Word: scripting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Secret File stars Robert Alda, and its first script had a touchingly old-fashioned air. Alda, dressed in Nazi uniform, crept into wartime Germany to locate the factory where Hitler was manufacturing a bacteria bomb. There were squads of brutal and booted Gestapo, a beautiful barmaid (Was she enemy or friend?), a German professor who recoiled from making weapons for mass destruction. Alda had plenty of opportunity to make a stiff upper lip and to say things like "I'm only doing a job that has to be done...
...this, plus a dozen big musical sequences, makes Star a mighty long gulp of champagne; but, like champagne, it is hard to refuse. Simply in the writing, for instance, there is a sureness rare in musicomedy librettos-and no wonder: Poetess Dorothy Parker worked on the 1937 script, and Playwright Moss Hart had that to draw on for this one. There is some fine Hollywood off-camera stuff: the great star being fastidious about his amours ("Too young. I had a very young week last week"); the little nobody taking her screen test ("Cut!" the director bellows in horror...
...persons, and said hoarsely: "Don't worry. I'm not going to sing." He read a couple of pages of his prepared text, stopped and asked: "You don't want to hear this, do you?" At best, the audience seemed indifferent, so Bender scrapped his script, began pacing around, pounding on the rostrum, on the walls and on a nearby piano. He talked extemporaneously, mostly about singing. Said Cleveland-born Bender: "We don't hold meetings in Cleveland without singing and praying and shouting." But he added: "I sing horribly." Under Bender's exhortations ("What...
...American. Guessing that she had headed for the studio, reporters made straight for Pressagent Brand's office to wait for the next bulletin. Brand had his script ready. "We're all sorry at the studio that it happened," he began. "It was a wonderful kind of legend, Joe and Marilyn. Everybody loves 'em both. Everybody thinks it's Romeo and Juliet. It's the All-American Boy divorcing the All-American Girl." Asked a hard-bitten Hollywood reporter: "But who gets custody of the Wheaties...
...what it is, the spectator generally has to take the vulgar intention for the vicious performance: he sees the ornate Regency sofa, but not what happened on it. Art Director Alfred Junge and Costume Designer Elizabeth Haffenden are in fact the real hero and heroine of this picture. The script (based on the old Clyde Fitch-Richard Mansfield heart-tugger that had four runs on Broadway) just moves the actors briskly from one gorgeous set to the next, and by the time the audience has finished inspecting the splendid costumes and furnishings, it is too late to notice that...