Word: levi
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...fools and get married again. Cornelius Hackl and Barnaby Tucker, two conscientious clerks in Vandergelder's store, imperiously decide to close the place up and head for New York City, where, for the first time in their lives, they may perhaps get to kiss a girl. And Mrs. Levi, the widowed "matchmaker" whom Vandergelder has commissioned to find him a wife, resolves to direct all her professional talents toward becoming Mrs. Vandergelder herself. Purely in the interest of Mr. Wilder's comedy, all these characters have apparently agreed to renounce their customary lives and create as many funny situations...
...slapstick is a theatrical narcotic, and both Wilder and director Tyrone Guthric almost inhale too much of the stuff. Having written the play expressly for Ruth Gordon in the role of Mrs. Levi, the author has given her too many lines that depend on dialect alone. Guthrie has compounded the peccadillo by letting Miss Gordon maintain her rasping voice too loud for too much of the time. The result, especially when Loring Smith is sharing the scene as the booming and gesticulating Vandergelder, is a shouting match that numbs the audience and detracts from those scenes wherein pandemonium reigns legitimately...
Otherwise, Miss Gordon brings out beautifully the changing tactics of Mrs. Levi in her matrimonial campaign: subtle flattery at the start; then reverse psychology, as she warns Vandergelder not to propose marriage because his household is too messy for any woman to run; and finally, when victory is secure, wifely nagging. Smith, too, gets nearly the maximum amount of laughs out of his lines; Eileen Herlie is suitably fluttery as a milliner; and Arthur Hill and Robert Morse are expertly naive as the two clerks. The settings are generous in number (four) but deficient in imagination--only in the last...
...leave, was Roman Catholic Bishop James E. Walsh, 64. Bishop Walsh had continued church services after the Communist victory: he dared the Communists to persecute him along with younger missionaries, saying: "The others have done no more nor less than I." Other church folk due to come home: Levi A. Lovegren, 66, supervisor of the Baptist missionaries in western China, imprisoned since January 1951 for "espionage": Sarah Perkins and Dorothy Middleton Presbyterian missionaries to a colony of lepers at Lienhsien, imprisoned since February 1951 for "sabotage." Points of Divergence. U.S. Ambassador Johnson is now committed to move on to Point...
...sweaters, dresses in Dacron, nylon and other wonder fabrics in every color. There are dresses of wispy silk and tough denims, terry-cloth shirts, and shorts in everything from calfskin to velvet. Toreador pants, once worn only by the brave (and beautiful), are as common as pedal-pushers and Levi's. One big 1955 craze: sweater-like cotton knits in everything from beach robes to low-priced cocktail dresses...