Word: sullavan
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...Sabrina Fair Margaret Sullavan is called upon to be twenty-odd years old and girlishly bouncy. Now, Miss Sullavan is attractive and talented, but she has been attractive and talented for quite some time. What is more, for the past ten years she has fallen victim to an incurable disease or crippling accident in every stage role. She just isn't up to bouncing...
...Miss Sullavan realizes that she has made an error, she can find solace in the casting of her co-star. Joseph Cotten, one of the screen's top soft-spoken actors, is supposed to act power-mad, wild and unharnessed...
While Mr. Cotten and Miss Sullavan are up-braiding the producer for tricking them into Sabrina Fair, the two stars might have a word with author Samuel Taylor. Taylor has provided them with a parody of Shavian comedy. Shaw's good-natured snobbery, his interminable stretches of dialogue, his predictable surprise ending are all belabored here. Lacking only is Shaw's sincerity and wit: In the part forced on Cotten, the "superman" seems barely capable of running his own life. And any clever lines are spare indeed, while almost-clever lines pop up again and again to mar the play...
...spite of everything, Sabrina Fair does have two big names for the marquee and shows every sign of a prosperous long run. For this reason, Miss Sullavan's many admirers should boycott the play to spare her going through the role night after night. She has suffered enough...
...Margaret Sullavan, though uneven, brings far more integrity to the playing of Hester Collyer than Rattigan does to the part. The expert Alan Webb is floored as the husband; as the playboy, James Hanley comes off much better in the play's best role. As somebody who would love and cherish Hester if he could, he perhaps reflects something in Rattigan himself. Rattigan seems not so much unwilling to do right by his material as incapable...