James Whale's brilliant and surprisingly delicate 1936 rendition of the Kern and Hammerstein musical, which was based on an Edna Ferber novel, is infinitely superior to the dull 1951 MGM Technicolor remake and, interestingly enough, less racist.
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Once a promising music student at Juilliard, Nathaniel Ayers was schizophrenic and homeless, playing violin on the streets of LA, when columnist Steve Lopez began writing about him in the Los Angeles Times in 2005.
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Many critics trashed Robert Wise's 1965 screen version of The Sound of Music, but the musical's emotional openness and unguarded optimism honestly express the worldview of songwriters Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein.
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