Word: pert
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Brian Aherne plays the part of a wisecracking murder-story writer whose pert wife, lovely Loretta Young, leads to a Greenwich Village apartment at No. 13 Gay Street. There, she hopes, he will write romantic novels. The discovery that something sinister is going an in the building, at times in their own apartment, thwarts the gay couple's literary plans, and sends them merrily-a-sleuthing. Aherne and Young, and an able supporting cast, turn in good performances, but the plot is none too exciting, and the dialogue strains for laughs. It is only average entertainment...
...relatives. The play's charm lies in its half-nostalgic, half-satiric display of the kid-gloved conventions of the time. Its comedy lies in its sharp family portraits-Rhoda's rude, snobbish dowager aunt (well played by Margaret Douglass), her healthily lovesick young cousin Daphne, a pert, gold-digging actress who is engaged to Cousin Jimmy (Myron McCormick). The play's romance lies in Rhoda's unspoken love for Jimmy, the intensity of which she understands only after another young man's attentions have released her pent-up feelings...
...tightwad reaching for the check. The gags are frightful. The lyrics are forced. Composer Green (Body & Soul, I'm Yours) has turned out one or two lusty tunes, and gone to town with Steam Is on the Beam, but his score is on the whole unexciting. Finally, though pert, attractive Ingénue Miller is a promising newcomer to Broadway theater, the cast contains none of those accomplished showmen who can amiably bully the audience into thinking that pink is green...
...young women rescue the evening on Joy Street. Catherine Whitfield, as the chatterboxy but clever Penny, cops the laurels. Her portrayal of an intelligent woman acting dumb is convincing where it could easily be fatiguing. The part of the other woman in her husband's life was assigned to pert and pretty Carol Wheeler, whose relaxed competence belies the alleged nervousness of amateur actresses. Helen Sanderson, as another other woman, trips several times in the first act, but recovers her poise before the damage becomes irreparable. The men are weak spots in the performance, except for John Rand '43, whose...
...bonds. Another go-getter was Hedy Lamarr, who wangled 225 tired Philadelphia businessmen into buying $4,520,000 in bonds at a single luncheon. But her patriotism has a limit-she cold-shouldered an enthusiastic Chicagoan who wanted to swap a $25,000 bond for a kiss. Pert Frances Dee sold an embroidered negligee for $5,000 in Little Rock, Ark.; Greer Garson persuaded the 23,000 men, women and children in Bluefield, W.Va. to ante $450,000 in a single day. Beamed Treasury Secretary Morgenthau: "An outstanding success...