Word: mirandas
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...lesson: watch out for the jaded aristocrats of New York. Back in the 1840s, according to the evidence of Dragonwyck, one innocent Greenwich girl named Miranda (Gene Tierney) knew no better. She was helping with the chores on her father's farm when fate gave her a chance to go to Dragonwyck, the Hudson Valley home of a distant relative. Miranda trembled with joy, begged to be allowed to accept. Her parents, dubious at first, finally relented...
...Miranda goes, with high hopes and a new Bible. Dragonwyck turns out to be a huge Gothic mansion near Albany. The relative turns out to be none other than haughty Nicholas Van Ryn (Vincent Price), whom any respectable Connecticut female should have spotted at once as not only a patroon but an untrustworthy, undemocratic rascal. Nicholas wears broadcloth and satin, dolefully plays a harpsichord and barks at his fat, stupid wife, treats his tenant-farmers like serfs...
...this fusion of flesh and fantasy which tends to create lopsided sequences, most notably in the last reel. As a result, "Three Caballeros" emerges as a somewhat confused, aimless travelogue on Mexico with Donald Duck or the sadistic penguin sharing the spotlight with Aurora Miranda or a beachful of Mexican bathing beauties...
...Done with trying to make sense of life-or even of a play-Shakespeare pitched upon a strange island world almost outside geography. There, while his playwriting became a tangled, stunted vine, his poetry blazed like a burning bush. There Prospero, the banished Duke of Milan, tended his daughter Miranda, shipwrecked his enemies by waving his magic wand, ruled over the spirit Ariel, all speed and light, and the monster Caliban, that "freckled whelp hag-born." There also the shipwrecked men tediously conspired and caroused. When, at the last - his enemies forgiven, Ariel and Caliban set free - Prospero forswears magic...
...also a less poetic one. In The Tempest, with its wonderful language, words speak louder than actions; not everybody in the Webster production knew how to utter them. Arnold Moss was a sonorous and commanding Prospero, Frances Heflin a sensitive Miranda. But as Ariel, Ballerina Vera Zorina let a good many speeches dwindle, and her grace was cold rather than sunlit. As Caliban, Negro Actor Canada Lee could not (like Shakespeare) make poetry of ugliness. Stressing the rather dull comedy also shattered the mood; the revolving stage was more practical than atmospheric. This generation may never see a livelier Tempest...