Word: minstreling
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...from Kiwanis. St. Louis-born Roberta Sherwood's career has a strong flavor of soap opera. Roberta's father ran an oldtime touring minstrel show ("He was a real raggledaggle show-business type"), and by the time she was in her early teens, she was out of school and in a song and dance act. Finally she married a sometime actor named Don Lanning, settled down with him in Miami, operating a restaurant. When her husband fell ill of cancer in 1953 and lost his bar concession, Roberta found herself with three boys on her hands...
...more stirringly sung than in this tale of bold emprise in old Nippon. In his latest film, Akira Kurosawa (Rashomon) has plucked the epic string. And though at times, in the usual Japanese fashion, some dismal flats and rather hysterical sharps can be heard, the lay of this Oriental minstrel has a martial thrum and fervor that should be readily understood even in those parts of the world that do not speak the story's language. Violence, as Kurosawa eloquently speaks it, is a universal language...
...party today have very little in common with the caricature of the past. Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, Attorney General Brownell, Presidential Assistant Sherman Adams, Postmaster General Summerfield. Thomas E. Dewey-these men have about as much resemblance to the Old Guard as an old-time minstrel show has to a slick Rodgers and Hammerstein musical...
Like most of Gilbert's plots, the Mikado is filled with strange twists and stranger characters. There is the wandering minstrel who is actually of the royalty, the old maid with an "irresistable right elbow," the axeman who can't stand the thought of head-chopping, and the bureaucrat who fills most every job in town, including officially checking up on his own corruption. This fellow, the Lord High Everything, is the best of the show, delightfully played by Thomas Whitbread. He is perfectly pompous, and his gift of timing makes even mundane lines amusing...
...could be even funnier if he would slow down enough to let all the lines come across. His best moments are with the old maid, played by Diana Frothingham, who uses her convincingly expressive face to good advantage. The romantic leads are played by Paul Cawein as the minstrel, and Marietta Perl as his love interest. Both have clear and pleasantly Iyrical, if not always even, voices. The rest of the cast give more than adequate support, especially Pete Churchill as Pish-Tush...