Word: brashness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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MAMMY PLEASANT'S PARTNER, by Helen Holdredge (300 pp.; Putnam; $4.50), a follow-up on last year's intriguing Mammy Pleasant, tells what happened in brash, crime-infested 19th century San Francisco when an unprincipled Scotsman, fleeing a murky past, teamed up with a ruthless quadroon beauty, in pursuit of a glittering future. Mammy was born a Georgia slave. She had a wasp waist and an eagle eye, and when she bared her claws neither slow prey nor a fast buck had a chance of getting away. Among other things, Mammy was a madame who lavishly entertained...
...quit Ferris after two years, moved to Ma Kelleher's boarding house in Flint, where he got room and board for $3 a week. He answered an AC Spark Plug want ad for a bookkeeper, was asked in the interview what his ambition might be. Said the brash young man to his future boss: "Your job, within a year...
...subverting the more cherished tenets of the NAM, the film runs very smoothly. Besides many visual gags, including the boat itself, a leaky tub that floats in a humorous way, there is a cast of usual types for this sort of picture. Of course, a cunning captain, insolent mate, brash little boy and blustering American are fairly stock characters, but these particular actors are good, if not sparkling. The same can be said of the picture...
...play needs a great deal more inspiration than that. In Reclining Figure, art is long-exceedingly long during the first two acts. The play's chief asset, its nimble wisecracking, is also a liability. For it impedes the farcical explosiveness needed for so plot-heavy a yarn, and-brash even where it is funny-the wisecracking prevents Reclining Figure from being elegant or urbane. Writing of 57th Street, Playwright Kurnitz has caught Broadway's tone while missing its tempo...
...comics came back, too, Milton Berle continued to subject his brash bounciness to the restrictions of a story line. Jackie Gleason returned with even more beautiful girls (36) and, with the expert help of Art Carney and Audrey Meadows, reeled off another good slapstick episode of The Honeymooners...