Overview

The Studs Terkel Interviews: Film and Theater collects the Pulitzer Prize-winning oral historian's remarkable conversations with some of the greatest luminaries of film and theater. Originally published under the title The Spectator, this ""knowledgeable and perceptive"" (Library Journal) look at show business presents the actors directors, playwrights, dancers, lyricists, and others who created the dramatic works of the twentieth century. Among the many highlights in these pages, Buster Keaton explains the wonders of unscripted silent comedy, Federico Fellini reflects on honesty in art, Carol Channing reveals that she is far more serious than she lets on, and Marlon Brando turns the tables and wants to interview Terkel. We learn about crucial artistic decisions in the lives of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee and hear from a range of film directors, from Vittorio De Sica and King Vidor to Satyajit Ray. We even get to witness Terkel playing straight man to a wildly inventive Zero Mostel. Because Terkel knows his subjects' work intimately, he asks precisely the right questions to elicit the most revealing responses. As the New York Times Book Review noted, ""Terkel's knowledge and force of personality make him fully a player alongside his famous guests.""

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9781565845534

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Reviews

Drawing from his many years of radio as well as some early magazine pieces, Terkel (Coming of Age, 1995, etc.) looks at his first loves, film and theater, as explicated by some of their most famous creators. One of the best parts of visiting or living in Chicago is hearing Terkel's radio program, a beacon for how intelligent, compassionate, and interesting talk radio can be. Terkel, who has dabbled in acting himself, is as fascinated by the art and craft of acting as he is by the many crafts explored in his classic Working(1974), a book to which he compares the current one. Terkel is the kind of guy who, by his own admission, is as riveted by watching a talented short-order cook juggle burgers as he is by a Eugene O'Neill play, and he brings that seemingly endless wide-eyed enjoyment to these interviews. The book has some wonderful moments. A ruthlessly frank Agnes De Mille talks about the difficulty of being taken seriously as a choreographer in the early days of her career and about the shock of seeing modern dance for the first time ( Our eyes were innocent ). Marlon Brando, reluctantly plugging his latest film, The Ugly American, begins to interview Terkel. Arthur Miller admits that his original ambition was to be a Russ Columbo-style crooner. And when the book is focused on craft, it is riveting. Unfortunately, Terkel is a bit more awed than usual by his interview subjects and some, like Federico Fellini, really don't have much to say. The result is a bit disappointing, with gems scattered amid too much dross. A regrettable oddity - a Studs Terkel oral history that has dull patches. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Studs Terkel (19122008) was an award-winning author and radio broadcaster. He is the author of Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession; Division Street: America, Coming of Age: Growing Up in the Twentieth Century; Talking to Myself: A Memoir of My Times; ""The Good War"": An Oral History of World War II; Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do; The Studs Terkel Reader: My American Century; American Dreams: Lost and Found; The Studs Terkel Interviews: Film and Theater; Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression; Will the Circle Be Unbroken?: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith; Giants of Jazz; Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times; And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey; Touch and Go: A Memoir; P.S.: Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening; and Studs Terkel's Chicago, all published by The New Press. He was a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and a recipient of a Presidential National Humanities Medal, the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a George Polk Career Award, and the National Book Critics Circle 2003 Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award.

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