Witchy Women

We're having a quiet Hallowe'en this year, but if we were to head to some theoretical costume party, I think I'd like to go as Aunts Enchantra and Hagatha.

Trailer Trash: No Pinkies?!

Three decades before Mel Brooks took on Broadway (and triumphed, at least the first time out of the gate), Rialto favorite Neil Simon decided to tread the Brooksian route with a spoof of classic Hollywood whodunits.

The result, Murder by Death, may not be a great film, but it has a peerless cast, amusing situations, some funny lines (Maggie Smith really gives her all to "Where's my Dickie?"), and the peculiar spectacle of Truman Capote trying to be a movie star. Throw in unbridled hammery from the likes of Nancy Walker, Alex Guinness, and Estelle ("Murderpoo?") Winwood, and you've got a perfectly satisfactory night out. It's not Young Frankenstein, but then again neither is it (thank God) Won Ton Ton...

Three on a Match

Here's a trio that must have been interesting backstage:

Blondell, Winwood, Bankhead: Hear No Evil, See No Evil, and Evil

How, one wonders, could a play starring these three Graces/Furies/Harpies not have been a smash? Well, Crazy October, a 1958 casualty up in New Haven, was definitely not.

Perhaps it was, if this summary is to be believed, because the plot sounds like the setup for a slightly queasy joke: "Tallulah plays Daisy, the proprietess of a roadside inn which she shares with a prostitute (Blondell) and a widow (Winwood), who is trying to get Daisy to cremate her husband."

In this context, why does "cremate her husband" sound like a euphemism for something much dirtier? And why is dear Miss Winwood dressed like Mamie Eisenhower? And to what extent is Miss Blondell actually having to prop her up? And (perhaps most tellingly regarding the fate of the play) why does Tallulah look as if she is going to swivel her head, drop her trick jaw, and devour the other two at one go?

We shall never know.