Word: matthau
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Playwright Kurnitz has a gift for amusing gags, and his play is sprinkled with hem. Here and there, it has a funny situation also; moreover, the manager beyond being show-stealingly played by Walter Matthau-is a juicy character, and not by accident. His rich, lowdown nature is right up Kurnitz' alley, which is Shubert with a touch of Tin Pan. In the world of music, as of art, Playwright Kurnitz remains Broadway to the core, He is not the only recent playwright whose treatment of a stylish professional world, by comparison with The Man Who Came to Dinner...
...Griffith earns his nickname when he shaves his skull egg-bald in hopes of growing thicker hair. When not engaged in scalping himself, he bangs pans by day and bumblefoots around the local talent (Felicia Farr) by night, but hits stormy weather on both fronts. His chief cook (Walter Matthau), a sardonic old coot with a mania for cinnamon rolls, marries the girl. Then Cookie ships out for convoy duty, and Griffith finds himself heating up both the gal and the gallery...
...pressure, is burned with half a dozen garlic-smeared slugs, and Keating (Richard Egan) is assigned to make the case against the goons who got him. He gets nowhere fast. The longshoremen, as usual, are afraid to talk. The victim himself refuses to "rat." The affable union boss (Walter Matthau) plies the racket-buster with bribes and threats. His chief witness disappears. But somehow the interest remains...
...Walter Matthau, as prize-winning playwright Michael Freeman, emerges from the affair with more dignity than his fellows, though this is little enough. His remarks about the second play being the hardest are unfortunate as far as Axclrod is concerned, but they are certainly borne out with disturbing accuracy...
Some of his gags were clever enough, some of his scenes had the right farcical commotion for a different kind of play, and in Walter Matthau he had an engaging leading man. But the play, which closed at week's end after five performances, was far from expert on its own terms, and its terms were a little shabby anyhow. Playwright Hess seemed to have chosen his theme for no better reason than that it is in the air right now, and to have handled it as though it were going...