Word: charlatan
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Black Magic (Edward Small; United Artists) is a viscous, heady brew concocted by a Russian-born Hollywood moviemaker (Gregory Ratoff) out of a turbulent French romance (Alexandre Dumas pere's Memoirs of a Physician) about a swaggering 18th Century charlatan (the so-called Count Cagliostro). The film was made entirely in Italy at a cost of $2,000,000 (more than a billion lire). Hollywood...
...Serva Padrona and Prokofiev's The Duenna (TIME, June 14, 1948), was scratching his head for a surprise for his 1949 season. A friend told him about Haydn's 172-year-old dramma giocoso II Mondo della Luna (The World of the Moon), wherein a charlatan astronomer and some frolicsome servants persuade a fat, foolish father to bless the marriage of his daughter to a poet by taking him on a trip to the moon. It sounded like fun, but the first problem was to find the score. Il Mondo had been resurrected in Germany...
...first, the Red press in Paris attacked Davis as "a charlatan, a tool of AngloSaxon imperialism." Then came a thoughtful silence. Finally last week the Communist weekly France Nouvelle came out with an article carrying discreet support. Said France Nouvelle: "As Zhdanov showed, the first duty is to work for the unity of the anti-imperialist camp. We should not be doing this by first doubting the sincerity of Garry Davis." This Communist gobbledygook could be translated as: "The Davis movement is useful to us, can be more useful. The order is-infiltrate...
...Silver Whistle (by Robert McEnroe; produced by the Theatre Guild) tells how a spacious liar and accomplished charlatan rejuvenates an old folks' home. A 47-year-old hobo, Oliver Erwenter (José Ferrer) poses as a superbly virile codger of 77 and passes out to the men folk a magical aphrodisiac (actually, small bread pellets). He tells lordly yarns of foreign travel and female conquest; makes flamboyant love to a young lady employed at the home; and with a bit of help, swipes the equipment and supplies for a rousing charity bazaar. Though the truth about him gradually leaks...
...taught me how to shoot a sexy dame singing a song and stuff like that." Welles has spent the past six months touring Italy, mostly vacationing. But he tossed off Cagliostro, a film biography of the great 18th Century charlatan, in between an audience with the Pope, an interview with Togliatti, and writing occasional pieces for the New York Post. "I've never seen what I wrote in print," he says. "It was like writing in sand...