Good for you, Rainey Park, supporting your local independent bookstore.
The brave folks who keep those going need all the help they can get.  I try hard to support the two stores in this area that are independent.  It is extra difficult in Boston and Cambridge because of all the used book stores around.  Still something of a bibliophile's paradise, though not what it once was.

How was your Midsummer?  We had chilly, rainy weather, so had a cosy indoor celebration.  I realized as we were getting ready for it that we've had chilly, rainy weather for the past 3 years in a row now on Midsummer.  I sometimes think the Goddess is just laughing at us!  We had smashing weather for Beltane, though, so I am not complaining.

G.

There's a book of arrangements that came out, I believe, from KLS' publishing house--the Pomegranate Press.

I meant to pick up a copy at the time, as it had some unique photos.  I'm not sure whether it's in print or note. There's always abebook and such.

G.

Well, given that the writer (I use the term loosely, you understand) of this tiny gem of expository prose implied that DS only "spawned" ONE feature film, And that Joan only did "a few TV films" between 1971 and her passing, it's hardly to be expected that s/he would be aware of Grayson's post-DS career (which was more noted for stage work than films or TV).

Steve

I ***LOVED*** Ode to Angelique back in the day.  I saw in 16 magazine that a 45 of it was out and looked EVERYWHERE for it, but of course could not find it.

We did not have a cassette recorder then, so I never got to make a tape of it, but they played it so frequently on the show that I soon memorized the tune.

It was a huge thrill for me when all the different arrangements came out on the one DS CD.  I found the original 45 a somewhat disappointing arrangement when I finally got to hear it.

Joanna's theme is beautiful, in my opinion--one of my favorite Bob Cobert tunes.

I really wish there had been a moment where Hoffman turned to Bruno, arched an eyebrow, gave him a smile so frosty it left icicles on his schnozz, and purred "Composer?  Come off it, babe, you were never more than an uppity Las Vegas lounge act!"

another missed opportunity,

G.

Oooh, Witches and Homosexuals!  *my* kind of people...

G.

Hey Jennifer, can I get hunk intern Chris Jennings to give me a total body exam? wait, don't let me trip over my own trousers as I fumble to remove them!!!

suddenly, I'm just loving the American medical system!

xoxo G.

That was a good review.  I personally find the Curtis Dorian Gray top-knotch, well acted television drama.  Some profess to find the adaptation boring or kitsch, but I like Davenport and Briant the best of any of those who have essayed the key roles of Lord Henry and Dorian.  I think the production would have worked even better had Basil been more the way he was in the book.  The adaptation made him too hetero (and cast him with an actor who was about 10 years too old for the part) and more taken with Dorian's innocence than his startling physical perfection. In the book, in which Basil was a throwback to the male-focused artistic ideals of ancient Athens.

I don't agree with Robert Osbourne though that the publication of Dorian Gray started Wilde's legal troubles.  The book came out first in magazine form in 1889 or 1890.  And I think the cloth publication was in 1890 or 1891.  Wilde's legal difficulties resulted from his relationship with Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas.  Although readers of a later time often assume that Dorian is a projection of Wilde's troubled paramour, in reality Dorian was inspired by John Gray, a conflicted aesthetic poet who flirted with Wilde for a time in the late 1880s.  I don't believe Wilde and Douglas met until around 1892.

Bosie Douglas' papa, the notorious "Scarlett Marquis," the Marquis of Queensberry (an enthusiast of pugilism), was outraged by Wilde's antics with his son. Wilde actually wanted to be more discreet--Bosie manipulated his lover to push the envelope in order to get at his father, whom he hated.  All this is ably dramatized in the Stephen Frye vehicle, Wilde (in which Jude Law portrays Lord Alfred Douglas very much as the vitriolic monster depicted in Wilde's own prison memoir, De Profundis, and also Andre Gide's If it die not, which deserves to be more widely read).

For comparison, I recommend the 1970 Helmut Berger vehicle, Dorian Gray, with Herbert Lom as Lord Henry Wotton.  In this version, the story was updated to the milieu of the late Sixties and decadent, Swinging London, and the gay aspects were made somewhat more explicit, considerably more so than in the Dan Curtis version.

Gothick