Word: druten
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...When finished, it contained 30,000 words, would have required five and a half hours to run if it ever had been shot. It never was. They made another. Then Selznick made another. In the next year Jo Swerling, Oliver H. P. Garrett, Ben Hecht, John Van Druten, Michael Foster, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Winston Miller, John Balderston, Edwin Justus Mayer all had at least a little finger in the scenario. But next to Sidney Howard's work, the bulk of the scripting, as David Selznick admits, was done by David Selznick. He is still very touchy because a shooting...
...doors of Parliament, rebuilt life-size on a sound stage, is scrupulously authentic. As history, it ranks low, since it not only telescopes Parnell's career but also whitewashes it to suit the Hays office. As entertainment, it ranks in between. The screen play by John Van Druten & S. N. Behrman is literate but logy; John Stahl's direction is stately but pedestrian; Myrna Loy behaves as though she missed The Thin Man, and not even mutton chop whiskers and a turret-top collar can make Clark Gable look, sound or act like the uncrowned King of Ireland...
...John Van Druten's screen play, Richard Thorpe's direction and a more flexible medium combine to remove the faint creakiness that Night Must Fall had on the stage, make it a powerfully striking example of how a mood of horror can be created by understatement. Good shot: Olivia courteously giving Danny the price tag which she has just removed from the shawl he is presenting to Mrs. Bramson as an heirloom, from his mother...
...London Jews, went to Oxford, was appointed an Army schoolmaster during the War when faulty eyesight barred him from active service. After the War, he learned the publishing business thoroughly with the Ernest Benn tradepapers, branched out on his own in 1927. First Gollancz book was John Van Druten's poignant public-school play, Young Woodley. First Gollancz success was another play of public-school heroics...
...which unfortunately leaves a bad taste in the mouth. The year's Pulitzer Prize play is rather a weak sister, as it was a compromise candidate, "The Old Maid." The other four plays are undistinguished, run-of-the-mill comedies and melodramas, "Accent on Youth," "Lost Horizons," Britisher Van Druten's "The Distaff Side," and Kauffman's tourde-force play given backwards, "Merilly We Roll Along." However there was probably nothing more important to substitute in place of one of these four, except possibly the hilarious saga of a bersek British explorer in "Petticoat Fever," or the libretto...