Word: plotting
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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What distinguishes Sons of the Desert from other Laurel & Hardy comedies is less its plot than the presence in the cast of Charley Chase, a lanky, glib comedian with a mouse-paw mustache and a moron's chuckle. Appearing at the Chicago convention as a Son of the Desert from Texas, Charley Chase greets Laurel & Hardy when they arrive from California by whacking them with a paddle. He invites them to his table and puts in a long distance call for his sister in Los Angeles. who turns out to be Hardy's wife. Stupid Charley Chase does...
This is exactly the case with Mr. A. E. Thomas play "No More Ladies." At first sight it is impressive, but in retrospect it is seen to be riddled with faults. The plot is hackneyed, for it is the ancient story of what a wife does when she learns that her husband has been unfaithful to her. The lines possess a certain surface cleverness and brilliancy, but an unevenly mixed Coward-Barry-Lonsdale ancestry is painfully evident. In welcome relief to these mediocre features is the character portrayal; with the exception of the acidulous old lady who astounds the younger...
...Criminal-At-Large," which is appearing this week at the Tremont falls into this last category. The plot is hackneyed enough and all the time-honored stage tricks are used; yet in spite of this -- or perhaps because of it -- the play gets across and a fairly enjoyable evening is provided. Of course, if one gets no pleasure at all out of the conventional mystery claptrap, it will be a very dull evening indeed. But if one likes sudden shots in the dark, hands reaching out of walls, hidden panels, and so on, what Mr. Wallace has to offer...
...Before Dashiell Hammett came over the horizon, U. S. readers could point with pride to no first-rate living U. S. authors of detectifiction (with the exception of such competent plot-tanglers as Mary Roberts Rinehart, S. S. Van Dine). Though murder stories have long been the main meat of a solid minority of U. S. readers, the quality of the domestic supply has been fortified by English importations. But no longer can oldsters shake their heads over the departed glories of Edgar Allan Poe. In Dashiell Hammett the U. S. has again a first-rate writer of crime stories...
...having too good a time, knows and dislikes the queer Wynant family too well-until a gunman breaks into his hotel room early one morning to crease him with a bullet. Then he gets grudgingly busy. Before Wynant is found, two more murders are uncovered. More conventional in plot than his earlier books and less slaughterous (Red Harvest had at least a dozen murders), The Thin Man is easily the U. S. murder story of the past year, adds one more proof to Author Hammett's title of No. 1 Crime-story Writer of the U. S. Hammett fans...