Word: raven
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...same artist, was a breathtaking medley of scenes and events, ranging from the crucifixion of Christ to the execution of Nathan Hale, from an attack of delirium tremens to the Ride of John Gilpin, from Little Britches left out in the snow to Poet Poe addressing the Raven. Sentimental though most of the subjects were, the craftsmanship in each picture was remarkably good. And not a single one had ever seen the light of print or public exhibition...
...Shanghai that sturdy pillar of the U. S. business colony, Frank Jay Raven, master of the "Raven Interests" (banking, real estate, insurance) which had assets of $70,000,000 as recently as last December, had just been shaken down. He blamed the collapse of his American-Oriental Banking Corp., much patronized by missionaries, the U. S. Marines and Shanghai prostitutes, on President Roosevelt's artificial jacking up of the price of silver, on which everything turns in China. "I am financially broke, but we are protecting our creditors," said Mr. Raven. "All my resources are going into liquidation...
...Raven (Universal). Bela ("Dracula") Lugosi and Boris ("Frankenstein") Karloff, foremost U. S. cinemonsters, first played together in The Black Cat, "suggested" by Edgar Allan Poe's story (TIME, May 28, 1934). The Raven "suggested" by that frail, pathetic poet's best-known poem, suffers chiefly from the obligation its producers felt to give it more bloodcurdling situations and paraphernalia than The Black Cat. Consequently the picture is stuffed with horrors to the point of absurdity. One imposing piece of equipment is a bedroom which descends to the basement like an elevator when its owner wishes to harass...
Lugosi is a distinguished, crazy surgeon who broods over Edgar Allan Poe, keeps a stuffed raven in his study, is fascinated by death and torture. When his vanity is appealed to, he operates on a young girl (Irene Ware) to save her life, falls in love with her. Meanwhile he is approached by a criminal (Karloff) who wants his features altered to escape detection. Because Karloff, anxious to mend his ways, believes that "ugly people do ugly things," he begs to be made better looking. Instead, Lugosi makes him uglier still, enslaves him by promising to do a better...
Only an average-length novel (255 pp.), He Sent Forth a Raven took Author Roberts five years to write, makes correspondingly slow reading. Author Roberts' tricks of style, which include a growing fondness for the ablative absolute, have hardened into a mannered manner that is more poetry than prose. And her narrative, never rapid, has turned more descriptive, more rhapsodic than ever Her people do a deal of "looken, thinken," but spend most of their time "talken." When Stoner Drake's second wife died, he solemnly vowed never to set foot on God's green earth again...