Word: spinsterism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Winston (Walter Matthau) enjoys the benefits of a towheaded gamine, Toni Simmons (Goldie Hawn). How can he elude the marriage trap? Simple: by telling Toni that he is already bridled with a wife and saddled with three children. Suspicious, the mistress demands to see the wife. Winston persuades his spinster nurse, Stephanie Dickinson (Ingrid Bergman), to pose as Mrs. Dentist. Byzantine complications add a flush to Stephanie's sallow countenance, but the complications are purely formal. Once Bergman zeroes in on a male lead, the light comedienne should pack her gags and go home...
...orchestra's malevolence is especially unfortunate in light of the show's score, which is a good one. But, since the singers are so fine, the damage is not as bad as it might be. Carol Simon, as Lilly, the spinster school teacher, has the best musical material of the evening-two ballads ("We're Home" and "If You Promise Me a Rose") in which she expresses her domestic hopes for her ne'er-do-well would-be beau Sid. The songs are pure artlessness carried to the level of high musical-comedy art. The melodic lines are as sweet...
...woman on a train is brought to realize the emptiness of her married life through confrontation with two old spinsters-once childhood friends. Each of the three is bringing home dead or dying relatives. Cornelia is excluded from her accustomed level of Memphis society because her husband is Jewish; she has no children. In parting Cornelia says to one spinster, "I suppose you'll be met by a hearse . . . and Patty will be met by an ambulance-and I'll be met by Jake." This sentence "was one of those sentences Cornelia began without knowing how it would...
...madwoman (Katharine Hepburn) is a spinster who believes in young love, freedom and graciously decadent living. She feeds all the cats in her Paris suburb, writes daily letters to herself, lives in a mansion and worries equally about her 9-ft. feather boa and the loss, many years past, of her only lover. She would seem to be easy prey for a cartel of international shysters (Yul Brynner, Paul Henreid,* Charles Boyer, Donald Pleasence and Oscar Homolka among them) who have discovered oil under the old lady's property. But she will not be moved, and she wins...
...Olga, in her late twenties, is the eldest, and she opens and closes the play. Marian Seldes has beautifully caught the quiet suffering of this reluctant schoolteacher, subject to headaches, who is finally forced into still more responsibility as a headmistress. She has the true manner--of a proper spinster schoolmarm, and her sense of duty is reflected in her ramrod-straight carriage...