Word: behrmans
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Without apparent effort, S. N. Behrman has created the most amusing comedy that has come to Boston in many years. He hasn't satirized the life of an artist, nor has he burlesqued it. Yet without relying on low comedy or the pseudo-intellectual repartee of Noel Coward, which evokes laughter from the "sophisticated,"--an obnoxious word--he has patterned a delightful play around a series of commonplace situations. His trick--I shouldn't use the word, for Mr. Behrman is more experienced than the majority of playwrights whose characters fluctuate according to their whims--more accurately, his method...
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...