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Title: Design for Living : Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne by Margot Peters ISBN: 0-375-41117-8 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 14 October, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.33 (3 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Left wanting more
Comment: The biography was not about this famous couple as real people; rather it was a recitation of their newspaper reviews for each production. I have been to their home and taking the tour brought me firmly into their world. Reading this book did not.
Rating: 3
Summary: two extraordinary actors
Comment: DESIGN FOR LIVING is a biography of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, extremely popular husband and wife stage actors in the first half of the 20th century. Author Margot Peters provides, in exhaustive detail, the histories of the Lunts many successful stage productions, mostly by now underremembered writers like Noel Coward and Robert Sherwood. Throughout their careers, the Lunts enjoyed good reviews from New York critics but were often chastised for choosing inferior plays. Even though I enjoyed learning about the Lunts, I didn't really understand what would have led them to make these choices after reading the book.
Peters also comes up a bit short when discussing the Lunts acting technique... (she shouldn't be faulted too much or this though, working from secondary sources). Repeated references are made to how they made everything seem "fresh" and "spontaneous", but we don't know how they really got their teeth in a character.
Peters notes that other biographers of the Lunts have claimed that both Alfred and Lynn engaged in gay relationships without providing any evidence. Peters also provides no evidence, but also provides no evidence that the Lunts had any intimate life with each other. After reading DESIGN FOR LIVING, I came away feeling that I knew the Lunts well as actors but very little as people. Probably how they would have wanted it.
Rating: 2
Summary: Query
Comment: I reviewed this book 2-3 weeks ago when it first came out. Why hasn't my review been posted?
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Title: Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical "Follies" by Ted Chapin ISBN: 0375413286 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 30 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: Colored Lights : Forty Years of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration, and All That Jazz by John Kander, Fred Ebb, Greg Lawrence, Liza Minnelli ISBN: 057121133X Publisher: Faber & Faber Pub. Date: 05 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: Queer Street: The Rise and Fall of an American Culture, 1947-1985 by James McCourt ISBN: 0393050513 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: November, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: The Unexpurgated Beaton : The Cecil Beaton Diaries as He Wrote Them, 1970-1980 by Hugo Vickers, Cecil Beaton ISBN: 1400041120 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 28 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: The Complete Lyrics of Frank Loesser by Robert Kimball, Steve Nelson ISBN: 0679450599 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 28 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $49.95 |
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