Word: babbittism
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...root of all evil" (a line in the play). This purpose was not accomplished. Author Channing Pollock, a great showman, is not a great artist. He has tried to do a Faust, with snatches of The Adding Machine and the Ballet Mechanique. His devil is a silk-hatted Babbitt named Mr. Moneypenny, who seizes an old and whining clerk named John Jones, gives him ticker tape and a Park Avenue apartment. It soon becomes apparent that John Jones is not happy-one doubts that he could be happy under any conditions. His children (with one exception) go to various types...
Meanwhile, and all summer long, the Van Sweringen brothers ? Oris Paxton, 49, and Mantis James, 47?sat high in their 54-story steel & limestone railroad tower domineering over Cleveland. Their apart- ment there in the air is charming.+ Charming, too, are they as individuals?courteous, manly, straightforward. Babbitt Clevelanders state that they are not jovial, that they are aloof. They play (chiefly at golf) more for physical and mental exercise than for sport. As railroad financiers they are great tacticians, but not yet great strategists. They gained control of the Nickel Plate, the Chesapeake & Ohio, the Hocking Valley...
...intelligent young woman (Violet Heming) and a Babbitt with ideals (Minor Watson) agree to get married on a business basis: he pays her a fat salary; she looks after his comforts, entertains his friends, but does not sleep with him; both are free to do whatsoever they please, to call off the marriage whensoever they wish. Love comes and the marriage is put on a more conventional footing. After that, the monkey wrench idea is used...
...whose family dates back to Charlemagne, who would innately prefer Santa Maria della Salute to the First Methodist. Her rubber-company father, distressed, arranges to remove the cultured Gaul to Ohio, hoping Daughter will be disillusioned by his Old World fragrance among robustuous U. S. odors. Chameleon Pierre turns Babbitt, nearly estranges the girl while ingratiating himself with her father, ultimately wins her with a recrudescence of Gallic passion when his success is dramatically jeopardized by an American rival. The farce is spotted with easy gags, is occasionally deft, never hysterical. Kenneth MacKenna as Pierre, Lucile Nikolas as Barbara, Harlan...
...someone else," but Arachne's malapert masterpiece was a nevertheless romantic tapestry of gods and their foibles. To Athene's vengeful annoyance, a jury of immortals promptly, indifferently, judged it superior to the goddess's weaving, and spent the hour allotted them for solemn decision in Babbitt discussion of the relative merits of liquors...