Word: scandalous
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...demands a lot of waiting on, but soon turns into a back-stabbing monster who plots everyone's destruction. She enrages the servants, drives the husband to drink, wrecks his career, ruins his marriage, makes a shrew of his wife, a hypochondriac of his child, precipitates a village scandal. Her trouble, which is sex, finally unmasks her; her phobia, which is birds, finally causes her death...
Design for Scandal (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) is a libel on the U.S. bench. It exhibits Jurisprudence (tall, dark and handsome Rosalind Russell, a female judge) knuckling under to Cupid (tall, dark and handsome Walter Pidgeon, a reporter). This farcical victory is won by Newsman Pidgeon over Judge Russell after she has awarded his employer's (Edward Arnold) wife so much alimony that he has to earn $18,000 more a month to pay it and has to send Pidgeon to frame the judge, into the bargain. Characteristically, the judge won't admit that she loves the reporter except...
...latest offerings at the University are not going to win any Academy Awards, but they have this virtue--if you can somehow manage to avoid the newsreel, they will provide three hours of uninterrupted laughs that -- unlike Pearl Harbor, Singapore, et al--are not on you. "Design for Scandal" is in the familiar pattern of sophisticated dialogue comedy; "Rise and Shine" recalls the Joe College musicals of several years ago. Yet both move along briskly, boast a few new twists, and are unpretentiously slap-happy--a pleasant relief from war bulletins and the topheavy sagas of Bogart, Scott or Lynn...
...Design for Scandal" is a tribute to Rosalind Russell's versatility as a comedienne. This time she plays the frigid woman-judge whose only weakness is a chronic allergy to roses, "a human law-book" with about as much passion as the statues she carves for a hobby. Eventually, Her Honor is thawed out by the persevering attentions of Walter Pidgeon, who performs the sequence of boy meeting, losing and regaining girl with a minimum of hamming and a maximum of savior faire...
...purpose in view--the ultimate strengthening of America's war effort. Propagating rumors about what Eleanor privately thinks of William Knudsen not only loses sight of this objective, but actively weakens defense and upsets morale. The shortcomings of OCD and the defense program in general are only intensified by scandal-mongering, where they could be alleviated by specific editorial suggestion. Apparently, the press need be reminded that there are more important ends than selling papers, and that "yellow journalism" may be doing much to sabotage the very freedom under which it thrives...