Word: humorously
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...good humor seemed just as unruffled, his expression just as bland, when a reporter asked if he felt "any sense of guilt for your part in the Stalin purges." Replied the only surviving member of the special commission that carried out Stalin's party liquidations of the '30s: "Under collective leadership we always feel responsible for the shortcomings and errors we have made, and we openly admit them to our people. This helps rectify the position." Still smiling, Malenkov wound up confidently promising that the Soviet Union would win "the battle of coexistence" in "much less than...
...beginning, however, the going seems a little rough, mainly because the play is not very funny. Throughout the first half of the comedy, most of the humor is at the expense of the Jew, Shylock, whom the poet conceived as a grasping, vengeful figure intent on exacting his pound of flesh from the Merchant. But director Richard Smithies has wisely chosen not to make Shylock the butt of all the jokes, even though he succeeds only partially in finding funny material elsewhere in the play...
...truly funny final scene. Here Edith Iselin, as Portia, and Paul Schmidt, as Bassanio, lose their initial remoteness and become recognizable as lovers. Jean Loud, in the part of Nerissa, is charming throughout, gaining stature as the play progresses. As Launcelot Gobbo, a clown, Michael Pollatsek injects some humor into the early scenes by cleverly contrived pomposity and overacting. Ernest Eugene Pell, on the other hand, gives a somewhat too unobtrusive, if competent, performance as Antonio, the Merchant. Yet the only serious defect in the acting of these and the other members of the large cast is their sloppyness...
...proportions of each melodramatic character. When he falters, it is generally when the action needs spiking with a few irrelevant laughs, which he gets by contemporary cynical asides to the audience. They rather destroy the continuing tone of the play, and therefore probably weaken more than strengthen. The best humor is milked from his straight and well-cooked dialogue, which director Edward Thommen exploits to the limit...
...Grey Flannel Suit is a long movie and one worth seeing. Its subject, the great Madison Avenue of high-pressure public relations, is tricky and almost impossible to describe without loading the dice. Passing up most of the opportunities for cute, crude humor, the movie makes a skillful attempt to give a straight treatment to Madison Avenue and its progeny...