Word: glib
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Even with its too-glib identification of mental maturity with success and conformity, the movie is as good as the novel. Gene Kelly sings and dances too well to be a convincing second-rater, but he gives an agile performance as the camp entertainment director. As schmalzy Uncle Samson, Ed Wynn gets a few laughs, and Claire Trevor is sharp and clear as the irritating but well-meaning mother. Natalie Wood, a great beauty, is something less than a great actress. Her most believable moment comes when Marjorie, despairing of Broadway acting fame, says mechanically: "Sometimes I think...
Real ability still often must take second place to good fellowship. The difficulty lies with the fact that there is no common agreement concerning in what merit consists. Academic standing is not always consulted, and often the glib conversationalist will be elected over the serious scholar. Many members are more concerned with keeping certain people out than with who gets in. The election meetings are charged with a snobbery and viciousness that many Final Clubs would be hard pressed to emulate...
Pull Up Some Wood. Amid his bouncing and shuffling teenagers, ex-Harmonica Player Clark is right at home. Personable and polite, he manages to sound as if he really means such glib disk-jockey patter as, "Let me pull up a hunk of wood and sit down with you." This air of sincerity is Clark's biggest attraction. Though ABC has mailed out 300.000 of his photographs since last summer, boyishly handsome Clark believes that most teen-agers see him less as a romantic idol than as the ideal big brother who understands their problems. On the problem...
...upon the exceeding sinfulness of man and the exceedingly simple way of enjoying the forgiveness of God by registering one's repentance in the signing of a card-this would be like playing a child's game if it were not done under such solemn pretension . . . The glib promise made over and over again that one thus 'receives the forgiveness of his sins and will go to heaven' discredits Christianity in the eyes of discerning men and women ... Its success in winning thousands by the incantation of an uninterpreted formula must be measured against the vaster...
...Money Stopped (by Maxwell Anderson and Brendan Gill; based on the Gill novel) deals with a classic stage theme: a fight over a will. It uses classic combatants: the disinherited black sheep and his self-righteous brother. As the glib playboy with a rusting charm (Richard Basehart) and the sententious prig with a rankling virtue (Kevin McCarthy) trade slurs-while their sister (Mildred Natwick) waves an olive branch -they lay siege to the holdings in the family vault via the skeletons in the family closet. Out, eventually, clatter illegitimacies and suicides and a crushed father image. And the disinherited playboy...