Word: slattern
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...comic scenes center around Josie-the-slattern's rascally old Irish father, who is played by Arthur Malet with a nicely integrated and polished collection of mannerisms indicating rascality and eld. It would be a brilliant performance, except that it is a bit too carefully styled and a bit too lovable to be thoroughly at home in O'Neill's harshly realistic play. Moreover--unaccountably, in view of his obvious skills--Mr. Malet is not very funny...
...picture of an inane cocktail party sounds like something Noel Coward might have written in prep school, while a second skit relies on that hoary staple of a dozen revues--the parody of famous playwrights' styles. Even the spectacle of Miss Davis as a hillbilly crone and a lethargic slattern in gym shoes can't offset a script which comes up with a little horror like Flying Saucers, featuring a trio of spacemen (Meissen, Delit, and Spode) wearing tea cups...
...Biddle, a hood who conjures up a race riot. As an individual or a type, Biddle would seem psychopathic; instead, his role in the film is a symbolic, gathering behind one grinning mask all the virulence of Beaver Canal. In the only role of individuality, Linda Darnell is a slattern trying to escape from her slum background, who betrays and then rescues the Negro doctor (Stephen Poitier) accused of murdering Biddle's brother...
...melodrama gets out of hand. And, like most films of its kind, the picture stacks its cards too obviously in the Negro's favor. Most of its characters are oversimplified blacks and whites. (One exception: the bitter woman, well played by Actress Darnell in a slattern's makeup, who gets over her prejudice against Negroes...
Honored by the Barter Theater of Abingdon, Va.: Actress Shirley Booth, for her playing of a slattern in Broadway's Come Back, Little Sheba. The award: "one Virginia ham and a platter to eat it off of," and an acre of Virginia land...