Word: scripting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
With nuns all the rage this season, Playhouse 90's Four Women in Black put Helen Hayes through some listless paces as a saintly pioneer in Arizona, but she was largely overborne by Apaches, mesas of filmed cacti and a soporific script. On G.E. Theater's The Bitter Choice, Anne Baxter was hopelessly involved-and tearily terrible-as an Army nurse whose deliberate anger was supposed to scalpel through a G.I.'s shell of apathy. As Social Lioness Dolly Madison trying to make a Washington comeback, a bespectacled and bewigged Bette Davis had her moments on Ford...
...Caine Mutiny Court Martial isn't a bad play as commercial drama goes. Herman Wouk's study of the decay of a loyal petty tyrant, concluding with an elegy for devoted though unenlightened service has considerable vigor. Adapted from the novel, the script assumes much of the background of the novel, and as script leaves something to be desired in development of the characters...
Failing among other things to fill in where the script leaves off, Dudley House's production of this Broadway success is disappointing almost across the board. Though there are several bits in the performance which seem to be handled with minor competence. Fredrick Marker's direction fails to sustain any pace or rhythm, or to hold the play together in the light of any unified continuity or insight. His production even lacks the basic and most simple elements of stagecraft, failing to recreate the electric atmosphere of a "tragic" court martial in large part because almost none of the cast...
Perhaps the best performance was turned in by Director Marker as Captain Queeg, although supported by some purple passages in the script. However, the show does begin to pick up in the second act, and perhaps could improve in the remainder...
...photography is done in the best Italian neo-realism style, with many close-ups, little camera movement, and with nearly every scene, from subways to bars, shot on location. Script-writer Chayefsky's ear for conspicuously natural speech is better than ever...