Word: geniuses
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Good serious plays are scarce enough, talented new playwrights are scarcer. Whitest hope is 21-year-old, London-born Peter Ustinov, whose The House of Regrets-written when he was 19-has the critics talking of a "new Chekhov" and mumbling about genius...
...Curiously enough," William Knudsen holds no degree as a mechanical engineer; "curiously enough," neither does Henry Ford, nor do most of America's industrial revolutionists. "Curiously enough," Arthur E. Morgan (TVA) became a genius of flood control without an engineering degree; still without degree he became a college president (Antioch, 1920) to promote the educational philosophy that a degree in theory hampers the success of many a man by limiting his imagination to the record of accomplishment certified on his roll of parchment: "the textbooks you've digested have told you how things have been done which...
Tony was in no sense a trick horse. But he was intelligent, utterly trusted Mix, and had what Tom called "a genius for acting." He leapt chasms, he dashed down precipices, he received Mix (an indifferent horseman) from a parachute. He carried Mix through a blast of dynamite which knocked a hole in Tony's side. He developed social graces. He managed to keep a straight face when he was honored in the dining rooms of the Savoy in London, the Crillon in Paris, the Astor in Manhattan, and when he was given quarters in the check room...
Author Maugham based his unfriendly fable about genius in the raw on the life of unfriendly Painter Paul Gauguin. Like Gauguin, Genius Charles Strickland (George Sanders) reaches his prime as an overdomesticated stockbroker. Like Gauguin, he abruptly quits all that for Paris, semistarvation and oil painting. He takes over the studio and the wife (Doris Dudley) of a piteous fellow painter (Steve Geray). Later he leaves the wife to suicide, and heads for Tahiti where he marries a sleek young native with a Mona Grable smile (Elena Verdugo), slaps out masterpieces by the gross, dies (lingeringly) of leprosy...
Herbert Marshall's Bond Street voice and general air of bemused gentility make a perfect foil for George Sanders' playing of the brutal genius. One of the few cinemactors with any real presence, Sanders has for years been using it to put starch into supporting parts and B pictures. The Moon & Sixpence gives him his first big chance. It also puts his fine performance in a vacuum...