Word: actor
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Federico GARCíA Lorca was a versatile Spaniard, a painter, musician, actor and dramatist as well as a poet. Since his death his reputation has continued to grow. Like most reputations, it has an element of the factitious. Lorca took no part in the Spanish republican movement, far less in the revolutionary uprising of the Left. He resented the political demonstrations that were made in Barcelona in 1935 on the occasion of one of his plays. Inevitably, however, Lorca's assassination made him a hero and a martyr of the republic. Whether he knew...
Edmund Gwenn, veteran character actor that he is, gets the freest of reins in this innocuous little film--and he overacts his way magnificently through the role of an irascible old Scottish sheepherder, soaked in Scotch and fighting a losing battle with a heather-clogged accent. Plot concerns a couple of rival dogs, the annual sheepherding trials, and dastardly murders (of sheep) by one of the aforementioned canines...
When he performs with other men (most memorably in The Story of G.I. Joe), Robert Mitchum is a believable actor. But it seems to be a mistake to let him tangle-as a hero, anyhow-with the ladies. In love scenes his curious languor, which suggests Bing Crosby supersaturated with barbiturates, becomes a brand of sexual complacency that is not endearing. Jane Greer, on the other hand, can best be described, in an ancient idiom, as a hot number...
Thunder in the Valley is a remake of Bob, Son of Battle, Alfred Ollivant's children's classic about rival Scottish shepherds and their dogs. Those who remember the glorious old rip of a character actor (Music Hall Veteran Will Fyffe) and the glorious black villain of a dog in the first version (the British To the Victor, 1938) will find the new picture comparatively genteel. But its very best audience, after all, has a short memory...
...dangerous symptoms of dramatic activity broke out during the first half of the nineteenth century. A certain Holworthy was famed among members of the Class of 1848 as an actor for his displays in Hasty Pudding mock trials, but Holworthy himself had never considered his achievements theatrical. "I don't remember any plays," he said. "In that time I do not think plays of any kind would have been permitted...