Word: druten
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...enchanting Madwoman of Chaillot flourished. Musically, 1948-49 could point with pride to Kiss Me, Kate as well as South Pacific; but, to only one enjoyable revue, Lend an Ear. It was a season when the mourners' bench was lined with Tennessee Williams, Clifford Odets, John van Druten, Kaufman & Ferber, Garson Kanin, Marc Connelly...
Make Way for Lucia (by John van Druten, based on E. F. Benson's novels; produced by the Theatre Guild) tells of a showoff English widow (Isabel Jeans) who settles down for the summer of 1912 in a buzzing English village. Christened Emmeline but always called Lu-chee-a, she also affects gaily soulful garments, ostentatiously moves from the easel to the pianoforte, dabbles in Italian, and occasionally drops into baby talk...
...double exposure of the precious and the provincial, a caricature of manners and a comedy of airs, Make Way for Lucia is as full of gentility and small jabs as an old-fashioned pin cushion. Some of it is pleasant fun; virtually all of it gains from Mr. van Druten's deft and mannerly use of E. F. Benson's yellowing Lucia novels, and from the amusing exaggerations of a capable cast. What cuts down on the fun in Lucia is the too-great sameness of the cutting-up. The fun itself tends to be pretty thin...
...Remember Mama (RKO Radio), an adaptation of John van Druten's stage hit, turns out much better than most such translations. A deeply domesticated "family" movie, Mama is a leisurely, kitchen-life chronicle of a tribe of Norse-American San Franciscans, in & around 1910. There is much less plot than incident, and the quality of the incidents increases in proportion to their deceptive simplicity...
...Druten, carried by the nearby Johnston office, had to change his tactics. Instead of inexorably propelling Parker and Reagan into bed, he has to keep them out of it. When Reagan, a buck-sergeant on week-end furlough, retires on Miss Parker's living room couch, the camera carefully records the tightly closed bedroom door that separates the lovers. In the play, the curtain fell as the two embraced. But the idea is the same and most people will probably catch...