Word: soaps
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Story. Half soap opera and half documentary, often absorbing, about a G-man (Jimmy Stewart), his job, his wife and kids...
...melodramatic devices. It is chockablock with phantoms, haunts, ominous coincidences, infants lowered into tiny graves to ascend as tiny angels, would-be suicides snatched back at the dark river's edge, pregnant maidens abandoned by heartless cads. This is the Dickens who wrung out Victorian soap opera's dampest hour, and posted "cry now" signs at every chapter break...
They did not have far to search, for television is shot through with major and minor forms of corruption. There are the phony commercials: the foam in the beer glass, which is often really soap suds; the home permanent on the pretty model, often the result of a two-hour session with a hairdresser. Last week, the FTC issued a complaint against Libby-Owens-Ford Glass Co. and General Motors, charging "camera trickery" on commercials, e.g., pictures were taken through open windows that were supposedly taken through clear plate glass. There is the blatant, organized sale of plugs...
...Alice Babette Toklas appeared, "soft, small, and warmly murmurous," Gertrude switched boon companions for life. The two gentle ladies from America enjoyed living in the eye of the bohemian hurricane. There was the writer André Salmon, who foamed at the mouth with delirium (he later claimed it was soap) and nibbled the trimmings on Alice Toklas' hat. There was Alfred Jarry, an absinthe-minded playwright who carried a revolver and once shot down "some obstreperous nightingales." Oddest of all was Gerald Berners, an English lord who had a tiny piano built into his Rolls, and would flash...
Career. Anthony Franciosa does a considerable job of acting as the sad young hero of this soap opera about show business, but the customer may be left wondering why the theater so often presents itself as one of the bleeding arts...