Word: successful
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...plot--broken up by newsreels, dramatic profiles of famous American figures from a ruggedly moralistic Eugene V. Debs to Rudolph Valentino and assorted other collage skits and "cut-outs"--centers on the life of J. Ward Moorehouse, Dos Passos' version of The American Success story...
...innocent with bright blue eyes, and he meets a wealthy woman whom he marries several scenes later. As Moorehouse's career soars, the plot switches focus to Janey and Joe Williams, two kids from a middle-class Georgetown background. Unlike Moorehouse, Janey and Joe do not become success stories. Joe runs away from home, enlists in the navy, deserts, and become a workingman whose "future is behind him." Janey ends up as Moorehouse's secretary...
...MANY RESPECTS, the character of Moorehouse embodies the spirit of U.S.A. Moorehouse skips into the play with enormous idealism that decreases in direct proportion to his rising fortune. His success, too, is typically American--based less on merit than on chance and a talent for the hard-sell con-job. And when he dies at the end of the play--a lonely middle-aged man who is more a victim of The Success Story than its hero-prosperous pre-Depression America goes down with him. Stephen Toope's Moorehouse lacks the strength to carry this broad, demanding part. He takes...
...role as Dick Savage, the bright young businessman under Moorehouse's wing. Prewitt's greatest assets are his insincere smile and deceptively flat voice. Where Moorehouse is soft, Prewitt's Savage is tough and pragmatic. Somehow he will survive the Crash and become the new era's success story; even as the cognac flows in a Paris cafe in celebration of the end of the world war, Savage suggests somewhat cheerfully, "Who knows? We might be back here for the next...
...professional man, a dashing playboy--and the usual shock ending. The plot and suspense rely on interaction between the characters--their growing suspicion of one another and the inexorable stripping of civilized facades. Beneath lie passions Christie believes can drive even the most unlikely people to murder. The success of the play thus relies on good acting to dramatize the character relationships, and fast-paced direction to highlight tension...