Word: melodrama
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Never was more melodrama swept between two covers and seldom was it swept so well. Author Dehan's style is his fortune. Tumultuous, it confuses at first, until the long rhythms of a splendid imagination become apparent. Then, sustained overtones rise above the narrative?the bitter self-sufficiency of a betrayed Jew; the long-suffering humanity of a French monk in the wilderness; the earthy mysticism of aborigines who talk from hill to hill with smoke columns, declare war with muttering drums and ululate for a dying god when the sun is eclipsed...
...theatrical season just past was marked by a run of mystery melodrama.* The theatrical season just beginning promises by token of Blood Money to continue in the same bloody tradition. A mystery melodrama is a play that starts with a murder and ends in a surprise. Here the murder is incident upon one Senator Bolton, who just before his death wrapped up $100,000 in a brown paper envelope consigned to nobody. The surprise, according to reviewing ethics, must not be divulged. Let readers know, however, that beauteous Phyllis Povah, who plays as sec- retary to the Senator whose demise...
...psychologically and philosophically speaking, was easily the equivalent of any crime they might have committed against society. Society, through its legal machinery in Massachusetts, had started to bare the skins of Prisoners Sacco, Vanzetti and Madeiros for the touch of Death and then, with a reprieve of which the melodrama was a cheap insult to whatever dignity human life may have, virtually mumbled: ". . . Live on for twelve days longer. Our mind is not quite made...
...classic situation of rural melodrama is the moment at which the eloping or otherwise errant heroine is asked to produce her "marriage lines." Lack of such is considered circumstantial evidence of the most damning sort...
...other newspaper in New York," Mr. Hearst entered upon a comparison between the newspaper and the author: "There are various elements of interest in the fiction stories which appear in books and on the stage, and in the fact stories which appear in newspapers-such as romance, adventure, melodrama, comedy and tragedy. . . . "In dealing with all of these elements of interest, all of these facts of life, the editor, however, must exercise good taste. . . . just as the playwright or the novelist must. "And as a matter of plain fact, the editor generally exercises, and should exercise, and in fact must...