Word: melodrama
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...judges are about to be bullied into a blanket verdict of guilty when the Dictator (House Jameson) appears, encounters a sudden revolt, is shot dead. Even more boisterous and declamatory than Pulitzer Prize-winner Rice's We, the People, this sharply written melodrama suffers from one defect : real news events, when literally re-created in the theatre, tend to sound like burlesques...
...humor, impersonal satire, shameless, but effective hokum. Only a rare reader will be able to sit it through unmoved either to a smile or a sigh. The total effect is sinister. Author Waugh must be credited with having written a novel truly representative of an age which is partly melodrama, partly farce...
...nearly always so overworked during the past year that he was in a constant state of irritation, but withal honest, forthright, energetic. Those who would welcome his departure do so only because if he stays they see no way of: 1) altering NRA policies; 2) changing NRA from a melodrama starring Hugh S. Johnson to a businesslike administration of recovery measures. Last week it was learned that the President had. as a reward of merit, raised the salary of the General from $6,800 to $15,000?equal to that of the Vice President, the Speaker, members of the Cabinet...
...successes. Last of the four was Vinegar Tree (1930) which got him a cinema contract. Now one of the busiest male stars in Hollywood, he is famed for his profile and his versatility. He has performed in farce (Goodbye Again], satire (The Dark Horse), musicomedy (Gold Diggers of 1933), melodrama (The Mouthpiece), costume romance (Honor of the Family}, sentimental comedy (Lady for a Day) and DeMillery (Cleopatra), often works in two or more pictures simultaneously. Married, he lives in a small house in Hollywood. His grandfather was a spiritualist, his father a country publisher. He studies navigation, owns and sails...
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's W. S. ("Woody") Van Dyke (White Shadows in the South Seas, Trader Horn, Eskimo) dislikes being pigeonholed as a "location-director." Yet such he was until he made The Prizefighter and the Lady last autumn. Since then he has made Manhattan Melodrama and The Thin Man, both smash hits. He rarely makes more than two "takes" of a scene; many directors make a dozen. He is a reserve captain in the Marine Corps. Most of his friends are military officers. Military maneuvres are his hobby and he maps out his pictures like a general planning...