Word: ellas
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...tells the time-tattered tale of a plain-as-rain chorus girl (Carol Burnett) who is mistakenly hired for a star part by the usual illiterate czar of the predictably nepotistic studio, F.F.F. Pictures. With Ella Cinders in her eyes and a mouth a dentist could not open wider, Carol Burnett makes an appealing clown-waif in the celluloid jungle. As her leading man, Jack Cassidy is a personable peacock of vanity, but all his part calls for is preening...
Squirming Bundles. Describing his pitifully equipped infirmary, Wolken told how he had tied an aspirin with a ribbon and a sign that said: "Prisoners with temperatures of less than 100° lick once, those with temperatures higher than 100° lick twice." Another prisoner-physician, Dr. Ella Lingens, saw squirming infants, which she at first thought were bundles of old clothing, thrown alive into the fires of the crematorium after the gassed bodies of their mothers. Another ex-inmate testified tearfully that this method of killing babies was ordered by the Nazis because there was a severe shortage...
Thus one is unavoidably engaged by the specifically "Negro" aspects of the story: Jim's sister's speeches about "fighting for our race;" Jim's inner torment over being the only Negro in his law school class; Ella's shame at having married a Negro. O'Neill's basic theme, the passionately destructive relationship between Ella and Jim, cannot help but be obscured by the incidental racial questions...
...instance, after Ella and Jim's wedding the two families, white and black, line up on either side of the church steps. The tableau is striking, but the terrible anxiety of the moment is lost for two reasons: a vapid accordion intrudes, and Anne Gerety as Ella substitutes a sort of open-mouthed gawk for a dramatic gesture...
Several minor characters give excellent performances. Robert Blackburn as Mickey, a prize fighter who loved and left Ella, is marvelously cocky, and provides most of the few light moments of the evening. Jim Spruill, as a boyhood friend of Jim, is successful in conveying the differences between the races--the joviality of the Negroes, the awkardness of the whites--O'Neill seeks to establish in the first two scenes. Bradley Marable as Jim's mother is also excellent, delivering the line "Dey ain't many strong. Dey ain't many happy neider" with moving compassion...