Word: hokum
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...Gary Cooper's virility, Paulette Goddard's femininity and the American Frontier Spirit. The movie is getting such stentorian ballyhoo that a lot of cinemagoers are likely to think less of it than it deserves. It is, to be sure, a huge, high-colored chunk of hokum; but the most old-fashioned thing about it is its exuberance, a quality which 66-year-old Director DeMille preserves almost single-handed from the old days when even the people who laughed at movies couldn't help liking them...
Ever since Phineas T. Barnum observed that "a sucker is born every minute" and proceeded to prove it with a fabulous assortment of hokum, men have tried to describe the mystery and glamour surrounding circus life. But most attempts at painting the lives and loves of an India Rubber Man or drawing the character behind a barker's chant have failed miserably. Circus people became either ridiculous or dull under the pens of fascinated, but insensitive authors. "Gus the Great" is no unhappy commentary by someone outside the realm. Mr. Duncan treats his subject with great dignity and honest realism...
...nearing 70, Author Sinclair can still reel off his special Lanny-brand of history and hokum at comic-strip clip. "All I have to do is turn the spigot," he once explained, "and the water flows." And, though critics and historians may not like him, Lanny has a public. In Europe-and in Russia (where Sinclair is considered a major U.S. literary figure, along with William Faulkner and Erskine Caldwell) the Lanny Budd volumes are becoming almost as well known as Author Sinclair's The Jungle or The Brass Check. Several of the Lanny series have already been published...
...Wonderful Life" might appeal to pulp-magazine addicts and people who don't know the truth about Santa Claus. On paper, it would hardly suggest to a normal mind that its transformation into movie form could do anything but heighten to the point of nausea its sentimental hokum and turn-of-the-century American idealism. On the screen, however, it becomes as entertaining, as moving, as funny and sad--in short, as fine a picture as ever came out of Hollywood...
...Wonderful Life. A wonderful, hokum-filled fable in which Producer-Director Frank Capra and Actor James Stewart stage a triumphantly sentimental Hollywood homecoming (TIME...