Word: prolog
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With this story incident as a prolog, the picture takes up the story of the Glourie clan on the contemporary scene, when the only member of it left is young Donald Glourie (Robert Donat). A shy, shiftless, personable young man, he lives alone in Glourie Castle waiting for someone who, by purchasing it, will free him from his creditors. When the purchasers-a U. S. chain-store proprietor (Eugene Pallette), his nervous wife and their pretty daughter (Jean Parker)-appear, Glourie Castle is moved piecemeal to Florida. The ghost goes with it. His penchant for crudely old-fashioned kissing games...
...opera's prolog Lulu is represented by a fearsome wriggling snake, an eternal destroyer, according to Composer Berg who makes her just as horrid in every scene which follows. She destroys one man after another, commits a murder which lands her in prison, weasels her freedom only to philander in Paris with gamblers, procurers, swindlers. End comes in a sordid London attic where Lulu is brutally murdered by Jack the Ripper. Berg's orchestra then sounds out a shuddering scream. The New York Philharmonic took the cue faithfully, startled half its subscribers who still had to hear Soprano...
...stock poetic attitudes and phrases. Last week Miss Wurdemann's third book revealed an attempt to cope with a major theme, relating in varied verse forms the narrative of seven brothers whose lives represented, as they plunged toward their respective dooms, the seven Capital Sins. Beginning with a prolog describing the death of the father-"This giant man, this grey old beak, disastrous Granite of God that lay upon them always"-that released them into the world, the poem recounts Jared's death from avarice, Abel's from gluttony, Jasper's from pride...
...affable, grape-nosed star with grace, good humor and superb enthusiasm. No better indication of the civilized qualities of the picture could be given than its adroit conclusion. Tibbett, harassed by the strain of running an opera company whose "angel" has deserted it, comes out to sing the prolog to Pagliacci. He does so in grand style to ringing applause from both the audience in the picture and, usually, the audience at it. Then,, instead of going on into what looked like an inevitable anticlimax of more arias, prolonged congratulations and embraces by hero and heroine, the curtain comes down...
...prolog dragged into the first act and the first act into the second, The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles cast a thick pall over its audience. Here was not only nonsense, but tiresomely outmoded nonsense. Critical verdict was unanimous: The show should never have been staged...