Word: hobo
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Heavenly Express (by Albert Bein; produced by Kermit Bloomgarden). In recent years playwrights have been busy pulling the lids off coffins. Heavenly Express plays along with On Borrowed Time, Death Takes a Holiday, The Fabulous Invalid, Liliom, Outward Bound-this time dressing Death up as a hobo...
Part of an old hobo legend, the Heavenly Express makes a pleasant theatre fantasy, but Playwright Bein leans on it too heavily as a plot device. He has also treated his fantasy far too coyly. The Overland Kid (John Garfield) dances all over the stage, cavorts on chairs and tables, makes pixie faces and Puckish gestures, behaves like someone who is more at home on a tricycle than in freight cars...
...play comes most alive when it forgets its plot and lets The Overland Kid sing the songs of the road, including such a glimpse of Hobo Heaven as the oldtime hobo song...
...Bindle stiff" is an American hobo term. The regular, full-blown, 100% hobo travels "as is," unhampered by any such sissifications as luggage, package or bundle...
...hobo who does carry a bundle, be it ever so little, is regarded as a stuck-up stiff or bindle stiff...