Word: mosse
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...young girl enslaved by a French woman professor and at length set free by her love for a young man)-to find a Broadway theater (TIME, Jan. 8). Finally lodged at the Belasco, it played there undisturbed for two months. Then, suddenly, New York's License Commissioner Paul Moss refused to renew the Belasco's license unless Trio closed. Trio closed...
...once a barrage of furious criticism opened up against Moss. The man who had called Trio "lewd, lascivious and immoral" was himself called "dictatorial," "bigoted," "one-man censor."* In the growing uproar, 19 organizations denounced Moss. Some demanded that Mayor LaGuardia fire...
...Varicose Alleys." The Mayor, who would dearly love to impose his own fussy notions of morality upon all New Yorkers, stoutly defended his Commissioner, weaseled that Moss had not indulged in censorship, but had "only passed on the application for a theater license." Meanwhile Playwright Elmer Rice and Director Margaret Webster resigned from the board of the Mayor's pet project, the New York City Center of Drama and Music, because Moss helps run it.* And Lee Sabinson, producer of Trio, sued Moss for $1,000,000 damages...
Baldish Paul Moss (whose licensing powers extend from pawnbrokers to meat markets and masseurs) had always kept a sharp eye, and sometimes brought down a heavy whip, on the theater. In 1934 he removed the runways ("varicose alleys") from New York's 14 burlesque houses. In 1937 he closed the houses...
...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...