Word: halperns
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...Halpern clan is a family of cartoon monsters. Vulgar, egomaniacal Mama (Ruth Gordon) is a compulsive shopper with delusions of solvency. Masochistic Papa (Walter Matthau) is a corner-cutting shoe manufacturer who is going bankrupt in a paroxysm of anguish and gallows humor. Son Bernie (Anthony Holland) is a leaky, self-expressing drip, the kind that leaves a brown stain in a washbowl. At play's end, simple-witted Bernie is out in the once pristine West shilling with a tom-tom for some once noble Indians who are now corrupt enough to con the tourists with their fabricated...
...Father Halpern (Walter Matthau) is a shoe manufacturer who bungles the business devices that everyone else succeeds with (like exploiting tax loopholes and war scares). He is not the Little Man, but a small-scale tax self-consciously. His wife (Ruth Gorevader; not poor, just going bankrupt don) is a silly woman whose mother-love is gauged in terms of what she can buy her son, whose purpose in life is to get bargains, and whose problems are valued at the going Psychiatric rates. "Me," their son Berney, still wants to "find himself" at twenty-six. He hopes...
...obvious risk in presenting such unattractive Jewish characters. Broadway audiences have shown little inclination to take criticism in the past, and without newspaper critics to tell them to take it (and like it), they might, pardon the expression, rebel. Matters are not helped by Miss Gordon, who exaggerates Rona Halpern beyond the demands of farce, and of Walter Matthau who does nothing but impose a televised quality on the Halpern living room. As Berney, however, Anthony Holland ekes out all the sympathy possible and Lily Darvas is similarly good as the grandmother whom the Halperns briefly tolerate, then ship...
...subject that Miss Hellman treats with particular humor and good sense is the uneasy relationship between post-ghetto Jews and Negroes. The play opens with Berney singin' on his guitar "De life of a nigger ain't much good..." a point to which the Halpern maid, who overhears him, speaks with some feeling. In a later scene, Berney urges social action on a Negro who mugs him, more or less to shut him up. As these two episodes perhaps suggest, there is considerable overlap in the construction. Since a scene or two might be cut in the process of tightening...
...Larry Johnson in foil, Lajos Heder in sabre, and Allan Gardner in epee represented the Crimson in the 31-team tournament. Gardner turned in the outstanding individual performance, atoning for an off-day at the easterns the week before by taking third place in the epee. Gardner finished behind Halpern of N.Y.U. and Anger of Princeton, turning in a 23-7 record for the two days...