Word: humorous
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...flew home via Lisbon, with delays for bad weather. This week, none too soon to suit him, he landed at LaGuardia Airport, where he was overwhelmed by five teary Kennedys: Mrs. Kennedy, daughters Jeane, Kathleen, Patricia, Eunice. First official visit was to the White House. He emerged in good humor, refused to answer any questions as to why he had come home. Later, still sphinxlike, he announced he would go on the radio and address the nation...
Chaplin's previous hits have been pearls of assorted humor strung on a thread of personality-the personality of an ineffectual, half pathetic, half grotesque, wholly sympathetic little comedian. The Great Dictator has enough pearls but no thread...
Here Miss Hughes is speaking much truth. No one can get much humor from Sir Toby Belch's pun on "points" if he isn't aware that points in Queen Elizabeth's day were of vital importance in connecting one's pants to one's suspenders. In fact, I fail to see how an audience can enjoy Shakespeare at all, especially his comedy, if it hasn't given the play a good once-over ahead of time. Not that Shakespeare is "deep" or needs unravelling. But it only stands to reason that an author who draws on such a wide...
...Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Ague cheek who hardly exploited "the robust comedy elements of the play" I take it that Miss Hughes feels badly that the lines did not crackle like those, say, out of "Panama Hattie." I don't think Shakespeare meant them to. Toby's humor is more mellow than witty. It belongs, just as he does, to old and merry England...
Typical of Toby's humor is his bantering with Maria, who warns him to "confine yourself within the modest limits of order." He counters: "Confine: I'll confine myself no finer than I am. These clothes are good enough to drink in, and so be these boots too." There is certainly nothing "dated" in this joke to spoil it, but it would hardly rate in the poorest radio laugh-show. It belongs to a comic old knight, still able to raise cain, but really as antiquated and useless as the England which is giving way to new commerce...