| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : SEPTEMBER 27, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| BOOKS
Star Power THE SPECTATOR Talk About Movies and Plays With Those Who Make Them By Studs Terkel New Press 364pp $25.95 In oral histories like Working and ''The Good War,'' Studs Terkel's genius is to interview ordinary Joes and Janes about a Big Topic and place their personal experiences in a larger context. Where words or interpretation fail Everyperson, Terkel supplies them, lending clarity and dignity to the sometimes inarticulate musings. The Spectator, Terkel's ragtag collection of interviews with stage and movie celebrities from 1949 to 1999, too often has the opposite effect: By interjecting his (not always relevant) personal memories, and by presenting the material so haphazardly, he makes the giants seem life-size. It's like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. The octogenarian Terkel is a confessed show-business addict with a rich history of play- and moviegoing memories, which he is all too eager to share. Some of the memories are pungent, but many are flat-out inaccurate (Interference was not the first all-talkie, for instance, and Clifton Webb certainly never danced in Slaughter on Tenth Avenue). Terkel's interviews are lumped under large, overly vague headings--war, death, success, etc.--and so casually edited that it's not always clear whether Studs or his guest is talking. That said, Terkel has a guest list that would turn Tina Brown green: Lillian Gish, Arthur Miller, Marlon Brando, Tallulah Bankhead, William Saroyan, Buster Keaton, and August Wilson, to name a few. And when host and subject happen upon a subject particularly dear to Terkel's heart, sparks fly. Miller waxes eloquent on how the Depression shaped his artistic vision. Lorraine Hansberry is witty and world-weary on the success of A Raisin in the Sun and how she was influenced by, of all things, Sean O'Casey's Dublin plays. Uta Hagen speaks chillingly of the McCarthy hearings: ''It was the only time in my life I've ever been frightened, and I'll always hate them for that.'' And a few amusing pages with Arnold Schwarzenegger reveal that, however big you thought his ego was, it's twice that. But the arbitrary, grab-bag nature of the collection wears the reader down. Why chapters titled ''Ways of Seeing'' and ''Ways of Seeing II,'' when there is no discernible difference in the material? Why stick a whimsical but inconclusive session with Burr Tillstrom and his puppet characters, including Kukla and Ollie J. Dragon, at the end and call it an Epilogue? Why 11 pages with Edward Albee and only 3 with E.Y. Harburg, whose memories of penning Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? should inspire an old lefty like Terkel to dig deeper? One might argue that Terkel is weaving an impressionistic tapestry of his relationship to the lively arts, a patchwork quilt depicting how popular entertainment molded his worldview over most of the century. Or maybe he had a bunch of interviews lying around, and he and the publisher simply smelled a quick buck. BY MARC MILLER _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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