Word: charming
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...leftists howl like the devil. They, who kick at the Supreme Court's power of judicial review will scream for it if this little tid-bit is passed. Your correspondent agrees with them heartily, but is inclined to smile at their feminine inconsistency. "There in lies their charm," we suppose...
Music Hath Charms (score by Rudolf Friml; Libretto by Rowland Leigh, George Rosener, John Shubert; Shuberts, producers). In operatic circles, Maria Jeritza has always been as famed for her business acumen as for her wit and charm. She had the good sense to duck out of Music Hath Charms before that mossy opus reached Manhattan...
Composer Friml's score has charm equal to anything he has done in the 22 years which have passed since he wrote High Jinks. "Sweet Fool" is a ballad worthy of place among modern Schmalzmusik. But the libretto with its creaky structure belongs to the bygone era of celluloid collars and beehive police helmets. In surrendering her role to Natalie Hall, Mme Jeritza escaped being a Venetian noblewoman of 1934 who thinks better of spurning a commoner when, in a flashback, she impersonates her own fisher maiden ancestor in 1770 wooing and winning the Duke of Orsano. She also...
...fellows . . . ready for anything"), Alec divides his time between his country estate and the pleasures of town. He is married to a beautiful wife, but they are just pals. Alec not only has good looks (he was called "Adonis" at Yale but was somehow popular), but also a fatal charm. He knows a lot about animals, rides like a centaur, drives like a state policeman. He did his bit in the War ("We had slept with our windows open that hard winter and had had only one blanket apiece"). And he is almost as hard a drinker as a Dashiell...
...Todd (Robert Montgomery) leaves his fiancee, Mary Clay (Joan Crawford), waiting at the church while he elopes with his old mistress. The best man, Jeff Williams (Clark Gable), then spanks Mary with a hairbrush. These antics are intended to suggest that all three characters are urbane patricians, filled with charm and worldly wisdom. Lest the point remain in doubt, they speak exclusively in hard-boiled whimsey. When Jeff calls on Mary he kisses her and says: "Perfectly beautiful outside! How inside?" Mary: "Swell, inside." This means that Mary has forgotten Dill...