Word: saroyans
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Hearst's King Features Syndicate was hard at work on a glowing ad for Leonard Lyons, whose column it had sold to 25 papers (circulation: 4,000,000). The ad: 1) an ebullient article on Lyons by William Saroyan ("one of the few columns of our time which has both form and style"); 2) a letter from New York University's English Department saying that Lyons' column is recommended reading in the Advanced Writing Class; 3) a statement by Carl Sandburg (via Saroyan): "Imagine how much richer American history would have been, had there been a Leonard...
...play, last week got into its usual politico-dramatic wrangle. On the first ballot nine votes (a three-quarters plurality, or 15 votes, was needed to win) went to Lillian Hellman's passionate, anti-Nazi Watch on the Rhine (TIME, April 14). Next came three votes for William Saroyan's dreamy The Beautiful People (see below), which had opened the night before...
...ballots and three hours of electioneering produced no decision, but the Saroyan bloc grew stronger. Then the Circle decided that a simple majority should win. On the seventh ballot Watch on the Rhine triumphed with twelve votes, Saroyan got six, Critic Burns Mantle (New York Daily News') held out with one ballot for Paul Green & Richard Wright's Negro tragedy, Native Son. The Circle had no trouble producing 16 votes (three not voting) for Emlyn Williams' The Corn Is Green as the season's best foreign play...
...Beautiful People (written and produced by William Saroyan). Playwright Saroyan is still selling his big but ancient idea-that living can be pretty fine if people can relax and savor it. The trouble is that in his new play the Theater's most pronounced overdose of vitamin "I" leadens, rather than lightens, his fantasy with the well-known Saroyan whimsey...
Almost anyone of sensibility is a pushover for old waltz songs on the cornet, and Saroyan is a master of many similar nostalgias. Their potency keeps The Beautiful People from being merely the old charmy game, played by an expert. For, notwithstanding its whimsical deadweight, the inventive, germinal quality in Saroyan is one of the most fertile forces in the U.S. Theater...