Word: broadway
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Abner (based on Al Capp's characters ; book by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank; music by Gene de Paul; lyrics by Johnny Mercer) sometimes gloriously explodes, sometimes damply splutters, as a big Broadway show. Suddenly, with something fine and deafening from the orchestra, suddenly with something fine and floor-shaking from the chorus, Al Capp's comic-strip community bounces to life. At other times, behind musicomedy goggles, Capp's satiric eye notes and needles skulduggery, stupidity, conformity. But there are numerous occasions when the Capp menagerie, let out of their neat newspaper cages, noisily lose their...
Whether characters who are full-fashioned in pen and ink can ever do as well in flesh and blood may well be doubted. But it is less the characters than the characteristics of comic-strip life that make for trouble on Broadway. Plainly the chopped-up repetitions, the churning status quo that go down fine a spoonful a day in a newspaper could sadly pall as an evening-long drink on the stage. On the stage, accordingly, Li'l Abner has been swamped with plot, which not only palls but plods. Also, by never letting anyone relax, the plot...
...Choreographer Kidd's Sadie Hawkins Day ballet is a wonderful matrimonial chase in which Al Capp's womenfolk become amorous Keystone Cops. In the Visigothic descent of the Dogpatchers on General Bullmoose's formal ball, Kidd has created one of the memorable shambles scenes in Broadway history. And for the show's rousingest music, Jubilation T. Cornpone, Kidd has made a packed stageful of bodies rock with movement while their voices are raised in song...
Died. Paul Kelly. 57, longtime (since 1907) Broadway actor, who played opposite Helen Hayes in Penrod (1918). turned to Hollywood in 1926, was convicted of manslaughter (1927) after Actor Ray Raymond died when Kelly slugged him during a quarrel over Raymond's wife, Actress Dorothy Mackaye. Kelly married Actress Mackaye in 1931 (she died after a car crash in 1940) after serving 25 months in San Quentin, later returned to Broadway, won the Donaldson and Perry awards for Command Decision (1947-48), starred in The Country Girl (1950-51); of a heart attack; in Los Angeles...
...Stop. Don Murray ropes, brands and corrals expert Comedienne Marilyn Monroe in a rowdy version of William Inge's Broadway hit (TIME, Sept...