Word: hoffenstein
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Died. Samuel Hoffenstein, 57, master writer of satiric light verse (Poems in Praise of Practically Nothing); of a heart attack; in Los Angeles. A wry-writing favorite of Manhattan's wry-minded literary set in the late '20s, Hoffenstein (who had written, I'd rather listen to a flute in Gotham, than a band in Butte) disappeared into Hollywood as a scenario writer, later explained: "In the movies we writers work our brains to the bone, and what do we get for it? A lousy fortune...
...Ernst Lubitsch a good movie director and producer? One of the best: "Ninotchka" and "Heaven Can Wait" are typical products of the "Lubitsch touch." And is Jennifer Jones a good actress? Yes, and as beautiful as her co-star, Charles Boyer. This fellow Samuel Hoffenstein, can he write? Like a Parker 51. Then how come "Cluny Brown" is such a bum picture...
That's easy. Hoffenstein's get-nowhere say nothing script condemns the picture from the start. The potential comedy in a story about a maid with a yen for fixing plumbing and an over-frank manner in the presence of superiors gets stuck in an under brush of plot complications. Given this bad material to work with, Lubitsch has made the worst of it. He has miscast both Miss Jones and Boyer in light comedy parts, and his attempts at satirizing English high-life seem ponderous, especially when handled by Peter Lawford and Helen Walker. Add to this a further...
...clear now except for two things. If all these people, like Lubitsch and Hoffenstein, are as good as you say they are, how can they be as bad as you say they are? And why has "Cluny Brown" been a popular success...
...strictly legal sense, original. Ben Hecht ducoed the Molnar play into the triangle. Donald Ogden Stewart and Alan Campbell whipped up the first act of Ladislaus Fodor's play Burberry into the brief burlesque. Two other Ladislauses, Vadnai and Gorog, worked up the Charles Laughton tearjerker. Samuel Hoffenstein and Henry Blankfort are responsible for the sharecropper scene...