Word: swanning
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Since 1953, Guinness has made no more than token appearances in the theater-in Shakespeare at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, in The Prisoner in London. In 1955 he succumbed at last to Hollywood's enticements and starred with Grace Kelly in The Swan. He liked Hollywood ("so friendly"), but Hollywood figured Alec for an oddball. For one thing, he had a very peculiar diversion. He took walks. He took them, moreover, in Beverly Hills, where a man without a car is regarded with a good deal more suspicion than a man without trousers. The police stopped the fellow...
...Shostakovich, Khachaturian, but all three tailored their music to the classic choreographic idiom. The Russians' failure in modern productions became most evident during the Bolshoi Ballet's otherwise hugely successful 1956 season at London's Covent Garden. The company expertly paraded such gorgeous old floats as Swan Lake and Giselle, but was peppered by the critics for the lack of imagination and heaviness of its scattered newer works. Back home, Russian choreographers petitioned the Ministry of Culture for a freer hand, and surprisingly, the Ministry agreed that "the many-sided variety of Soviet life is insufficiently reflected...
Dore Schary, 53, oldtime writer, big-wheel cinemagnate and devout Democrat, has long mingled his art with politics. In 1956, after a slump at the box office and a series of money-losing movies (The Swan, Somebody Up There Likes Me), he was fired as production chief of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, suspected that the firing was due in part to his support of Adlai Stevenson. Schary had stumped for Stevenson in the 1952 and 1956 campaigns, also produced the doctrinaire film, Pursuit of Happiness, for the Democratic National Committee...
...acting is generally overacting. Among the few who were exceptions to the general awkwardness was Ann Brennan, whose nearly perfect performance of Annabella was often a saving grace for the play. Thomas Lumbard lived up to a small part with dignity, and James Swan, Gerald Malone, and William Bruckner were usually respectable. Benette Schultz played the juicy role of a maid with an occasional flair...
Time Remembered is less moonlit than footlighted, and is most rewarding-in fact, is great fun-when it is a stylish theater piece, full of little acting doodads and knickknacks, of interpolated flourishes and roulades: a trio practicing orchid-eating, a wild snatch of Swan Lake, a bit of supper ritual, a quite mad hunting scene. As the flighty duchess, Helen Hayes -if not wholly French-is very often wholly delightful, alternating an actress' skill with a vaudevillian's liveliness. Richard Burton plays a prince who is more bored than bereaved with a fine sullen dash...