Word: torvald
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...Nora's husband, Torvald Helmer, Donald Madden is an excellent foil. His blond Scandinavian looks, his slightly mannered stuffiness, arrogance and condescension all contribute to a solid and coherent character. He conveys just the inflexible sense of property and propriety that is so necessary to the role. There is no falling off in the rest of the cast-in Nora's worldly wise friend (Patricia Elliott) or in the doctor (Roy Shuman), who is paying mortally for the sins of his father, or in the unscrupulous moneylender (Robert Gerringer), who is trying to keep a slippery foot...
Seductively Powerful. As everyone probably knows, Nora Helmer has saved her husband's life with a convalescent trip financed by an indiscreet secret loan from the moneylender, who writes a letter exposing her to her husband. Torvald plays a cravenly abusive blame game with Nora, then, when the threat lifts, wants to go on together as if nothing had happened. But Nora sees her idealistic love shattered. She feels that she has been treated like a doll-child in her father's house and a doll-woman in her husband's. She opts to leave...
...will not serve that in which I no longer believe." Nora's door slam is a crisis of belief, her non serviarn. But is she saving herself or indulging herself? To judge her act, one must imagine the alternatives. In that final scene in which Nora accuses Torvald of never having talked to her seriously about serious things, man and wife are, in fact, doing just that. Torvald is changing, seeing his wife as a person in her own right, and forgiving her. If she were really maturing, as Ibsen claims, she would forgive him and try to make...
Especially impressive is Suzanne Chappell's interpretation of Nora. Nora is essentially a split personality, vain and frivolous on one hand, determined and strong-minded on the other. Miss Chappel effectively stresses the latter. Thomas Gaydos as Torvald and Michel Bouche as Krogstad are both effective and convincing...
...social type Ibsen meant her to symbolize, thus helps transform the play from an outmoded indictment into a moving character study. As Nora's complacent spouse, Dennis King, hero of operettas, farces and romantic dramas, plays Ibsen as well as he sings Lehar and Friml. For all of Torvald's prissy traits, Actor King makes him pitiable in his final, bewildered defeat. Back from playing the ancient High Lama in Hollywood's Lost Horizon, Sam Jaffe is expertly repulsive and yet appealing as Nils Krogstad, the blackmailer who gets Nora in his clutches. Also from Hollywood, Paul...