Word: calhern
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...prominent family, imminent fame, eminent income. Two young women (Linda Christian and Jane Powell) want not only him, but his attributes, too. Linda is a nice, safe society type, but Jane (the Athena of the title) is something else again. She lives with grandma (Evelyn Varden) and grandpa (Louis Calhern) on a Southern California hilltop. Grandma, a buxom old beldam, wears a flowing white burnoose. Grandpa is a gay old (78) caloric crank...
...bright-some of the fad stuff could hardly be funnier-but too many are dipped in common brass. The tunes, all but one called Imagine, are routine musicomedy, and the lyrics are of the sort that rhyme "baritone" with "aware o'tone." Even so, as crackpots go, Louis Calhern is a Ming vase, and Evelyn Varden provides at least one fine moment. At the Mr. Universe contest, while Steve Reeves is straining to lift the crucial bar bell, she glares at Purdom and hisses: "Don't just sit there! Hold the good thought...
...Louis Calhern and Walter Pidgeon do most of the slowpoke moralizing. The action is in the capable hands of Frank Lovejoy, Keenan Wynn, Van Johnson and Newcomer Dewey Martin. Wynn is excellent as a retread veteran who wants to come out of the war with honor, but alive, and is therefore fated for an early death -shown in an appalling sequence, taken from official Government film, of the crash of a plane on a flight deck...
...rapid sequence the camera scans the seven leading personalities and their reactions to the president's death. The Playboy Financier (Louis Calhern) dabbles in bonds and women from the Stork Club, the Trusted Vice-President (Walter Pigeon) looks faithful, the Hearty Sales Manager (Paul Douglas) learns of the death in his secretary's apartment, and the Dead Man's former Mistress (Barbara Stanwyck) tears her hair. Only Frederick March, as the scheming comptroller who wants the presidency, has the time and the talent to develop his role...
...brilliantly built by all hands. The script maintains the mood with a cold, mechanical finesse: each new scene thrusts out the one before with a brisk push-pull, click-click. Yet curiously, only one actor really seems to get his blood up in the contest. Holden, Douglas and Calhern are fine in their characterizations of U.S. businessmen. But as the "night-school C.P.A." who tries to charm, scheme, jostle and bluff his way to power, Fredric March is magnificent...