Word: theme
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...talent of Mr. Bontemps is considerable. He has the authentic skill of the novelist in choosing a theme likely to interest readers, in telling a story not in propria persona but through the words and actions of characters; in fact he has every gift to commend him to the reader's respect except greatness. The lack of that quality in Mr. Bontemps is serious, for he has chosen for the motif of his novel the events of a slave insurrection in Virginia in 1800, and such a theme requires greatness. It is beside the point that greatness is still...
When Charles Morgan wrote The Fountain (1932) it was variously hailed as a big book, a pretentious imposture, a masterpiece, a phony. Sparkenbroke will raise the same contradictory contentions. Like its predecessor it is a long (551 pp.), serious novel on a solemn theme. Whether it was heavily ridiculous or gravely sublime was a question for the reader's taste, sympathy, sense of humor. Discerning readers last week gave Sparkenbroke high marks for good intentions and pomposity, refused to consider it as a masterpiece, but conceded that its weighty persistence was more impressive than the average novel...
...rumor that the Goldwyn boys spent $500,000 an hour on this supreme effort. The saga of Ziegfeld commences at the Chicago World's Fair, where the master is offering the muscles of the mighty Sandow. Even at this early stage in his development "Ziggie" realizes that his main theme is a rhapsody on the theatrical potentialities of the female form. He brings Anna Held to America and makes her a national idol by immersing her daily (in private) in milk baths. He then marries the beautiful Anna (magnificently played by Luise Rainer) and moves ahead with the production...
Beaming acknowledgment of the applause, 24-year-old Alec Templeton, blind Briton, performed one of the tricks which many in the audience had primarily come to witness. He asked Conductor Sundstrom to name five notes, which he swiftly contrived into a theme with variations in the manner of Bach, Mozart, Chopin...
...parlor entertainer has a stock of well-rehearsed piano tricks. Many a vaudeville performer can play Yankee Doodle and Old Black Joe simultaneously when his stooges in the audience suggest the titles. Alec Templeton impressed Chicago critics with more remarkable feats. When Glenn Dillard Gunn gave him a theme, he quickly responded with a choral prelude which the Herald & Examiner critic almost took for a Bach-Busoni transcription. Pianist Templeton also showed Mr. Gunn he had not only learned Rachmaninoff's new Paganini Rhapsody from records but also could rattle off his own piano transcription of the complicated orchestra...