Word: spruille
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...same feminine peevish tone Morris proposes that Zachariah substitute a pen-pal correspondence with Ethel for his former carousing. Zachariah (James Spruill, a Boston University Fellow and director of the New African Company), only leers good-naturedly at the suggestion, Ethel: sixteen, white, and well-developed. Though wiser than Morris in knowing that dialogue does not replace sensual aspirations, in furrow-browed innocence Zachariah sees no reason why he should fear making it directly with his white...
EVEN the remarkable depiction of the master-slave relation between the slave ship's apparent captain, Don Benito Cereno (William Young), and his apparent slave Babu (James Spruill) fails to compensate for the inappropriate tone. The image of Babu as a happy, able and devoted servant seduces Delano into unwitting contradiction of his American democratic precepts: "Sometimes I think we overdo our talk of freedom./ If you looked into our hearts, we all want slaves...
...Absurd--about the corrupting influence of Catholicism, represented by a girl dressed in white, and the evil in modern life, symbolized by a procession of Nazis who troop back and forth behind the set. What saves it from the woodenness of most allegories is the performance of James Spruill as Brother...
...Spruill slithers across the stage, rubbing the boards with his arms and legs; when he roars his whole body heaves as though he was vomiting up sound. He is the man that the white dressed girl, Rosemary, corrupts; she coaxes him into committing incest with his sister...
Several minor characters give excellent performances. Robert Blackburn as Mickey, a prize fighter who loved and left Ella, is marvelously cocky, and provides most of the few light moments of the evening. Jim Spruill, as a boyhood friend of Jim, is successful in conveying the differences between the races--the joviality of the Negroes, the awkardness of the whites--O'Neill seeks to establish in the first two scenes. Bradley Marable as Jim's mother is also excellent, delivering the line "Dey ain't many strong. Dey ain't many happy neider" with moving compassion...