Word: silver
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...army general and flown back to his bank in Shanghai. The government now knew that it did not have to tolerate abuses like that. It showed that it could learn: at Suchow this week, for the first time since the Japanese war, the troops were paid in silver. Morale, eyewitnesses reported, "bounded...
Results were poor. When solid winter cloud layers were sprinkled with dry-ice pellets (or water droplets or chemicals such as silver iodide), practically nothing happened. In no case did rain start falling unless it was already falling less than 30 miles away...
...Silver Whistle (by Robert McEnroe; produced by the Theatre Guild) tells how a spacious liar and accomplished charlatan rejuvenates an old folks' home. A 47-year-old hobo, Oliver Erwenter (José Ferrer) poses as a superbly virile codger of 77 and passes out to the men folk a magical aphrodisiac (actually, small bread pellets). He tells lordly yarns of foreign travel and female conquest; makes flamboyant love to a young lady employed at the home; and with a bit of help, swipes the equipment and supplies for a rousing charity bazaar. Though the truth about him gradually leaks...
...sadly uneven affair, The Silver Whistle is all the same a pleasantly unusual one. There may be nothing new about the theme (which is simply that people crave illusions, that while there's hope there's life), but the particulars are often fresh and lively. Mildly Saroyanesque throughout and a trifle Pollyannaish at the end, in its best scenes The Silver Whistle is genuinely funny, whether from the hobo's taradiddles or from dodderers who, with one foot in the grave, suddenly kick up commotion with the other...
...gift of the gab makes him tedious as well as fascinating; and the elderly capers, if picturesque at times, at other times turn rancid. Obviously pleased with his own joke, Playwright McEnroe sometimes lets it run on too long, sometimes lets it go too far. What tremendously braces The Silver Whistle's very shaky charm is José Ferrer's very assured performance. A master of florid roles, a born Cyrano de Bergeractor, Ferrer spouts and yarnspins with an air, never trades tinseled make-believe for drab reality...