Word: charming
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Laid in Manhattan in 1908, The Damask Cheek centers in Rhoda Meldrum, a plain-looking, vivacious English girl who is visiting her American relatives. The play's charm lies in its half-nostalgic, half-satiric display of the kid-gloved conventions of the time. Its comedy lies in its sharp family portraits-Rhoda's rude, snobbish dowager aunt (well played by Margaret Douglass), her healthily lovesick young cousin Daphne, a pert, gold-digging actress who is engaged to Cousin Jimmy (Myron McCormick). The play's romance lies in Rhoda's unspoken love for Jimmy, the intensity...
...traditional for the men of the House of Marlborough to marry pretty women, love the British Empire, dine well and raise hell in politics. Lord Randolph Churchill, father of Winston, had "force, caprice and charm." At times he also had bitter words for his colleagues in the House of Commons and blunt criticism of mismanaged government...
...stoves during the past ten years, for the fun of it and for the occasional whimsical client who wanted a "Victorian room." Erwin knows his Victorian interior. He has designed sets for a good many movies, including Little Women, noted for their period detail. But the principal charm he sees in his stoves is that they are functional; no matter how old they are, they can still heat a room...
...centuries in fairyland* between the profane and mundane world and the world of the supernatural and religious. The fenodyree (Manx brownie) from the Isle of Man has a diminutive Lincolnshire cousin, Robin-Round-Cap. These little folk are clumsy, hairy and industrious but, like pixies of more personal charm, have often been known to thresh a barnful of wheat for people they liked. The flying fomorians, of Celtic origin, have wings like the gremlins, but are larger and warlike. The hordes of pigmies which in the 2nd Century visited Fergus MacLeite, King of Ulster, are believed to be the ancestors...
This harmless charade has a certain honky-tonk charm for which those who liked Damon Runyon's Butch Minds the Baby will be warmly prepared. The talk is the patented Runyon brand of Times Square Swahili, in which a worn-out race horse is "practically mucilage," and marriage is described as "one room, two chins, three kids." There is the usual Runyon corps de ballet of ham-hearted grifters, heisters and passers, played by a friendly crowd of veterans from Hollywood (Eugene Pallette, Louise Beavers) and Broadway (Sam Levene, Millard Mitchell). Carefully solemn Henry Fonda has the dignity...