Word: melodrama
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...there never been a philosophy of kismet, doubtless the theater would have invented one. For whatever its status as metaphysics, it makes a useful handmaiden for melodrama. And exploited, as in Tonight in Samarkand, with all the blare of circus music and color of circus life, it achieves for two acts a certain quality of nice old-fashioned excitement. The play goes in for few philosophic frills, merely uses fate as a plot gimmick. A blonde girl symbolizes death, but no more abstrusely than a headwaiter symbolizes dinner...
...Desperate Hours (adapted from his novel by Joseph Hayes) provides this season-and probably next-with a thriller after its own loud-beating heart. Playwright Hayes has fashioned an up-to-date old-fashioned melodrama about three escaped convicts who move in on a respectable Indianapolis family while waiting for getaway money from a confederate. The situation is rich in all kinds of human and ironic and psychological possibilities. But in The Desperate Hours such aspects pretty much lurk in corners. It is excitement that is stationed at the front door, suspense that guards the back, and tension that sneaks...
...role is a disgusting one, and Tony Curtis was a perfect choice. George Nader plays the policemean and also does a good job. In fact, the whole cast, including the countless unwitting Bostonians, does the best it can; its only guilt is that of association with a second-rate melodrama...
...greed turn him into a gigolo and, eventually, a corpse. ABC's U.S. Steel Hour offered another TV version of Henri Bernstein's The Thief (Kraft TV Theater did the same play in 1952), with Paul Lukas, Diana Lynn, Mary Astor and James Deane. An old-school melodrama, The Thief tells of an idealistic young man who takes the responsibility for an older woman's momentary weakness. The play, as well as the actors, was better in its parts than in its whole, but it made a satisfactory 60 minutes...
...Waterfront. Elia Kazan's big-shouldered melodrama of dockside corruption; with Marlon Brando (TIME...