Word: cronyn
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...original form (Patrick Hamilton's play, Rope's End) this was an intelligent and hideously exciting melodrama. It has been well adapted by Hume Cronyn, but it was probably inevitable that in turning it into a movie for mass distribution, much of the edge would be blunted. The boys in the play-who were pretty clearly derived from the Loeb-Leopold case-were highly cultivated, effeminate esthetes. So was their teacher. Much of the play's deadly excitement dwelt in this juxtaposition of callow brilliance and lavender dandyism with moral idiocy and brutal horror. Much...
...whole heart into stuff even thinner, plays it in that slothful spirit. But the picture is good enough to pass an idle hour. It ambles from one easy, half-developed comic idea to another, with few serious dead spots between. Typical gags: Johnson and his publisher (Hume Cronyn) fouled up in an Indian war at the orphanage; the leapings and snatchings of respectable people at a small-town wedding, tormented by the ants which Butch has turned loose...
...adroitly served up that the picture got on several of last year's ten-best lists. Brute Force is a prisoner of all the old jailbreak cliches. There is the decent but weak warden (Roman Bohnen) who can't control his mild but maniacal head guard (Hume Cronyn), a sadist who plays Wagner while softening up a prisoner with a rubber hose. There is the boozy prison doctor (Art Smith) with a heart of gold and some of the crummiest "philosophy" ever scraped out of the bottom of a cracker barrel. There is the stool pigeon...
...Green Years," today's offering, is A. J. Cronin's sentimental tale of the life of a Scottish boy who is hampered by poverty, a mean old grandfather, and a foolish old great-grandfather. Some splendid acting by Hume Cronyn and Charles Coburn help a lot, though no alchemist's miracle is achieved...
...woman powerless in the grip of passion, Lana Turner plays a peculiarly ill-defined character, driven in conflicting directions by muddled motives. Nor is Garfield, while more suitably cast, given a better organized role. The smaller parts are much neater; Cecil Kellaway as the husband and Hume Cronyn, as a lawyer who gets Miss Turner and Garfield out of their first major jam, give excellent performances...