Gerald Kaufman

Saturday

Gerald Kaufman

How my party was betrayed by KGB boot-lickers

From our UK edition

When in 1983 I described Labour’s manifesto as ‘the longest suicide note in history’, I was drawing attention to the party’s apparently irreversible meltdown as an electoral force. When in 1983 I described Labour’s manifesto as ‘the longest suicide note in history’, I was drawing attention to the party’s apparently irreversible meltdown as an electoral force. As leader, Michael Foot was wedded to policies such as unilateral nuclear disarmament and leaving the European Economic Community. The strategy, if there was one, seemed to be to lose as many votes as possible. The remarkable revelations published in the Chernyaev diaries make this attempted political suicide easier to understand.

Wednesday

Gerald Kaufman

New Sondheim: enjoy it while stocks last

From our UK edition

A Sondheim premiere in New York! Besotted fans of one of the four greatest-ever Broadway composer-lyricists (the others being Irving Berlin, Frank Loesser and Cole Porter, all, regrettably, dead) were resigned never to seeing another. I feared that we were going to have to make do, perpetually, with repeated, indeed incessant, revivals of Sweeney Todd, and those anthologies, such as Side by Side by Sondheim and Putting It Together, which started out as such fun but became funerary lamentations for the lack of something novel, exciting and, most of all, unknown. Yet now, 14 years after Passion, Sondheim’s adaptation of an Italian film about an embarrassingly neurotic love affair, comes Road Show. I saw it a few days ago, shortly after its opening.

Saturday

Gerald Kaufman

What Cyd Charisse told me about Singin’ in the Rain

From our UK edition

Gerald Kaufman on the late, great dancer and film star ‘who could stop a man by just sticking up her leg’, and the accidents that led her to a role that became a movie sensation When I discussed Singin’ in the Rain with Cyd Charisse, who died last week, she was of course aware that this was the film that propelled her to instant stardom. She knew less, however, about the series of accidents that brought about this opportunity. Charisse was scarcely a novice to MGM musicals before her big chance came along, but when MGM’s iconic producer of musicals, Arthur Freed, decided to make Singin’ in the Rain, with a score consisting almost entirely of songs written by Freed himself, not the tiniest thought was given to including her in the cast.

Saturday

Gerald Kaufman

Recipe for terror

From our UK edition

Gerald Kaufman attacks Bush for supporting Ariel Sharon’s ‘disengagement’ plan, which, he says, will inevitably result in more Israeli deaths One morning this week I got into conversation with a smartly dressed, middle-aged woman at the 274 bus stop in St John’s Wood. She told me that she was having an apartment built in Israel and that her daughter, on aliyah (the Hebrew word for immigration to the Holy Land), was a doctor in Jerusalem. This nice lady told me, ‘I would defend Israel with my last breath.

Saturday

Gerald Kaufman

Diary – 22 March 2003

From our UK edition

One day last August, with the dust-motes swirling in the summer heat, I ran into Robin Cook in a corridor of the House of Commons. The place was almost deserted during the long recess, whose length Cook later truncated as part of the sweeping reforms he brought in when Leader of the House. The Spectator had just published an article by me expressing my misgivings at the prospect of a war on Iraq, and Robin told me he agreed with many of the points I had made. It therefore came as no surprise to me that his own doubts should have surfaced steadily to the point where he resigned from the government.