Word: behrman
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Considerably less evanescent than the play by Samuel N. Behrman in which, performing as Sigrift, Critic Alexander Woollcott scored a sedentary success, Brief Moment emerges in the cinema as a bright investigation of small problems, slick, chipper and reasonably entertaining. Most inevitable shot: Owsley, inveterate cad of the films, sneering at Abby across his cocktail glass...
Hallelujah, I'm a Bum (United Artists -Joseph Schenck) was written by Ben Hecht, adapted by Samuel Behrman. scored by Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart. directed by Lewis Milestone and acted by, among others, Al Jolson...
...Theatre Guild got the script of Brief Moment, asked Mr. Woollcott to play the easygoing, quipful part of the helpful intermediary. He refused. Then Katharine Cornell bought it, made the same request. Somewhat puzzled, Mr. Woollcott read the play, soon discovered why his services were in such demand. Playwright Behrman's stage direction for the part was: "He should look like Alex ander Woollcott as much as is physically possible." Showered with congratulatory telegrams and flowers, attired in green silk dressing gown and blue silk pajamas, Actor Woollcott found himself an instantaneous success the morning after the Manhattan premiere...
Playwright S. N. Behrman. whose frolicsome plays (The Second Man, Serena Blandish) were admirable, does not use ponderous syllables to transmit his new solemnity. His idiom is rapid, keen, unfailingly dramatic. For Alfred Lunt he has provided another personal success with perhaps the most picaresque role of his career. For the Theatre Guild, smarting from the rebuffs given Karl and Anna and The Game of Love and Death, he has made the season happier...
...play itself is not the gold mine "Caprice" was. Starting with an over-whelming idea--the saga of a man with a clairvoyant gift that enables him to reap riches in business. Mr. Behrman seemed to flounder, to be a little uncertain of his way. This was particularly evident in the second act. The details are revealing, little turns of character are brought out with subtlety and grace, but it is in the larger strokes, the rhythms and counter-rhythms, the transitions from one scene to another, that one feels an ineptitude that, but for Philip Moclier's unobtrusive direction...