Word: version
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Sixth Happiness. A sentimental, overlong, but often moving film, not unlike a Cecil DeMille version of Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, with Ingrid Bergman as a missionary in China...
...cast and particularly the Met's often heavy-footed chorus, achieved some stunning, stylized patterns reminiscent of Bayreuth. Highly effective were the glowingly expressionistic sets by German Designer Caspar Neher, but his costumes were merely foolish: mauve, mustard, rose and lavender, suitable for a Todd A-O musical version of the Wars of the Roses. If Designer Neher tried to follow the romantic music by being deliberately unrealistic, he spoiled his effect with just enough realistic touches, as when platoons of soldiers in what looked like pink pajamas appeared alongside authentically ragged refugees...
...Verdon moments worth counting are few, but one fine one is a witty chorus number called The Uncle Sam Rag, parodying a sedately British version of U.S. ragtime. As Essie's muscular true love, Richard Kiley is good in voice and virile in manner. The lackluster score sounds like eight notes in search of a composer, and the book should be returned to the moths from which it was borrowed. But Redhead's flaws are not in its star...
Since then three editors have tried to shape this mass into an orderly autobiography. The first version appeared in 1924, and by cutting out all seemingly offensive passages. Editor Albert Bigelow Paine tried to keep Mark Twain's reputation as spotless as his linen. In 1940 Bernard DeVoto published another portion of the manuscript. Now Charles Neider, novelist and essayist, gives what seems closest to the truth of the matter...
Musical archivists may show scant interest in the warbling of Dorothy Collins and Johnny Desmond, but a player-piano version of Rhapsody in Blue, plunked out by Gershwin himself in 1937, is of historical interest...