Word: stage
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Abbott and Costello have exhausted the usual stage sets for burlesque intermission comedy. Now, after stealing uniforms from the Army and Navy, they are poaching on the domain of Dorothy Lamour. A foursome composed of this comedy team and a colorless love team are shipwrecked on a Lamour island, where the whole squad wastes an hour of celluloid trapping the usual hard-boiled spy ring. Costello canters around in a ridiculous costume, dodging palm trees, spears, and a herd of dusky sarongsterettes who think it's Sadie Hawkin's day. He ends up out of breath, prying adoring arms...
Died. Dame Marie Tempest, 78, darling of two generations of theatergoers; in London. She was the longest-reigning queen of comedy on the British stage, made her debut in 1885, was rehearsing a new show last summer when she fell ill. A musi-comedy star in the gaslit years, she switched to plays at the turn of the century, made a special type of role famed as "a Marie Tempest part." The part: a sprightly, well-bred matron, with a feline manner and a sharp tongue but a heart of gold. She lost most of her possessions when her home...
Then the chant changed to: "We want Stokowski!" The dapper conductor tripped across the stage. Shouted the tank corps: "He needs a haircut...
Beat the Band (music by Johnny Green; book by George Marion Jr. & George Abbott; produced by Abbott) is a sort of bouncing and stentorian corpse. Always long on pep, Producer Abbott (Too Many Girls, Best Foot Forward) has this time loosed a regular stage blitz, with everyone in the cast seeming to chase a fire, and most of the dances doing everything but start one. With a nod from the plot Abbott has worked a blaring swing band, all traps and trumpets, into the proceedings. Even the costumes are loud as a St. Patrick...
...draft age to 18 cleared the college air. College officials, who had decided that any policy, however tough, was better than no policy, applauded. If the youth draft did not settle the wartime fate of the 1,700 U.S. colleges (enrollment: about 1,120,000), it set the stage for a settlement. Cleared up was the question: who would go to college-only men in uniform and the physically unfit. A battle over a big remaining question began behind closed doors in Washington: Who would run the colleges, the Army & Navy or civilians...