Word: egos
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...idea that hidden in all men is a "common instinct" or basic "energy," which "governs living behavior in individuals, species, and in evolution." Individuals and nations that thwart this timeless instinct - either through unnatural laws and institutions or by catering to the day-to-day vanities of the ego -call down upon their heads neuroses, national-madness, and even extinction of their species...
...have lately been reading both Joyce and Proust with considerable disappointment; they both seem to me very sick men, giant invalids who, in spite of enormous talent, were crippled by the same disease, elephantiasis of the ego. They both attempted titanic tasks, and both failed for lack of that dull but healthy quality without which no masterpiece can be contrived, a sense of proportion...
Stopping off to warm his ego in a hero-worshiping small town, he seduces the local belle (Ann Blyth), hornswoggles a keen judge of character, her father (John Litel), and cleans every small businessman along Main Street in a succession of crap games. In an expansive moment he also helps his slow-moving brother (William Gargan) to swing an important business deal; a little later he almost persuades his brother's wife (Ruth Warrick) to skip town with him. He has, it seems, just one good streak: his young nephew's fatuous, gee-whillikers devotion inspires...
...three Rachmaninoff tidbits. He discovers a budding young pianistic genius on a Pennsylvania farm in the person of Myra Hassman, who plays the Concerto twenty-seven times and addresses Goronoff incessantly as "Maestro." At her New York debut she plays guess what too well to suit Goronoff's touchy ego, so they split and she marries a Pennsylvania farmer who's Almost as good and kind as he is stupid. After a number of obvious events masquerading as developments, one of which has Myra's daughter play the thirty-third excerpt from the Concerto, Myra discovers that she doesn...
...Allegretti does a fine job in the lead role, performing it with the mixture of pathos and humor without which there would have been no play. Robert Lubehansky is perfect as his surfaced Alter Ego, as are several others in lesser roles. Among the females, both Kaye Horan of fig leaf fame and Jane Bergwall are interesting, although Miss Horan would probably be more effective if she did not attempt quite so obviously to add to her natural bodily gifts...