Word: caste
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Ladd rates all the encores for acting, but in the screen story he plays second fiddle to Brian Donlevy. Donlevy, who is appropriately cast as an unscrupulous politician, is engaged in a vicious struggle for political control of an already corrupt city. Ladd, his number one trouble-shooter, sees plenty of trouble when Veronica Lake gets Donlevy to give her father political support in return for her smiles and wiles, but it takes him the whole picture to straighten things out. And in the end, with a little help from Veronica, he acts perfectly normal. The guy, who in "This...
...enervating and the Maltese were too polite), neither did there burn in Britain's amber jewel any flame of devotion to the King. Not even when, in 1921, his Majesty granted self rule (within limits). The Governors and the governed lived in separate worlds, while many a Maltese cast wistful, restless eyes at Rome...
Beat the Band (music by Johnny Green; book by George Marion Jr. & George Abbott; produced by Abbott) is a sort of bouncing and stentorian corpse. Always long on pep, Producer Abbott (Too Many Girls, Best Foot Forward) has this time loosed a regular stage blitz, with everyone in the cast seeming to chase a fire, and most of the dances doing everything but start one. With a nod from the plot Abbott has worked a blaring swing band, all traps and trumpets, into the proceedings. Even the costumes are loud as a St. Patrick...
...Green (Body & Soul, I'm Yours) has turned out one or two lusty tunes, and gone to town with Steam Is on the Beam, but his score is on the whole unexciting. Finally, though pert, attractive Ingénue Miller is a promising newcomer to Broadway theater, the cast contains none of those accomplished showmen who can amiably bully the audience into thinking that pink is green...
...those who can take it, The Glass Key is a hard, fast, frightening hour, with a few soft spots. Veronica Lake's special talents give inappropriate energy to a somewhat vapid role. Alan Ladd is really the whole picture. With expert writing, direction and a very solid cast working to dilute him, Ladd makes Beaumont come close to the character that Hammett had in mind-an admirable, minor-league Machiavelli...