Word: townes
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Charley Gray, who grew up in a small town which hears a striking similarity to Newburyport, Massachusetts, is a junior executive in a staid old New York bank. During a critical week in his life, when the turning-point of his career in the shape of a possible vice-presidency looms ahead, a chain of circumstances leads him mentally and physically back to his home town. Most of the book is a long flashback describing Charley Gray's childhood and youth...
Also, there is the question of organization. The long flashback in the middle of the book sags perceptibly. After a couple of chapters one is perfectly willing to accept the author's word for the fact that the social strata in a small New England town are extremely solidified. Mr. Marquand, however, piles on more and more illustrations. Everything that happens to Charley Gray seems caused by the fact that he isn't quite on the top of the social ladder...
Both pictures are notable for fine acting performances. Jane Wyman, as a deaf-mute in a rugged seacoast town, has already received a garden of critical orchids. Walter Houston, as the old prospector leading two hot young bloods to a fortune in gold, creates a wonderful character who dances at the sight of gold dust...
This season, theater lovers can look with some hope to a midtown Manhattan cubbyhole. There, amid the jangle of telephones, a stagestruck, 27-year-old girl rides herd on thousands of good tickets to the best shows in town. Plump, Brooklyn-born Sylvia Siegler works 14 hours a day on her new business-the Show-of-the-Month Club, which has caught on so fast that next week it moves into a whole floor of offices...
Barty Fingal, a stringy bit of town scum, and his pal Pelancey, a handsome but dim-witted giant, find a compromising letter in a jacket sent to Pelancey's dry-cleaning shop. They decide to blackmail the man who wrote it, and their scheme is so successful that the poor fellow commits suicide...