Word: humors
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Humor and characterization are excellent in "The Late George Apley," but that is about all. The plot lacks substance and sentimental appeal and has none of the warmth that might have rescued it. The effect is always superficial; never once does the tone of the play suggest a smooth or natural flow. Epigrams and quotable witticisms follow in rapid succession, and if the play's continual references to Boston life delight the audiences here, that delight can be expected to diminish to the chuckle stains, on Broadway. Chuckles do not make hits...
What is his measure? He is modest, honest, healthy, simple, kindly, straightforward, with a pleasant sense of humor, the average level of Congressional intelligence-which is higher than U.S. voters often think. His defects are lacks: he is obviously not a man whose nobility of purpose, splendid idealism or farsighted vision of the American destiny has ever stirred or could ever stir the country. He is not known as the sponsor of any legislation of importance, let alone of any profound or seriously progressive measures; he has never notably participated in debate on taxes or economic measures...
...other westerns are almost, but not quite, as indistinguishable as so many Lincoln pennies. What distinguishes this one is its discreet overall sense that the cast-iron predicaments, incisive fights, violent equitations, munificent landscapes and hay-stuffed creatures of such operas can be invested with some feeling both for humor and for authenticity. In advancing this idea, casually argued at best, the most efficient debaters are: 1) John Wayne, who is cinema's ablest proponent of rawhide masculinity; 2) neon-eyed Ella Raines, the most human and promising of the young sub-stars; 3) whiskey-whiskered, exuberant "Gabby" Hayes...
...Cotty attended Cheltenham College, preparatory school, where he became "tall, strong as a horse, graceful." From there he went to Cambridge, where he read Punch, Dickens, Matthew Arnold, Tennyson and the law-and not much else. "There is a striking similarity between the Rector's humor and that of Punch in the days when he was in Britain," observes Ashburn. When Endicott graduated, he knew only that he wanted to be useful...
With characteristic (Tobacco Road) humor, Caldwell spotlights a Southern squatter community, called Poor Boy, and follows the dreamy, hard-drinking career of a onetime highly-paid war worker, called Spence Douthit, who amiably man ages to resist every attempted reform -including his own delinquent daughter's. Caldwell's characters, as usual, outrage every decent instinct and stir every other kind...