Word: lummox
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...most popular, if not most highly acclaimed, U.S. woman authors in the past half-century; in Manhattan. To many critics she was the sob sister of American letters, and her 30 novels and countless short stories little more than glorified True Confessions pap-orphan servant girls (Lummox, 1923), the secret love of a married man (Back Street, 1930), mother love (Imitation of Life, 1933). But her novels sold many millions of copies, and magazines paid $70,000 for the serial rights. "What success I enjoy," she once said, "comes from my inner convictions, which are little soul-tapers lighting...
...crew, which seems to stand for the U.S. public, is shown as a lazy collective lummox that just wants to live comfortably. The captain (Richard Crenna), who talks like a Jules Feiffer caricature of Lyndon Baines Jingo, acts at the critical juncture like a militaristic maniac. The hero (Steve McQueen), who is known as Holman, but let that pass, is apparently intended to symbolize fine young men who die in battle needlessly...
...packs a bit too much levity into it, so that transitions between ludicrousness and anxiety sometimes come off awkwardly. But neither mood overpowers the other, and the pulse of Pinter's story never misses a beat. Dustin Hoffman and Paul Benedict are well-matched as the brains-and-lummox partners; only Hoffman's antics occasionally smack of Kellogg's Cornflakes, and he tends to mix up his Cockney with Brooklynese...
Surely, also, Audrey is provided with ample opportunities for her patented doe-eyed scream. Four graphic corpses, I am told, put in an appearance. The first (Audrey's hubby) is tossed battered from a speeding train. The second (a mountainous lummox with a hook where his right hand oughta be) we discover face up and fish lipped in an overflowing bathtub. Number three (a balding dry-goodsman from the Bronx or someplace) gets his throat most ostentatiously slashed in an early-morning elevator. The last is an evil-tempered Texan named, curiously enough, "Tex." Audrey finds him bound head...
...rest of the ladies are brought into the business mainly to give afternoon audiences something to cluck over. Shelley Winters carries on a dalliance with a little-theater director mainly to escape the boredom of life with her lummox of a husband. Claire Bloom, a nymphoholic divorcee, goes for delivery boys and straight gin. Only Glynis Johns and John Dehner, as a sort of artsy-daftsy fun couple, manage to bring a whiff of fresh air to the otherwise musky proceedings. While declaiming "I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion" into a tape recorder one afternoon...