Word: comic
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Sergei Prokofiev's little comic opera, The Duenna,* almost got lost in the shuffle. Finished in 1940, it had reached the dress rehearsal stage in Moscow when the war put a stop to it. After the war, it was put on in Leningrad and Prague, but the score was still in manuscript...
Most of them are just on hand for the fun of it-a fine dancer (Paul Draper) who wants to be a comic; a lyric poet (Reginald Beane) of the hot piano; a cop (Broderick Crawford) so kind-hearted he wants to hand in his badge; an old Arab (Pedro de Cordoba) with exquisite hands and a diagnosis of the world's ills: "No foundation all down the line." The bartender is Bill Bendix at his gentlest...
...antiquated, erratic Long Island Rail Road also came in for some parboiling. It had received permission from ICC, reported the Bawl Streeters, to charge what its service is worth. This "drastic curtailment" of its revenue had forced the Long Island to enter a new field-supplying daily comic features to 482 newspapers. General Manager David E. Smucker was made to say: "The newspapers will have to pay for the funny features which the Long Island has hitherto supplied them without cost. A ... test in the Middle West revealed that 89% of the readers rated the Long Island the nation...
...other hand, the straight technical expertism is still one of the wonders of the movie world. The plain raw slapstick and character comedy are the best to be found-except in better Disneys-since the comic masters of silence. And in every opportunity for the eerie, the cruel, the ghostly, the terrifying, the darkly and mysteriously sad, genuine creative inspiration jumps to life...
...comedy ideas which practically nobody seems to be able to think up these days. The desperate obstacle race takes place among instantly inflating life rafts, stockpiles of prefabricated barracks, bouncy camouflage nets, a regular holocaust of naval flares. It's good, fast, noisy fun; but the good comic ideas are never really milked of their possibilities as they used to be by Chaplin and Keaton and Lloyd...