Word: crichtons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Admirable Crichton (Columbia) seemed a fine piece of social satire to an age that was concerned with keeping the servants in their place. Much of the humor is inevitably lost on a generation that can't get servants in the first place. But somehow, despite the ravages of time and more than 50 years of amateur performances, this British adaptation of Sir James Barrie's play is well worth watching as a pretty lesson in the minor art of monocle farce...
...Haven't I always treated you as a human being?" splutters Lord Loam (Cecil Parker), the parlor pink. "Most certainly not!" gasps Butler Crichton (Kenneth More), the pantry tyrant. "Your treatment to me has always been as it should be." When Lord Loam insists, Crichton persists: "Any satisfaction I might derive from being equal [to my master] would be ruined by the footman being equal...
...demonstration. He sets master and servant down on a desert island, and within two years a society without social distinctions has become one in which the class system is firmly established. But natural selection, not the accident of birth, has made the master the man, the man master. As Crichton wins his lord's daughter (Sally Ann Howes), it is plain, Playwright Barrie seems to be saying, that quality is the better part of equality...
...feature presentation is also a bit nostalgic. The Admirable Crichton is a very British, very enjoyable adaptation of Sir James M. Barrie's play. Crichton is a splendid butler of the turn-of-the-century sort who believes quite firmly that for a man of his birth and talents, a position as a gentleman's gentleman is ideal. Similarly, thinks Crichton, his master's ideas about equality are not only dangerous but wrong. Crichton's philosophy is sorely tested when Lord Loam and his daughter are marooned along with Crichton and a few other on a desert island...
...Happiest Millionaire was Philadelphia's Anthony J. Drexel Biddle (1874-1948). Kyle Crichton, who helped write My Philadelphia Father with Biddle's daughter Cordelia, has rerouted the biography for the stage. Certainly this most redblooded of bluebloods, most warm-hearted of hotheads, most brotherly-loving of eccentrics-who turned teetotaler and collected alligators, boxed with professionals and gave a voice recital without having a voice-cried out to be a stage character. The stage problem, plainly enough, was to give some sort of connection to Father's disconnected crazes and sudden whims; the stage difficulty...