mel Brooks's toors hang, full of borscht and seltzer while the crazed milkmaids Mostel, Wilder, Dick Shawn and Kenneth Mars squeeze and squeeze and squeeze. So much of the American comic strain flows through this film that it makes a pallid commentary like Bob Fosse's Lenny a misrepresentation. That movie tried to deal with other, broader things, not what Lenny lived for; this does...
...stretches and sprawls and sometimes the interviews just go flat. But it is by far the best work done on the ugly little freak blacklist, and it is hard to imagine anybody attempting to match the ambitious perspective of Hollywood on Trial. It pulls in Herbert Hoover and Zero Mostel. Joseph McCarthy and Walt Disney, and although it doesn't have the footwork some documentaries do, it is an impressive mosaic...