Word: villainized
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Vardis Fisher's candid, uneven, sometimes powerful tetralogy (In Tragic Life, Passions Spin the Plot, We Are Betrayed, No Villain Need Be) reminded critics of Rousseau, Zola, Dostoyevsky, Dreiser, D. H. Lawrence (but not, oddly enough, of Thomas Wolfe). This four-decker autobiographical chronicle told the tormented story of Vardis Fisher's fight to free himself from acute egomania and puritan repressions...
This play, despite the social axe it has to grind, is pretty much of the famous old black-and-white melodrama. Wall Street is perhaps the real villain, and it is indicted for the murder of all its speculators and their souls. But the old veteran bull, Nicholas Vanalstyne, though he relishes smashing his enemies, wouldn't think of leaving an orphan or a widow dispossessed by him to suffer in penury. His son, heir, and namesake, however, is a rotter pure and simple. He has lived in sin, but he throws the odium of the crime on his innocent...
...souls of five lives at ebb tide in the Southern Pacific. At its climax the two lowest by dying heroically save themselves from being dragged out to the sea, point the way for two others, hero and heroine, to make peace within themselves, and consign the ultimate villain to eternal low tide amid the highest physical comfort allotted to any of the quintet...
When looking for cause for growing disunity, note is taken of the increased size of Harvard in the last two decades and of the growing diversity of its students' backgrounds which can scarcely fuse adequately in four years. But as the real villain, emerges the House Plan...
...Prescription for Romance," which completes the bill, is mildly amusing, but of necessity suffers from contrast with the main feature. Its theme is very familiar: villain absconds with company's funds; innocent girl shelters him; detective and girl fall in love; all ends happily. Nevertheless, the treatment is light and humorous, and Mischa Aue as a phoney count provides many a ridiculous sequence...