Word: hoofer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Idiot's Delight (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) is Producer Hunt Stromberg's version of the play in which Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne delighted New York City theatre audiences three years ago. On the stage, Idiot's Delight presented the fragmentary romance between an itinerant U. S. hoofer and the fake-Russian mistress of a munitions maker, in an Italian border hotel on the eve of a European war. All this added up to an amusing and superficially penetrating indictment of totalitarian politics. Whenever Hollywood touches material of this sort, it stirs up a tremendous agitation about whether...
...radio, Comedian Phil Baker-as well known for his accordion-playing as for his clowning- for years wanted to play a legitimate role. "I'm tired"' said he, "of being an Edgar Bergen." Recently his ambition soared at the thought of playing the lead role of a hoofer in Robert E. Sherwood's Idiot's Delight, while his "idealism" was aroused by the play's anti-war message...
Baker made arrangements with the Theatre Guild and Alfred Lunt, chucked his lucrative radio work, took Idiot's Delight on tour. Hailed as a natural for the hoofer role, he got rave notices. But the show did poor business, wound up its brief tour last week $10,000 in the red.* "Ten thousand dollars." said Baker, who is returning to radio to recoup before taking another crack at the stage, "is more than it was worth...
...Lightnin', wave after wave of purest hokum sweeps across the stage, but so candidly that nobody minds. Famed Hoofer Fred Stone (Montgomery & Stone) proved himself a winning character actor, brought to the title role made famous by Frank Bacon if not the same homely vigor, a sly and childlike charm. Lightnin', as Actor Stone-borrowing an old line of his-remarked in his curtain speech, is a play "to which children can safely bring their parents...
...that the proper study of mankind is man, Hollywood long ago assumed that the proper study of the cinema is the entertainment business. Cycles in Hollywood flare and fade, but the history of the young girl who goes to Manhattan to become an actress, falls in love with a hoofer and brings down the house on opening night remains as rooted as Narcissus. To the standard ingredients of the backstage formula, Letter of Introduction adds two interesting variants: the show in which Katherine Mannering (Andrea Leeds) makes her gala debut turns out to be a calamitous flop; and the hero...