Word: plot
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Plotting the Show. The packagers of both $64,000 shows also produced NBC's The Big Surprise, which folded fortnight o ago. One of its planners offers this insight into the big-money show : "We always used a plot, an ideal way we would like the half -hour to go. If one contestant wasn't getting a good audience reaction, we would say that ideally it would be good if he got the answers for $500 and $1,000 and then missed $2,000. It develops a little audience antagonism if anyone loses right away. In a high...
...missing motor in this case is a decent book. To be sure, the show is based on one of the most enduring, if not the better, of Eugene O'Neill's plays, Anna Christie. But even in the original play, the plot was not one of the strongest elements. It concerns a more or less reformed prostitute who, after some years spent in pursuit of her trade, returns for rest and rehabilitation to her father, the skipper of a coal-barge...
...after some soul-searching and recriminations, marries her. It's as simple as that, but by means of some effective symbolism and characterization as well as his gloomy view of the fate which brings the pair together, O'Neill injected a good deal of power into the staggering plot. In a musical, however, you just don't explore the possibility of portraying the wickedness offered in the girl's career; you don't use fate except as a rhyme in a song; and above all you aren't gloomy. So all Abbott retains of the original is the elementary...
However, with the exception of such proven masters of the sharply written, razor-edged tale as John Collier, Roald Dahl, and Saki, few of Hitchcock's authors can both write well and create an intriguing situation or plot. The book's first few selections are rather dull cases in point, and make an unfortunate beginning for an anthology. The editor's idea of arranging authors in reverse alphabetical order is perhaps commendably simple, but hardly functional for anyone who reads more than one story at a time. In this case the arrangement leads to a most uninviting first fifty pages...
...victims are squeezed in a vice of propriety and necessity for love, in a situation where propriety must control them. Colette unfortunately omitted any see-what-to-expect-of-secluded-girls'-schools moral, leaving just a story. While the characters are interesting only as general types in a unique plot Olivia'a story seems very real to one who has not first-hand experience...