Word: clown
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...over who should sit on the throne, as narrated in the two books of Samuel. Jon Lipsky, the playwright, remains faithful to the Biblical narrative but takes extensive liberties with the characters. He depicts Saul (Tim McDonough), a donkey-driver unexpectedly lifted to power, as a bumbling, good-natured clown rather than following the original portrait of a man fated to disobey God's commands. David (Suzanne Baxstresser), the young hero of the tale, emerges as a Machiavellian schemer whose love of power makes him patient enough to wait for it. Samuel Steven Weinstein)--in the Bible a wise judge...
...Europe and enlisted Broadway Choreographer Donald Saddler and Burlesque Comic Joey Faye to help create the vaudeville numbers. Maxwell's casting is precise. Spacek, playing a spiritual sister of the lost souls she acted in Badlands and 3 Women, is diaphanously vulnerable, but also makes a fine clown in her off-pitch songs. William Hurt, her awkward military suitor, is sensitive and attractive in the scenes where he tries to shield Verna from the horrors of battle. The other members of the U.S.O. show, a fraying torch singer and a has-been Catskills comic, are performed with oldtime show...
...Wilder, like many artists who become too wrapped up in their own films, does not realize when he carries a good thing too far. For example, he hardly passes up an opportunity to clown, and as a result, he often comes off as a buffoon. Most of the puns and cheap sight gags are of dubious comic value, and the fragile thread of humor which supports them eventually breaks when it is stretched to a ridiculous length. In one scene, the train Wilder is on jolts, and Wilder's sleeping wife is thrown to the seat opposite...
...last, Chaplin, who died at 88 on Christmas Day at his home in Vevey, Switzerland, produced simply himself. But that self was not so simple. It was first introduced to America as a vaudeville clown in 1910, and the country did not respond warmly. Charlie's comic flare failed to ignite enthusiasm until the epochal one-reeler in which he tried on Fatty Arbuckle's pants and Chester Conklin's jacket. In that moment The Tramp was born, and with him a long parabola of triumph and humiliation. The arc described a career bred of deprivation...
...Chapter Two, the belated diversionary tactic is to have Brother Leo and Jennie's best friend Faye Medwick (Ann Wedgeworth) indulge in a teasy, vaudevillian, near adulterous liaison. Wedgeworth is a lispy, New Yorky clown with Valentine's Day on the brain, and her performance is as impeccable as her body is scannable. Not to scant the men. It will take the year or so that their contracts have to run to find adequate replacements for the richly gifted Hirsch and Gorman...