Word: vanessa
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...Vanessa: Her Love Story (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), adapted by Hugh Walpole from his own novel, is an earnest, lachrymose romance of the Jubilee Era, slightly oversold on its message, Love Will Find a Way. Benjie Herries (Robert Montgomery) is the black sheep of a huge English manor-house and bagpipe family. Other members of the family include a female centenarian (May Robson), lovely young Vanessa (Helen Hayes) and an anti-social introvert with a persecution complex (Otto Kruger). The trouble starts when Benjie goes to China instead of marrying Vanessa immediately. When he gets back, the manor house burns down...
...cinemaddicts who know that it invariably betokens a husband whose jealousy will drive him to distraction. Otto Kruger's presence in this picture will not add materially to its suspense. Nonetheless, his performance is the most convincing single feature of the entertainment. As Vanessa, Helen Hayes, who last week announced that she would return to the stage for good after one more cinema rôle, contributes her anguished smile and her catch-in-the-throat voice. Robert Montgomery's efforts are improved by the exchange of his customary whimsey for a set of sideburns...
...Vanessa, by Hugh Walpole...
...less, is deranging communication between Ireland and the astral shores. All the customers save a young Cambridge man want the savage Dean's spirit exorcised so that they can get on to more personal business, but Jonathan Swift has the upper hand, begins speaking with despairing eloquence about Vanessa, who proposed marriage to him; Stella, whom he loved; Ireland, which he admired; himself, whom he despised. The poetic Swift confessional is interesting, intelligible to none except the eager student. The charlatan medium dismisses her congregation, counts her money, prepares to retire. But as she makes...
...London in 1882, daughter to once-famed Sir Leslie Stephen, literary critic and freethinker, she was related to half the most scholarly families in England (some of them: Darwins, Symondses, Stracheys). When she grew up to be a tall, pale, Burne-Jonesy young lady, she and her sister Vanessa lived together in Bloomsbury. Around them soon collected the nucleus of the "Bloomsbury Group" of writers (Clive Bell, Leonard Woolf, E. M. Forster, Lytton Strachey). In 1912 Virginia Stephen married Leonard Woolf; together they founded the Hogarth Press. Critics soon became respectfully aware of Virginia Woolf. Said they: ". . . Liveliest imagination...