Word: pearled
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Chairman Dies' continual peeves was the fact that this same suspect New Deal was hostile to his committee. His relations with the Department of Justice and Attorney-General Biddle were particularly strained. Just before Pearl Harbor, Dies sent Biddle a list of 1,124 federal employees alleged to be Communists or members of subversive organizations. A year later, after an exhaustive FBI investigation, Biddle announced that of Dies' 1,124, only two--were discharged. Dies quickly called the report a "white-wash." But his batting average never was very high...
Three months after Pearl Harbor, the committee issued a report on Japanese espionage. It was a huge document, but as many well-informed individuals pointed out, its contents were largely known before-hand. Discomfited, Dies remarked that at least the report was "educational...
...shares. The wildcat is also a tomcat, and Veronica Lake, the prettiest of the colonel's three daughters, falls for him. The second daughter (Oklahoma's Mary Hatcher) sings a good deal, and the youngest (Mona Freeman) is on hand with wisecracks. There is also a cook (Pearl Bailey), and a comic swain (Billy De Wolfe...
More importantly for cinemusical purposes, there are plenty of occasions for songs and production numbers, cued in more or less naturally. 'Boys & girls bicycle to a picnic under leafy shade and sing about it en route; Billy De Wolfe sings At the Nickelodeon; Pearl Bailey clears away dishes or flicks a dust rag at a bannister while she chaws out a couple of songs...
...trouble is that in its Tarkington-esque aspects, the show is completely lacking in genuine remembrance, ease and spontaneity. The cyclists are pretty to look at, but as artificially gay in spirit as so many madrigal singers. As a Midwestern servant of the early 1900s, Pearl Bailey is about as believable as Salvador Dali's autobiography, but she does whatever she does with such queenly conviction and emphasis that she is by all odds the best thing in the show...