Word: silent
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Seven Keys to Baldpate (RKO). Earl Derr Biggers wrote the story. George M. Cohan made a play of it. Douglas MacLean was in it as a silent picture. As a talkie it proves again that the mechanism of the mystery story is an ideal device for comedy. Richard Dix is the young author who bets that he can write a book in 24 hours and sits down to work in a lonely house in the country to which he believes he has the only key. Typical shot: $25,000 in stage money burning in the fireplace at Baldpate...
...Thamesside dockyard where a cruiser is being launched. It is May, 1900; the Boer War is on. The first character in the book is Bolt, a loud dockyard foreman, a Kiplingesque sort of character, a type of England in her glory. At the end he is a doubtful, silent, bedridden old man. After the launching of the cruiser, the story shifts to the shop of philosophical Tobacconist Jones. In Jones's shop gathers a mixed crowd of intellects: Langham, the brilliant Radical politician, pro-Boer now, anti-German later; Talbot the East End vicar, gently skeptical of the ways...
From time to time historical figures enter the book: Viscount Grey, Lord Balfour, Newspaperman Harmsworth (afterward Lord Northcliffe). Of Grey, Author Tomlinson makes one of his characters say: "I see nothing in him, nothing. If he were not so silent and stately, people would laugh. He is silent because if he spoke you would know...