Word: costains
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...TONTINE, by Thomas B. Costain (2 vols., 930 pp.; Doubleday; $5.95), is Author Costain's eighth novel, a Literary Guild choice for October, and may serve only one useful purpose: to popularize the fascinating gimmick referred to in the title. The tontine (rhymes with "on green"), a fad which keeps reappearing through history, combines the suspense of the $64,000 question with the finances of the pyramid club. In Costain's tontine, begun in England just after the Battle of Waterloo, people in each of eight age groups enter the setup at 100 guineas a head. The money...
Into the youngest class of the Waterloo tontine went the children of Samuel Car boy and George Grace, two partners whose business marriage has ended in divorce owing to incompatibility. Alongside these wealthy kids, the daughter of Carboy's groom, Nell Groody, also joins. Then Author Costain relentlessly chronicles the lives of these participants, down to the tonteeniest detail. Carboy's daughter works her way through a series of polite flirtations (not a bedroom scene in 930 pages) from baronet's wife to duchess, while Grace's son parlays a naval career into a knighthood. After...
...Under Costain's pen, the tontine loses all drama and suspense, becomes simply a century-long marathon dance of unreal, Victorian marionettes...
...Silver Chalice (Warner) is made from Thomas B. Costain's bestselling nov el about a small group of dedicated Christians who sought to create a symbol out of the cup used at the Last Supper. Like so many other movies about the birth of Christianity, this film has a hard struggle trying to dramatize religion. Faith is depicted as a kind of chance commodity: some have it, some haven't-and the have-nots can get it merely by leafing through the scenario to the proper page...
...Million Robe. At least a dozen Biblical films are currently slated for production. Warner Bros, has three: 1) The Silver Chalice, with Virginia Mayo, Pier Angeli, Jack Palance and "a cast of thousands" in Novelist Thomas B. Costain's story about the cup Christ used at the Last Supper; 2) Land of the Pharaohs, which was written for the movies by Nobel Prizewinner William Faulkner; 3) Daniel and the Woman of Babylon, which has not yet been cast...