Word: salesman
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DIED. MARTIN BALSAM, 76, actor; in Rome. Born in the Bronx in New York City, the son of a sportswear salesman, Balsam went from the career-minting Actors Studio to live '50s TV to the movies, where he became a star portraying men who would never be stars. He was an uncertain juror in Twelve Angry Men (1957); a doomed detective in Psycho (1960); a Navy doctor utterly at sea in the moral morass of the nuclear age in The Bedford Incident (1965); and a hardworking family man at odds with his unreliable brother in A Thousand Clowns...
Hopelessly stuck in the past, The Colonial Theatre's production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman will soon attempt to wobble its way onto Broadway. The play's only source of survival is its nostalgic value; its central themes have ceased to resonate in the skeptical American consciousness, and Gerald Freedman's period-piece direction doesn't add anything to the play's relevance...
...American dream and the working class are still an affecting source of drama; Sam Shepard and David Mamet are proof. But Death of a Salesman, with its focus on idealism, fails to address the core concerns of an increasingly skeptical world that has already learned from Willy's lesson. Idealism is not a universal frailty like Othello's jealousy or Hamlet's indecision, but a transient societal attitude, and one that is not pervasive today. Those who do not agree will probably enjoy the show...
Despite superb performances from two of the show's main actors, this production of Death of a Salesman depends on an American idealism that is presently in its deathbed. Only the revival of that consciousness can produce a successful revival of the play...
SHOPPING FOR A USED CAR CAN MAKE the shopper feel as used as the car. The stereotypical sojourn involves a persistent salesman on commission (loud checked sport jacket optional), high-pressure haggling and a persistent anxiety that the buyer was talked into something he or she didn't quite want. Naturally, the heap falls apart in a few weeks, creating a desire for auto...