Word: plot
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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After eleven months in office, Ecuador's dapper President Galo Plaza Lasso last week passed a political milestone: his regime survived its first noteworthy revolutionary plot. At Aguas Hediondas (literally: Stinking Waters), a sulphurous spa just outside Ecuador's southernmost city of Loja, army officers arrested Bolivar Galvez, a member of Quito's City Council and the president of the Quito Student Federation. In Loja itself, they picked up Lawyer Julio Moreno, director of Ecuador's opposition Liberal Party. Farther north in Cuenca, the country's third city, several army officers were taken into custody...
From 1681 to 1840-while Shakespeare spun in his grave-London theatergoers saw, and enjoyed, King Lear with a happy ending. In a version by Poet Laureate Nahum Tate, which used most of Shakespeare's plot and many of his lines, it was played by such theatrical greats as David Garrick and Edmund Kean, and applauded by Dr. Samuel Johnson. Even Charles Lamb, who disliked the happy-ending version, conceded that it had a certain stageworthiness when he wrote: "Tate has put his hook in ... this Leviathan, for Garrick and his followers ... to draw it about more easily...
...favorite down the river. When the law catches up with Papa Monetti's free-wheeling banking practices, the oldest brother (well played by Luther Adler) fixes it so that Conte gets a seven-year stretch in prison for trying to bribe the jury. The rest of the plot, including Conte's sultry romance with a rich play girl (Susan Hayward), is routine...
Cool and demure, Priscilla Hiss corroborated almost everything her husband had said. She denied any part of the Chamberses' story which might tie her husband into any Communist plot. Occasionally she rested her white-gloved hands on the arms of the chair, where Esther Chambers, angry eyes snapping through spectacles, had rested her work-hardened hands...
Given the sturdy talents of the two principals, there was a chance in this one for some bright comic touches. Unfortunately, Irwin Shaw, who wrote the screenplay, and Director Chester Erskine, who stumbled about in surplus dialogue and plot, failed to exploit the story's skimpy elements of suspense. Take One False Step sets out to be a sprightly whodunit. After the first reel, it turns into a sad case of who cares...