Word: lamkin
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...Speed Lamkin '48 does not prove to be the only Broadway playwright ever to come out of Monroe, Louisiana, he will almost certainly be the youngest. His Comes a Day will open in New York on November 6, four days after its author's thirty-first birthday. He could still pass for an undergraduate, showing up for a drink in a herringbone tweed jacket, button-down shirt, and dark slacks: a slightly-built undergraduate with an impressively thick Southern accent. Surprisingly, the barman neglects to ask for his draft card...
Most of these situations are still effective when well-handled; if that were not the case, serious American drama would practically be wiped out. But Mr. Lamkin's dialogue is spotted with cliches. "And we laughed, oh, how we laughed. We were the happiest people on earth, without a care," and "Talking won't bring it back, Isabel. It's gone, it's gone," are representative samples. Mr. Lamkin writes so well for Mr. Scott that it is difficult to understand how he can write so badly for nearly everyone else. Many of these excrescences will probably be written...
...merits deserved, the results would be difficult to imagine, though some clues are provided by Arthur O'Connell as drunken father Lawton and Brandon de Wilde as his (overwritten, overdirected) son. The daughter of the Lawton household--a perceptive character study by the way; score one for Mr. Lamkin--wants to marry Mr. Scott's character for his money, but is torn by an enormous letch for a hot water heater salesman. Diana van der Vlis is excellent in this role, and Larry Hagman is good as her stud. Ruth Hammond is conventional but highly competent in a conventional character...
...memory-ridden, shabby-genteel matriarch. She projects a genuine grandeur, a sense that no matter what Isabel Lawton does she is somehow worthy of admiration. In cold fact Isabel Lawton is worthy of very little admiration, and Miss Anderson makes her much better worth watching than Mr. Lamkin had any right to expect...
...hard luck that Mr. Scott, in a showy and well-conceived part, runs away with the play. Comes a Day, for all its faults, is never dull, and in one brilliant scene Mr. Lamkin and Mr. Scott finally make it powerful. If Boston sees a better performance all year than Mr. Scott's then Boston is one lucky town...