Word: maughams
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...famous when he sat down, more than twelve years ago, to his work of translation-famous as a preacher, as a scholar, as a writer of detective novels and as a wit, but chiefly famous as a man. In the years before 1914, when the first plays of Somerset Maugham were delighting London with their brilliance, Knox already had a reputation for his wit and his satires against watery faith and confused thought...
Jane (adapted by S. N. Behrman from a Somerset Maugham short story) is urbane but upsy-downsy drawing-room comedy. Its three acts of intended laughter rather suggest three sets of tennis, with Jane narrowly losing the match, 6-2, 1-6, 4-6. Jane (Edna Best) is a rich, frumpish, middle-aged Liverpool widow, hard of head and blunt of speech. In a jolly first act she descends on her London relatives to announce that she is marrying a penniless architect half her age. There is consternation, opposition, and the sense of a cheerful future for the play...
...London, though nothing is actually shown but her incurring the rage of Londoners. There is no verve in it: things merely dribble along, with Jane tiring of society and the young husband tiring of Jane. In the last act, by flanking Jane with a worldly writer who might be Maugham (Basil Rathbone) and a philandering newspaper tycoon (Howard St. John), the play manages a few rallies, but never quite comes right...
...Painter Graham Sutherland: a study of walnut-faced Publisher Lord Beaverbrook in a grimly pleasant mood. The Beaver agreed to sit for the portrait, a 72nd birthday present from his staff last year, after he saw and admired Sutherland's first attempt at portraiture: a haggard, cynical Somerset Maugham...
...Constant Wife. Katharine Cornell's revival of Maugham's smooth-as-glass sex comedy of deception and self-deception (TIME...