Word: twain
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Paramount), featuring Bing Crosby, is proof that Mark Twain, who wrote the original story, knew a thing or two that Hollywood has forgotten. Twain figured, correctly, that it would be fun to turn loose in the 6th Century a character with some of the scientific knickknacks and know-how of the igth Century. Twain also knew that to get the fun his audience must be willing to believe in the fantasy-' to accept it as a child accepts a fairy story. Unfortunately, the makers of this movie appear to believe...
...funny in the same way that the Old Howard comics are funny. Observers laugh first because they can spot the gags upwards of a mile ahead of time, and second when they find they were right. This situation arises because Paramount has followed alarmingly closely (for Hollwood) the original Twain work. To be sure, they schmalzed up the beginning and end and threw in a little sledgehammer moralizing in the middle, but they kept their grubby paws off much of the Twain dialogue and all of the comedy situations...
...Twain sequence, however, is butchered almost beyond belief. The climactic total eclipse scene is so speeded up that the whole affair could easily be mistaken for a small but dark cloud passing in front of the sun. Hollywood, it seems, is so dreadfully afraid of boring its customers that it baffles them instead...
...John Sanburn Phillips, 87, genial, Iowa-born editor credited with developing more prominent writers than any other editor of his generation; after long illness; in Goshen, N.Y. A partner (with Samuel S. McClure) in one of the first U.S. newspaper syndicates (1886), Phillips hired Robert Louis Stevenson and Mark Twain * among his first contributors, later helped publish and manage McClure's Magazine, founded the American Magazine...
...Said Editor Phillips: "Twain's serial story wasn't so hot. It was one of those Tom Sawyer things. But we paid...