Word: maughamism
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Producer-Director Wyler had good reason to draw a comparison. Rummaging through his musty attic of past hits (Mrs. Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives, Roman Holiday), he came across Somerset Maugham's durable old (1927) melodrama, The Letter, and last week dusted it off for the 21-inch screen. It was Wyler's first stab at TV, and the result was a slick, highly polished teledrama about a bored wife who riddles her lover with bullets and gets away with...
...throated Siobhan (St. Joan) Mc-Kenna, in a blonde wig, played Leslie, the high-voltage heroine, through a sticky Malayan melee of passions. Stalking Maugham's female primeval like a white hunter was Wyler's inquisitive camera, peering through all the flora and fauna into the hurt eyes of the cuckolded husband (John Mills, making his American TV debut), or capturing the guilt written across the sallow face of the barrister (Michael Rennie) who helps Leslie beat the rap. With pace and polish, Wyler distilled all the steamy Maugham atmosphere and dry rot of colonial life, brought believability...
Producer's Showcase (Mon. 8 p.m., NBC). Somerset Maugham's The Letter, with Siobhan McKenna, John Mills. Directed by William Wyler...
...Elaine Stritch will star in 16 one-hour live shows called Washington Square, alternating with the Chevy Show's Dinah Shore and Bob Hope. Nanette Fabray, who left Sid Caesar for greener folding money, will star in High Button Shoes. Producer's Showcase will offer Somerset Maugham's The Letter (produced and directed by William Wyler), a musical version of Jack and the Beanstalk with Celeste Holm and Cyril Ritchard. John Huston's Lysistrata, Anatole Litvak's Mayerling with Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer, Claire Bloom in the Old Vic's Romeo and Juliet...
...Gishes both gave creditable performances--Lillian as Miss Madrigal and Dorothy as Mrs. St. Maugham--although they seemed somehow reluctant to lose themselves in their parts and to forget that after all, they are the Gishes. Lillian especially kept the passions within her a little too well hidden. Charron Follett, as the excitable, Gigi-like Laurel, had a part which could easily have been overplayed, but she handled it very well. O. Z. Whitehead was stiff at first but afterwards quite engaging as the butler. Only Frances Ingalls, as Laurel's young mother, was much too unsure of herself...