Word: charm
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...reasonably certain that no man ever said to Alice B. Toklas: "If you could only cook!" Small, wiry and quite bereft of feminine charm, she was once cattily described as "the lady with the melancholy nose." But cook she could-or at least she went into the kitchen armed with glorious recipes...
...what gives the Cook Book its special charm is the stream of Alice's prattle, in which the recipes appear like floating islands, in no particular order. Her own recipe for striped bass, for instance, was worked out when she made lunch for Artist Pablo Picasso. He "exclaimed at its beauty" and modestly protested that it should have been created in honor of Matisse instead. In Palma de Mallorca, a French cook almost started a riot in the market place by showing Alice how to smother pigeons (the cook said it made them fuller and tastier). The information came...
...Director Edward Golden, evidently sensing that his most valuable property was Claire Scott's Lady Teazle, has emphasized the true warmth between that lady and her husband from the very beginning. Miss Scott has the ability of making Sheridan's most insulting lines seem a prologue to tenderness. Her Charm alone makes those exchanges between the elevated country girl and her aged husband the high points of the evening...
...interest, Miss Jones may well have had her lines on flash cards. Though her words had more conviction in later scenes, there remained the disturbing sense that she was hearing the director: "six steps to the left; wring hands." Miss Jones as Miss Jones learning a part has neither charm nor authority, and however much the role might suffer from over-acting, it dies when played hesitantly. In fumbling hands, the tragedy of Isabel is all too simple: she is a ninny...
...others succeed to a remarkable degree. Douglas Watson is an affecting Ralph, gentle without being wispy as Isabel's consumptive adorer. Though given no chance to hint at the charm and initial love which wins Isabel's hand, Robert Flemyng's Osmund is to perfection the egoistic tyrant the script prescribes. With Archibald's assist, however, one performance makes all the others seem drab. Cathleen Nesbitt draws from the role of Osmund's vulgar sister a vibrant bitterness which bursts from the genteel monotony of the play. Her acid interpretation, less dilute with silliness than James' conception, gives the lines...