Word: schmaltz
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Wonderland on Ice (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Skaters' schmaltz, with the much traveled "Holiday on Ice" troupe...
...chapbook (Chaucerian jargon for this sort of collection) are not really supposed to be taken seriously. Cast From a Coffee House Comedy and Verbatim II have some funny lines, and some neat images, but lack coherence. Also in Cast From a Coffee House Comedy, the poet rhymes quartz with schmaltz, which is enough to stop any reader right there. The prose poem Battery Manhattan again has its brief moments, but is cluttered with incomplete sentences which have no function, and forced quaintness of expression. Mr. Phelps does however call the cry of a sea gull "Crake," which is amazingly accurate...
Died. Abe Lyman, 59, onetime bandleader at Hollywood's famed Cocoanut Grove, organizer of the Californians, a group known for zip and zest in the '20s, waltz and schmaltz in the '30s; of cancer; in Beverly Hills, Calif...
...depressing outlook is relieved, of course, by inevitable cure. Even a lengthy, schmaltz denoucment, complete with a sing-song rendition of "Goin' Home" (from, naturally enough, the New World Symphony), doesn't seem ludicrous after an intense portrayal of life in the hospital wards, Director Anatole Litvak uses occasional special effects with great success, particularly for the doctors' Inquisition to which each patient must submit before release. The flash-back technique, employed when doctors probe the patient's unconscious to unearth disturbing influences, is slick and convincing...
Arabella is basically an old-fashioned Viennese operetta-the sort that Johann Strauss really did much better than Richard†-without the courage of its corn. In Arabella, the waltz and schmaltz have been refined and intellectualized. Composer Strauss wrote this score in the tragically arid last third of his life, and he filled it with hints and quotations reflecting other works. His hand had lost none of its craft, and all the score lacks is inspiration. The Met postured prettily in its new hat; actually, Arabella was just an old toque...