Word: hounding
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...young playwright of widely hailed promise, Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead) is tick-tocking away with deadly superficiality in his new play, The Real Inspector Hound. This is a double-edged spoof on mystery plays and drama critics...
...critic is an avid lecher and blurb-confectioner, the other an intellectual exegete who would ponder the "human condition" in a pile of burning rubbish. Just such rubbish is put before both men in a fatuous mystery play. In a way, Hound is a miniaturized travesty of R. and G., since the two critics cannot grasp the play they are watching any better than R. and G. could fathom Hamlet. The critics become unintentionally involved in the action and are both shot to death. Stoppard is a ' word mimic and a born parodist. But parody is parasitic and needs...
...other half of the book, Albert Handley-a middle-aged madcap painter presiding over a whole circus of a family in Lincolnshire-rages against the sudden wealth and new-found fame threatening his old bohemian way of life. His children pester him for money, journalists hound him for interviews. Visions of unborn paintings torment his days and nights. He, too, claims to be a revolutionary-making money so that he can tear down the social structure that feeds...
ELVIS PRESLEY: It would be hard to devise any theory of criticism in which the number one position would go to anyone but Elvis. His influence on those who followed cannot be underrated: his hip-swinging set the style for performance, and the hard-driving toughness of Hound Dog and Treat Me Nice spawned a whole generation of imitations, from Fabian, Sal Mineo, and Joey Castle to Conrad Birdie. Only the Everly Brothers can match Elvis's dual line of songs--distinct yet composed of the same ingredients--that both define the pinnacle. Don't Be Cruel, Blue Suede Shoes...
Although murder and mental illness are hardly laughing matters. Director Jack Smight squeezes legitimate comedy from the corrosive camaraderie of Steiger and Segal in their hare-and-hound relationship. Not that the film is totally successful. Eileen Heckart, as Segal's mom, aims at Kosher salami but comes out Irish ham. And the end, heavy with Christian expiation, is as self-conscious as a Sunday-school morality play...