Word: acted
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...will get polio, and it knows that he will recover sufficiently to return to politics. These are the only major events of the play. The danger that the drama might become too talky is scarcely felt, however, as the tensions among developing characters are revealed. Only in the first act is one conscious of the conversation, as Schary tries too hard to show the Roosevelts as "ordinary" types. With only the attack itself to focus on, the act drags occasionally...
Vincent J. Donehue's direction also falters in the first act when the performance leaves it uncertain who is the central character. Bellamy is offstage for most of the last two scenes, and the play may seem to be about Louis Howe, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Sara Delano Roosevelt...
...actors contribute to this effect through very strong performances, as Mary Fickett as Eleanor, Henry Jones as Howe, and Ann Seymour as the stricken man's mother contend among themselves and for their own conceptions of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. What they need is more organization, and perhaps the act simply requires cutting...
This fault disappears in the second act, and there is a great moment in Roosevelt's library where everything seems to catch hold at once. The catalyst is his awkward and lonely daughter, Anna, whom he crossly reprimands for a minor fault. But then he and Eleanor begin to communicate, and Anna, affectingly played by Roni Dengel, comprehends her parents maturely for the first time...
...picture postcard nor the brooding gloom of an H. P. Lovecraft horror story. Camden, Me. (chosen for the film setting because Gilmanton, N.H., where Novelist Metalious wrote the book, does not look the part) is prim, bleak or beautiful, but never stagy, and the townsfolk extras look and act like people. What is even rarer, so do most of the actors. Dialogue between a couple of beady-eyed spring peepers at a swimming hole: "Nekkid?" "Nekkid!" Arthur Kennedy, as a bestial Yankee shack dweller, is frightening, but a little too garrulous for a New Englander, even a drunken one. Newcomer...