Word: humorous
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Your correspondent, Mr. Stewart (p. 4 of Aug. 10 issue) displays what ve like to call a "British deficiency in humor," branding as unreasonable a plainly fantastic expression...
...political experience more varied than the most cunning double-crossing ward heeler. Pontifical are the remarks which he makes in a soft baritone about the weather. Even his manner of blowing his nose in court is sonorous, distinguished. He also has imagination and a sense of humor...
...revue. He takes part in flippant blackouts-in one he has to wriggle his giant form under a bed. He sings. In his curtain talks he fingers his straw hat diffidently, looks incredibly happy when his jokes cause laughter, bewildered when they do not. Sample of the Broun humor: "I made a bet that Abie's Irish Rose wouldn't run a week. . . . Finally I bet that it wouldn't run forever...
Rebound (RKO-Pathé). Playwright Philip Barry (in Paris Bound and Holi day) gave drawing-room comedy a new fillip by introducing into the speeches of his well-bred characters a form of "cuckoo humor"-causing them, in moments of emotional stress, to go into absurd monologs, parodying the attitudes and technique of serious fiction. Because Barry's characters were rich and well educated, it came to be believed that such gaiety was the height of sophistication. Author Donald Ogden Stewart is an old hand at this type of humor and he employed it in his play Rebound. Less...
High point of humor was Harry Richman's scene after the intermission, selling a broom to a housewife by radio advertising technique (including quartet). But the main box office insurance, besides frequent and generous glimpses of lovely Zigs, remained the injections of nostalgia. These were administered in two ways, for contrast. Under a sidewalk perspective of the Empire State Building, industrious Mr. Richman sang while the company pranced a stagger-jazz cacophony called "Doing the New York," sure to make out-of-towners feel well away from home. And out of a hard-drinking penthouse party scene were developed...