friday, december 17, 2010
Style ABCDE C EZ SU
Wedon’t know of anyone else who kept a diary to this extent.”—Smithsonian’s Anna Karvellas about William Steinway, C3
CAROLYNHAX
Caught in the present An aunt wants to show her nieces and nephews that she cares. C4
BOOKWORLD
A marriage in the public eye “Franklin and Eleanor” illuminates the relationship between the Roosevelts. C2
RELIABLESOURCE
He popped the question William Kennedy Smith is to marry Anne Henry, who accompanied him to the Kennedy Center Honors. C2
As Larry King signs off, the stars come out, but not all the moments are shining
TOM SHALES On TV
L
urching awkwardly between classy gestures and underwhelming
torpor, “Larry King Live” breathed its last on CNN
Thursday night, even if its star and founding father kept reminding viewers that though his programwas ending, “you’re not going to seeme go away.” Whew. That was a close one. An impressively stellar roster
of guests —most of them appearing live — dropped by to well-wish on the final edition of King’s 25-year-old nightly talk show. On tape, President Obama congratulated King on conducting a very lengthy “conversation” that at times “opened our eyes to the world
beyond our living rooms.” Obama also praised King’s ability to interview guests ranging from“Kermit the Frog to Joe fromTacoma,” a reference to King’s call-in radio roots. Joined in his Los Angeles
FAREWELLFORNOW: King told viewers that “you’re not going to see me go away.”
studio by the quick-witted Bill Maher of HBO and the dim- witted Ryan Seacrest of “American Idol,” King showed surprisingly little emotion, no matter how impressive and generous the celebrities were. King responded to the salute fromObama with a kind of
benumbed indifference, although later in the show he expressed oddly unctuous gratitude to fellow TV talker “Dr. Phil”McGraw, who popped into the studio for a folksy bye- bye. When the ineffably affable
Regis Philbin offered cheerful salutations fromNew York, King barely registered a reaction. Although Philbin praised King’s aptitude for remembering very old songs, King sat there like a lump when Philbin launched into the old
closing theme from“Your Hit Parade”: “So long for a while, that’s all the songs for a while.” Poor Philbin was left dangling, with professional celebrity Donald Trump at his side. The guests did represent the
wide spectrumof interviewees that the gravelly voiced King has faced across the table, or via split-screen hook-up, over a quarter-century (or, as he put it, “a third ofmy life”) on television — among them
shales continued on C5 THEATERREVIEW ART
AA BRONSON
HARROWINGIMAGE:AABronson’s “Felix, June 5, 1994,” is a photo of his partner just after his death of AIDS complications.
Artistwants photo BY BLAKE GOPNIK On Wednesday evening, just PHOTOS BY LINDA DAVIDSON/THE WASHINGTON POST
SOLID CORE: David Pittsinger’s smoothly crooning Emile—backed by a 26-piece orchestra—seduces the audience and Carmen Cusack’sNellie in the Rodgers andHammerstein musical at theKennedy Center OperaHouse.
Smooth sailing
make this ‘South Pacific’ truly operatic
Strong performances BY PETERMARKS F
ew things in life sound bet- ter than “South Pacific.” And few “South Pacifics” havesoundedasgoodas the deeply pleasurable revival
bivouacked in the Kennedy Center OperaHouse for the holidays. Oh, an over-amplification issue
arises during “There Is Nothin’ Like a Dame” and some of the comic moments, minted way back in 1949 by book writers Oscar Hammer- stein II and Joshua Logan, land with a louder thud than ever. But wait until you hear the gorgeous “Some EnchantedEvening”and“ThisNear- ly Was Mine” as sung by bass-bari- tone David Pittsinger, who portrays Emile de Becque, the smooth French wooer of the cockeyed American optimist, EnsignNellie Forbush. That quadruple bassoon of a voice
interpreting the Richard Rodgers melodies—among the most melting evercomposedfor the theater—is all the seduction that you or Nellie need. Somehow, the effortlessness of
Pittsinger’s technique helps in the illusion that the greatromanceat the core of “SouthPacific” truly is operat- ic in scope. The 26-piece orchestra conducted
by Lawrence Goldberg doesn’t hurt, either. And as a further enjoyable anchor, this touring “South Pacific,” directed as itwasin itsTony-winning incarnation at the Lincoln Center Theater by Bartlett Sher, features a delightful Nellie in the person of Carmen Cusack. With a first-rate voice and charmingly down-to-earth take on the show’s pivotal character, Cusack offers a moving portrait of the slow breakup of Nellie’s provin- cial mind-set. These strong fundamentals en-
sure that Sher’s “South Pacific” re- mains as close to a definitive revival of the show as audiences are likely to encounter. And with Arena Stage’s intimate, endearingly entertaining “Oklahoma!,” theatergoers in Wash- ington can score an unusual, special double dose of the best that Rodgers andHammerstein can be. Thematically, the Pulitzer Prize- winning “South Pacific,” unveiled on
theater review continued on C4
SUPPORTIVE: The sailors are embodied by a robust ensemble.
before the unveiling of one of his photographs in a prestigious show at the Whitney Museum of American Art inNewYork, Cana- dian artist AA Bronson took an unusual step: He asked another major museum, the Smithso- nian’s National Portrait Gallery, to take another print of the same work down. Bronson, who is a pioneer of
gay-themed contemporary art, was protesting the controversial removal of a video from the Portrait Gallery show “Hide/ Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” exploring art by and about homosexuals. The exhibition, on view
through Feb. 13, has been the subject of debate since Nov. 30, when Christian activists and members of Congress pressured the museum into removing a
removed fromshow Action is in response to Portrait Gallery video controversy
ARI MARCOPOULOS
HIS STANCE: Bronson said all the artists in “Hide/Seek” should withdrawtheir work.
1987 video by the late artistDavid Wojnarowicz; it included 11 sec- onds of footage of a crucifix crawling with ants. The piece that Bronson has
asked to be removed is his wall- size color photograph “Felix, June 5, 1994,” showing the corpse
bronson continued on C8
Research firmoffers cash for journalists’ opinions
to energy beat raises ethical flags
Outreach related BY PAUL FARHI News reporters are supposed
to keep their opinions out of their copy. They certainly aren’t supposed to sell themback to the people they cover. Yet now there’s a hush-hush
way for journalists to turn their innermost thoughts into cold hard cash. A New York research firm has been trolling Washing- ton and other precincts in search of reporters willing to unburden themselves. For a price. Specifically, $250 for about 25
minutes of answering questions, a rate that values journalists’
time and opinions as roughly the same as your average high-priced lobbyist or lawyer. The firm, PFC Opinion Re-
search, is rounding up reporters and editorswho cover the energy sector to opine about “certain aspects of oil and gas industries,” as an e-mail sent this week to journalists, including several at The Washington Post, described it.
PFC promises to pay partici-
pating journalists “in cash” and to keep everyone’s name on the down low, which means the re- cipients can hide the proceeds from their employers and the pesky tax collectors. The company calls its cash
offer an “honorarium.” But at least one journalism ethics ex- pert has another name for it:
journalists continued on C3
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