Word: joans
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Married. Joan Blondell, 37, full-blown, blonde cinemactress; and Michael Todd, 40, Hollywood and Broadway producer (Up in Central Park); she for the third time (her No. 2: Cinemactor Dick Powell), he for the second; in Las Vegas...
Repeat Performance (Eagle-Lion) is a melodrama about an actress (Joan Leslie) who kills her drunken playwright husband (Louis Hayward) on New Year's Eve. She wishes that she could live that year over, except for its climax. When she finds her husband alive and as nasty as ever, and everyone else carrying on as if it were exactly a year ago, with no foresight of calamity, she realizes that Fate has granted her wish...
...Joan Leslie is sincere as the unhappy girl caught in Fate's double-focus; and Mr. Hayward throws all his weight into his role as a noisome drunkard-husband. But it is hard to figure out why he isn't done in again long before the show is over...
Despite these debilities, the play is retrieved and made fit for viewing by several considerations. One is that it takes a lot of inept handling to obscure the dramatic facts of Joan's career. Another is Maxwell Anderson's amazing gift of producing a flow of facile, taut dialogue. Finally, the cast is enthusiastic and, in the main, knows its craft. Madge Evans, despite a vigorous between-acts clawing from the Bergman acolytes, is fluent, intent on what she's doing, and very good to look at: and Richard Crouch is quick, practical, and harried as a stage manager...
Those irreconcilables who can't abide the thought of anyone but Shaw, or Bergman, tampering with the character of Joan, will find possible solace at the Colonial, in viewing John Gielgud's "Love for Love...