Word: podrecca
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...this movie, Miss Harvey aspires to be a great dancer and is well on her way to fame when she falls, breaks a leg, and is temporarily crippled. An admirer of hers who runs a puppet show, invites her to take up his profession. There are several of Podrecca's puppet interludes which are quite refreshing. We do not see why Miss Harvey grew to loathe the puppets, as that loathing drew her back to the stage, but the last scenes of the skillfully manipulated puppets make everything balance nicely...
...most entertaining personage is Novelist Christopher Jarret whose wife is hideous and mercenary. When she accuses him of overenthusiasm in their conjugal relation, Jarret is amazed. "Look in the mirror," he says, "and tell me it is anything but a disagreeable habit.'' The Piccoli (produced by Vittorio Podrecca). In a window on a miniature stage a four-foot wooden man dressed in the black velvet costume of Don Juan sings a glib, impatient seduction at a peasant girl. He shakes with emotion and lack of breath, turns from girl to audience on the high notes, putting...
...Concert Party." A lacquer-haired caricature of Negro Singer Josephine Baker, star of a "Little Tropical Revue," wiggles and shakes menacingly. In "The Bullfight," a wilder burlesque than the others, a hollow-eyed toreador fliply kills the bull with super-human mag nificence. Plump, beaming Impresario Vittorio Podrecca adapted his Piccoli ("The little ones") from traditional Italian marionets, hates to have them called marionets or puppets. Charles Dillingham first brought him and his little ones to Manhattan in 1923 when they failed dismally. Last year Podrecca came again, succeeded hugely, toured the country, ending this week in Manhattan. Sometime lawyer...
...Part two is an Oriental suite with singing and romancing. The scene then transfers to the tropics. Singing in the rain is the overture number followed by a Salome and sister act. A presentation in the manner and spirit of Josephine Baker was realistic, seductive, and sung by Lia Podrecca...