Word: melodrama
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Daphne du Maurier, 46, is one of the slickest pros now producing bestseller belles-lettres. She dips her pen into the inkpot of romance, melodrama or suspense and aims it like a dagger at the heart of the defenseless reader, who is usually quite willing to hold still...
Dial M is starred with fine scenes and good performances. Though played as contemporary melodrama, it somehow manages to reflect the gaslight magic of turn-of-the-century London. Murder is the plot, but everyone is extremely gentlemanly about the crime, from the Holmesian police inspector (John Williams) down to the caddish assassin (Anthony Dawson). The crime is conceived by quick-witted Ray Milland, who, losing his wife's love, decides to murder her for her money rather than wait for her to leave him. A solicitous sort who doesn't want to hurt anyone unnecessarily, Milland arranges...
...this question was put to a test by Tom Hopkinson, free-lance writer, novelist and onetime editor (TIME, Sept. 15, 1952). At the request of Herbert Gunn, 50, editor of Lord Rothermere's racy tabloid Daily Sketch (circ. 804,541), Hopkinson reviewed Front Page Story, a British movie melodrama with a Fleet Street background. After sending his review to the Sketch, Hopkinson was called by a subeditor and asked if one word might be taken out of the review. "What word?" asked Hopkinson. "You say, 'It's not a great picture,' " answered the subeditor. "Would...
Novelist Masters keeps his melodrama going at top speed with a terrorist plot, an attempted rape, a murder and plenty of political intrigue and skulduggery, and he handles it all with wit and intelligence. Though he does not go to the heart of his characters, at least he manages to get under their skins. But he is at his best when he catches the pathos of his eight-anna heroine and her half-caste lover, human beings who do not belong because the color of their skin is a shade too dark...
...show is a period piece with mild historical warrant: it tells of a French ballet troupe which came to New York around 1870, was burned out of the Academy of Music while still in rehearsal, and joined forces with a melodrama rehearsing at Niblo's Garden. Though presumably an account of how-via The Black Crook-American musicomedy was born, it seems an account of how it died. Few recent musicals have been more lavish, fewer still so long-winded...