Word: devilment
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Protagonists in this painful tale are a Pulitzer Prize playwright, an oh-so-Marilyn-Monroe-like Hollywood star, and a plain young man of almost no attributes who attains great success in love and literature through a pact with the devil--in the guise, as one might have guessed, of his Hollywood agent. Axelrod's fumbling attempt to give the thing a measure of significance in the last act adds considerably to the burden of the performers, who have a hard enough time making anything of their lines during the first two-thirds of the play...
...obvious to this handsome little devil in fact, that he is made of "finer clay," and he sets out to acquire a gleaming finish in the heat of events. As soon as he has choused his draft board with a neatly feigned epileptic fit, he lights out for Paris, where he hires out as elevator operator in a fashionable hotel. At about this time, his fingers stick to a lady's jewel case, and soon they are stroking the lady herself with such skill that she begs him to steal the rest of her valuables too. He obliges...
...great deal of his spare time is still devoted to his curbstone clinic, still without fee. What little is left, Stapp spends as a happy-go lucky gardener. His fig, tamarind, apricot and northern bamboo trees lean in splendid disarray among the devil grass. Never having fully recovered from his career as a Wear-Ever salesman, Bachelor Stapp is also an accomplished cook. Visiting Air Force brass, or important civilians such as Northrop's Chief Mechanic Jake Superata (whom Stapp credits with much of the rocket research success), have learned to test their palates on Stapp-prepared specialties...
...such scenes Wouk gives his people a special tang and zest. A Passover dinner at the Morgensterns' is turned into a hilarious romp by a progressively raised brat named Neville ("The Devil") Sapersteen, who bites little girls in the rump and needs 47 toy airplanes handy at all times in an open suitcase because, as the mother explains, they're "a sort of security symbol." ("Morris, leave the lid up or he'll get a trauma...
...will get the 90-minute treatment from NBC. José Ferrer will put on putty for another re-creation of Cyrano de Bergerac. Eva La Gallienne will star again in Alice in Wonderland. Maurice Evans becomes a son of the American Revolution for George Bernard Shaw's The Devil's Disciple. Opera will range from Puccini's Madame Butterfly through a new English version of Mozart's The Magic Flute and Tchaikovsky's Eugen Onegin to world premieres of two new operas: Lukas Foss's Griffelkin and Stanley Hollingsworth's La Grande Breteche...