Word: holt
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This is where John W. Holt, director of the Bureau, comes in, for he acts as leg-men, contact artist, and labor-management mediator for the other 3000 annual jobs. His system is roughly this...
Each applicant fills out a detailed form explaining his special talents, his free hours, his employment preferences, and sundry other details. Then Holt calls upon his store of contacts to find a hob that will fit the applicant's particular idiosyncrasies, or if none is forthcoming, files the application away until a suitable job shows...
...also this type of student who gives Holt the biggest headaches. Many of them turn up their noses at $40 a week jobs for less remunerative ones that will keep them in a lower income tax bracket. Others, who work for the pleasure of it are apt to quit at a crucial moment without telling their employees. Needless to say, this does no good to the reputation of the Bureau...
...probably wise as well as ingenious, for the play really scores as the whopping success story of a ruthless charmer who begins as a small shopkeeper faced with bankruptcy and winds up a potentate and peer of the realm. With bright humor and a sort of icy gaiety, Holt gambles, soft-soaps, bludgeons, picklocks his way out of scrapes and up the ladder. And the play's interest really lies much less in whom he does it for than in how he does it; the Edward role seems a bit of a phony as well as a phantom...
...play does not lack insight, but its real allegiance is to the footlights, with their richer-than-life diet of emotions. As Holt, indeed, Actor Morley sinks his teeth into the role as though it were an ear of corn dripping with butter-which, theatrically, it is. As Holt's wife, Actress Ash-croft-turning from a happy young mother into a blotchy old drunk-has a fat acting part too; but for brief seconds here & there, she is so good that she gives it the pinched look of tragedy...