Word: idioms
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...famed actresses. In this latest edition−a mockery fest which simultaneously jibes at world history, actors, producers, Broadway hits−Mimic Carroll simulates the jiggling gait of Beatrice Lillie (This Year of Grace), the lush, salivary speech of Constance Collier (the countess in Serena Blandish), the Jewish idiom of Fannie Brice (Fioretta), the long-legged, weaving rhythms of Gertrude Lawrence (Treasure Girl). He is far less successful in his one attempt to imitate a man, to catch the elusive implications of silent Harpo Marx (Animal Crackers). There are also two female mimics: Dorothy Sands and Paula Trueman. The latter...
Helen Kane sings in an idiom and with an inflection peculiar to the Bronx, N. Y., where she grew up and where her father ran a neighborhood store. In vaudeville she was one of those fat, supernaturally stupid girls who serve up joke cues to dapper comedians. Later, in Broadway nightclubs, her fame spread as a singer of semi-salacious, contemporary folk songs. She sang with Paul Ash's orchestra, later in the musical comedy Good Boy. Young men in eastern colleges have voted for her as their favorite actress...
...Czech Surgeon-Playwright Frantisek Langer is the last production of the eleventh Theatre Guild season. It is a success story in the mid-European idiom. Alik is the silent, dawdling son of a millionaire. All that he subsequently becomes, his redemption from a life of complete inertia, he owes to a girl, Susi. Naturally, since Alik is Continental, Susi is not his wife. Possessing the shrewdness of the slums, she manages, when Alik's father ousts her from Alik's modernistic chambers, to take Alik away with her, to make him work. Together they found a model dairy...
...translating ancient idols for modern idlers is not new. John Erskine and Robert Emmet Sherwood have taken the edge off the novelty. It would seem that Hardwick Nevin had moments of realizing all this while he was writing his play about Alexander the Great, for he abandons the modern idiom from time to time in his treatment and launches forth into high-sounding blank verse. The result is confusion. Neither young Alexander nor the audience get anywhere...
...then falls in love with Lupe Velez, a cabaret entertainer dressed up and taught fine manners by the countess, who wants to fool her prospective husband. Miss Velez proves she has not lost her energy. Comtesse Jetta Goudal's weak face and sloping shoulders are in the best idiom of the Second Empire. Best shot: Lupe Velez eating when she isn't hungry...