Word: vidal
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...most gifted of our young men of letters is Gore Vidal; and I do not say this merely to give a plug to a former schoolmate of mine. He has attained high esteem through his novels (The City and the Pillar), television dramas (Badge of Honor), and movie scripts (The Bachelor Party), to say nothing of short stories and literary criticisms...
...successfully taken the legitimate stage into his domain with his comedy Visit to a Small Planet, which recently finished a run of almost 400 performances on Broadway. Among the many virtues of the play--as of most of Vidal's writing--is the freshness of its dialogue. Vidal avoids dull or hackneyed speech; his lines are original and unpredictable, and bespeak an uncommonly imaginative creative mind...
Evil is represented by a Marseille tough (Henri Vidal) who is dashingly good-looking but sort of dumb. He takes it on the lam to Paris in a stolen car, falls asleep at the wheel, cracks up, and hides out in a shack on the outskirts of Paris. There he is discovered by the neighborhood bum (Pierre Brasseur), a charming, aging lunk who drinks all night, sleeps till noon, lives off his ancient, hardworking mother, and sulks because nobody loves...
...sort. There is a mind-reading act. There is a display of levitation. There is, every so often, a monologuist. There are Imitations of Woodland Sounds and Jungle Noises. There is a musical number, a sort of Songs of Three Wars. Indeed, the minute words fail, Author Vidal perkily rushes in with a new sound effect. When inspiration burns low, he throws another monologue on the fire...
Visit to a Small Planet (by Gore Vidal) attracted considerable attention as a satirical TV yarn about a man from a distant and civilized planet who. via flying saucer, visits his "hobby," the Earth. It later aroused considerable speculation as to how, without being sadly watered down, a good saucerful of TV fun could fill a regulation soup bowl of a play. The problem has been solved, on the whole quite happily, by not turning Visit to a Small Planet into a play. It has been turned, instead, into a kind of vaudeville show, with two expert comedians, Cyril Ritchard...