Word: portias
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...Death of the Heart describes such a meeting. Heroine is Portia Quayne, a product of a lonely, itinerant girlhood with her mother in second-rate European hotels. Orphaned at 16, she goes to live with her halfbrother, a successful London ad man. His wife, a sophisticated dilettante, grudgingly tolerates Portia at the beginning, detests her after she finds and reads Portia's diary, whose wide-eyed observations on her guardians read like satire...
Thereafter, uncertain whether Portia is "a snake or a rabbit," the wife treats her like someone who knows where the body is buried. Simple-hearted Portia (she had "those eyes that seem to be welcome nowhere") merely tries to figure out what makes these enigmatic grownups tick...
...Portia On Trial," the piece de resistance in the program now running at the University, is certainly far from being a good picture; but it does have its interesting points. The story, which once ran in the Ladies Home Journal, is one of Faith Baldwin's most involved accounts of the complications that can befall a simple family. In the ultimate trial, to which the whole picture leads up, we see a Harvard Freshman tensely watching his mother (Frieda Inescort), a beautiful barrister with whom he is hopelessly in love, defend his step-mother (Heather Angel) for the murder...
...Portia On Trial" is the first important production of Republic Pictures, and should be viewed with indulgence, as should Miss Inescort, a nervous young lady recently imported from the New York stage. The dialogue is crude, and most of the parts are overacted. The film has its good points, but is rather a disappointment...
...with thumping success through a two-season Manhattan run. a meandering road tour. Last week in Chicago, Actress Hayes & company joined with a few Tovarich troupers for a busman's holiday. Their respite: a one-matinee performance of The Merchant of Venice, with Actress Hayes a pint-sized Portia, Abraham Sofaer her Disraeli, as Shylock. Explanation: 1) Actress Hayes had always wanted to play Shakespeare; 2) the company had been playing Victoria so long they were fit to be tied. So good a time was had by all that four more such escapades were immediately scheduled in Chicago...