Word: scripting
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Private Secretary (Sun. 7:30 p.m., CBS-TV) enters hoydenish Ann (Maisie) Sothern in the situation-comedy sweepstakes but, like many another imitator of I Love Lucy, it suffers from a feeble script. As secretary to a high-minded theatrical agent, Ann is shown masterminding his affairs, settling his domestic problems and using the wisecracks that TV seems to think make up the language of U.S. business. Most televiewers will find the comedy situations every bit as familiar and repetitive as the Lucky Strike commercials...
...boldly entertaining as a glossy musical comedy. With a talented cast and enough action for three pictures, this fable of Hollywood whirls through two agreeable hours, but the final result is rather insignificant. A bankrupt motion picture producer, Jonathan Shields, begs his former director, leading lady, and script writer to make one last picture for him. Before deciding, each of them recalls his former association with Shields, and their three reminiscences are the bulk of the film...
...first scenes, director Barry Sullivan relates how young, struggling Shields took credit for Sullivan's prize script. This incident is only a prologue to Shields and his ruthlessness. Similarly, after the length and power of the second story, Shield's third betrayal is nearly an anti-climax. Dick Powcll, his victim, seems more the author of mystery stories than prize-winning novels and the plot of this sequence is but a soapy tale from radio serials. But Gloria Grahame, as a latter day Southern belle, drawls with a sultry sugared accent, more than covering any weaknesses in the episode...
Mississippi Gambler has plenty of feudin' and fightin' with pistols, swords and fists. The men are brave and handsome, and the women good and beautiful. Evil is punished and right rewarded. With a rambling the script and lackadaisical direction, the picture, like Ol' Man River, just keeps rolling along to its predictable Technicolored happy ending...
...production, regretably, was not up to the quality of the script. A lack of integration marked first part and in a scene at the palace of Anides, the characters seemed isolated when the drama was at fever pitch. There was also a tendency, most disconcerting in short dialogue, to depend more and more on the script towards the end. Musical accompaniment and a good touch at the end helped to cover up some of the inadequacies...