Word: shand
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Thanks to the zealous bureaucrats who write the rules, many a traveler arriving in New Zealand by air soon wishes he hadn't. Last week Tom Shand, New Zealand's new Minister of Civil Aviation, decided to give the bureaucrats a taste of their own medicine. He invited nine of the nation's top civil servants to join him on an airborne "picnic" to Auckland. It was a bumpy flight (the pilot had been encouraged to seek out the roughest patches of air), and before it was over, the passengers were handed landing forms to fill...
When it was all over, Tom Shand's picnic guests were herded into a meeting. Its agenda: possible ways of making things easier for visitors arriving in New Zealand...
Such assets help, even more than the humor, in this success story of the wife-made man. They brighten up Barrie's essentially unattractive characters. Those hard bargainers and dull conversationalists, the Wylie brothers, are saved by their affection for Maggie. An egocentric John Shand is saved by a humorlessness that makes him funny. And Maggie herself, whose maiden name wasn't Wylie for nothing, becomes an actress' dream part through the love that inspires the wiles...
Playing that part once again, Helen Hayes once again scores. If she now and then turns almost as cute as Barrie himself, she is most of the time as deft and self-effacing as Maggie Shand...