Word: thurberism
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Sometimes sophomoric, sometimes savage, Morgan's programs are a mixture of monologue and weird recorded music. A favorite of Robert Benchley, James Thurber, Stuart Chase, Morgan follows a simple formula. He breaks all the rules. As a result he is the envy of every announcer who ever gagged politely while rolling off an unctuous commercial. Once when reading a plug for Adler Elevator Shoes "Knockabouts come in ten colors . . . beige, cinnamon, blue . . ."), Morgan ad-libbed remarks on the probable habits of a man who would wear blue shoes, remarked "I wouldn't be seen in them...
...Male Animal (Warner) brings laconic Humorist James Thurber's famed War-Between-the-Sexes to the attention of its biggest audience yet. This semi-ludicrous, semipainful combat, which Thurber wrote all the way into a Broadway hit (with Co-Author Elliott Nugent) two years ago, is the most refreshing comic material Hollywood has encountered in a long time. The resulting cinema, though overlong and talky, is a delightful comedy charged with impish innuendo and raw laughter...
Playwright Thurber's hopelessly human hero is a blurting young English professor (Henry Fonda) who gets branded a Red because he wants to read one of Vanzetti's (of Massachusetts' Sacco & Vanzetti) letters to his class. The battle is joined when one of his wife's (Olivia de Havilland) old football-playing beaux, Joe the Twirler (Jack Carson), arrives at Midwestern U. for the big game...
This well-pastried pie of sense and nonsense is ably dished out by Protagonists Fonda and de Havilland. Co-Author Nugent, who directed, fails to reduce it from play form to unadulterated cinema, but is faithful to the captivating Thurber theme. Noisy Actor Carson is a natural for his Piltdown role. His best scene: demonstrating-in the professor's living room, with the professor's best china-his sensational new football play: a fake fake...
...Yard dash-First, F. Coolidge, Harvard, 4.6 seconds; second, B. Thurber, Andover; third, R. Storer, Harvard; fourth, G. Reynolds, Dartmouth...