Word: lear
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...King Lear (by William Shakespeare; produced by Robert L. Joseph & Alexander H. Cohen) is possibly the greatest single achievement in all literature-and the greatest stumbling block known to the stage. The play's scope, declared the late great Critic A. C. Bradley, is too vast for any stage to encompass; while Charles Lamb contended that the title role cannot be acted, that Lear's greatness is inward and "intellectual," and that when put behind the footlights he becomes merely "an old man tottering about . . . with a walking stick." There are other problems. The sharpest drama...
Broadway's newest Lear is a good deal more painstaking than vibrant. But its newest Lear is not only far better than any other that Broadway has seen for a generation; it definitely indicates, even though it does not definitively prove, that the part can be acted. Tall, commanding Louis Calhern (Jacobowsky and the Colonel, The Magnificent Yankee) conveys what the faithful Kent saw in Lear's countenance-authority.* Calhern also has a perfect sense of the vain, imperious whitebeard, the appalled father, the outraged king. And Calhern's Lear is often touching as well as grand...
...rest, the production merits respect for its determination to be serious rather than showy. Unfortunately, much of it seems commonplace, passionless, unbreathed upon. King Lear contains half a dozen roles stamped with Shakespeare's maturest genius. But the production is a tangle of acting styles-an Edmund sinuous as an Oriental dancer, a Goneril straight out of melodrama; perhaps only Martin Gabel's blunt, forthright Kent keeps its outline. Round the play's great lonely poetic peaks roar the cold winds of human evil and malign fate, the bleak message that...
...Besides flying his skittish aircraft, he must navigate, search for ground targets, avoid enemy antiaircraft and watch out for enemy fighters. No pilot has enough hands, eyes and brains to do all these jobs perfectly. Last week the Air Force told how it had teamed up with William P. Lear, winner of the 1950 Collier Trophy for aviation, to take some of the job of flying and fighting the airplane off the jet pilot's neck...
...Lear Inc.'s F-5 autopilot is much lighter (weight, less than 55 lbs.) than its predecessors, and so small (volume, 1 cu. ft.) that its parts have to be assembled by watchmakers' methods. When the plane is once in the air, the pilot can point it on its compass heading, turn on the autopilot, and relax as far as flying is concerned...