AboutEnnis grew up in Cincinnati, the sixth of ten children. In his first life he was an actor and singer; embarking on his second, he completed his BA at Empire State College, where he was a Richard Porter Leach Fellow.
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Tough times for Folkies Dept: First she fended off Taylor Swift’s attempt to make a movie of her life. Now comes word that Joni Mitchell was hospitalized this week. The prospect of losing the ultimate artist is too dispiriting to contemplate. We love you, Joni–now get up and get back to work.
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It isn’t true for every child that grows up in a large family, but it was true for me: I wanted to be seen. There I was, a middle child (one of ten) convinced of his invisibility, and fighting like hell to rectify the injustice. From where I sat, recognition came either by way of…
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The very first play I saw on Broadway was the original production of D.L. Coburn’s The Gin Game. By then, Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy had left, and been replaced by E.G. Marshall and Maureen Stapleton. No matter: it was still a once-in-a-lifetime evening watching those two deliver performances so perfect they made me weep….
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Photo: Hauser, left, with Siegel, Paul and Bentyne “Boo-bop-boooo-bop…” It was all I needed to hear–til this day those first four notes of “Tuxedo Junction” can still elicit the pleasure it did when the Manhattan Transfer released it on their debut album back in 1975. Hearing this matchless quartet for the first time was a…
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The sea air is a drug that addles reason. How else to explain the amnesia that comes over me every summer on the first bike ride back to the Ram’s Head Inn on Shelter Island? I forget that its approach involves two short steep hills—the first brings you up to Little Ram’s Head Island, a…
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We had a few things in common. Both of us were sons of the midwest (he hailed from Chicago; I was born in Cincinnati). Both of us were born on July 21. About the last–I once worked as an extra on one of his films. It was Cadillac Man, and I was thrilled, though not…
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Thanks to Horace Silver, the magical moment occurred shortly after I first moved to New York, one of many that effectively, resoundingly, shot down (or made me re-consider) all my country Midwestern notions about…everything. I’d say I was hooked from the moment I heard that sneaky vamp. “Come on Home” was the first cut on…
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It looks like a hole in the world. Among many other thoughts, that’s what struck me when I finally got a chance to see the 9/11 Memorial Plaza few weeks back. Symbols exist for a reason, and the architects of our country’s newest grief repository have hit on just the right one; it’s hard not…
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Melky Cabrera… …and Donna McKechnie (all roads lead to musical theater, dontcha know…)
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If he’d only shot The Godfather, Annie Hall and Manhattan, Gordon Willis’s reputation would be secure as one of the visual artists responsible for Hollywood’s last golden age of artisanal filmmaking. But his other films were equally masterful–this was the man who also did Pennies from Heaven, Woody Allen’s wonderful run of 80s films (Zelig,…
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