Word: ozarks
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Much of the credit, however, goes to Screenwriter Herman T. Mankiewicz, whose snappy dialogue and mastery of the Ozark idiom puts over the story. The plot it self is not spectacular. It follows Dean's career with St. Louis, reaching a climax in his disastrous arm injury, and leveling off with his transfer to the Chicago Cubs and final post as a baseball announcer. Though The Pride of St. Louis is basically another Stratton Story, Mankiewicz and Dailey have turned the Dean legend into a good movie in its own right...
Some plays are realistic and others present symbols or messages. A Little Evil, however, is a meatpie. The farcical lines, moralistic sermons, and Ozark philosophy mouthed by its characters are lacking in both humor and artistic insight. Unfortunately the playwrite, Alexander Greendale, is unable to bake his potpourri into a very theatrical dish...
Greendale's trouble is that he constantly wanders away from his main plot. Basically, he tells the story of simple Ozark people whose lives are complicated only by their natural, spontaneous emotions. It seems a mistake to attempt to make these people highly sensitive, profoundly thinking creatures, who are constantly searching for the answers to life. Greendale only succeeds in making them utter platitudes...
More important, Albotell has not been able to teach his characters to speak their Ozark dialect with Ozark accents. Perhaps most of the blame lies with the lines which just don't belong in hillbilly mouths...
...school-house in the mountains of Virginia. Charles Wesley will preach twice next Sunday, repeating the same service, in the state penitentiary in California. Dr. R.A. Torrey, the famous Presbyterian preacher, will speak next Sunday in the parlor of John Farmer, R.F.D. 6, Pea Creek, North Fork, Ozark County...