Word: shrike
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Other Pulitzer Prizes went to the St. Louis "Post-Dispatch" for its exposure of corruption in the Internal Revenue Department, Herman Wouk for his novel "The Caine Mutiny," and Joseph Kramn for his drama, "The Shrike...
...other four: Twentieth Century, Stalag 17, The Fourposter, The Shrike...
...Shrike (by Joseph Kramm) is a scary blend of theatricalism and truth- a case history of an intelligent man who, having attempted suicide, is brought to the psychiatric ward of a city hospital. Completely sane, he comes up against maddening institutional methods of both procedure and inquiry. And beyond his medical inquisitors, there is the wife he has deserted for another woman. Outwardly all devotion to the man who scorned her, she is viciously determined he shall not walk out of the hospital into any arms but her own. Half-crazed by the hospital's methods of therapy...
...Shrike is a relentless, gripping theater piece-one man's horror story that might easily be more than one man's fate. It is a tale of doors closing, one by one, until a door opens at the end-upon the outskirts of hell. Even its chief flaw as playwriting-it slightly scrambles the picture of an institution with the predicament of a man-enhances it as theater...
...proves a drawback because, far more than imaginative drama, documents exist to be scrutinized. On a factual basis, it is improbable that hospital psychiatrists, however literal-minded, would to a man misread both Jim and his wife. Documents can also get flat-toned, but, thanks to the production, The Shrike very seldom does. Jose Ferrer acts Jim Downs with wonderful quiet skill. Equally distinguished is his staging of the play, with its large, hand-picked cast that includes Judith Evelyn in the tough role of the wife. Powerful enough to raise goose pimples, The Shrike is yet plausible enough...