Word: byington
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...merchants in Newburyport, Mass., who had started it all, abandoned their program to refund 10% on all retail purchases. So did Newburyport's imitators across the nation. Merchants called it all a mistake. In the last eddy of the wave kicked up by Newburyport, a grocer in Byington, Tenn. posted invoice prices on his goods, let his customers decide the markup. They decided 20%, which was his normal markup, was about right. His business improved. But by & large, price-cutting had ceased to be the exciting catchword for a nationwide crusade...
Wasted is the word for the performances of Joseph Cotton, Ginger Rogers, and Spring Byington in this motion picture. Miss Byington is perfect as the understanding mother of, unfortunately, Miss Temple; Miss Rogers pertrays an extremely difficult role, with great skill, although one begins to have difficulty imagining her as twentyish. Cotten has perhaps the only worthwhile scene in the film: a five-minute psychoneurotic's battle with himself for control of his mind, and he does it with unbelievable dignity and power...
...home of the girl's aunt (Spring Byington) there is some touching domestic business (by Miss Byington, Shirley Temple and the accomplished Tom Tully)-memorably a Christmas supper at which everybody sings O Come, All Ye Faithful. There are also moments of franker pain and shock than most films dare to hand an audience without Boris Karloff to reassure them it is all in fun-a scene with a screwily bellicose veteran of World War I (Chill Wills-see cut), a horrible fracas between Zack and a dog, a still grimmer scene in which Zack, alone in his Y.M.C.A...
...harebrained friend (Spring Byington) disloyally practices first aid under the auspices of a detested New Deal publisher's wife (Isobel Elsom...
...American Mrs. Miniver") fit each other like gloves without hands in them. Fay Bainter succeeds against hopeless odds in making her absurd part plausible. So does Miles Mander, as the neurasthenic doctor. There are moments of high farce when the air-warden butler gets mixed up with Spring Byington (in her bedroom) during a blackout, and when the Widow Bainter wanders in on a kind of middle-aged seraglio scene with first-aiders all wound up in one another's bandages. Otherwise, high seriousness is the note, of which the most vibrant tone is Mrs. Hadley's remark...