Word: villainizing
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...some reason, the only way out of this dilemma seems to be suicide, but before the girl jumps out of a window, she manages to spread the impression that the villain was not her boss, but a footloose social worker named Benjamin Franklin Ivey. The preposterous melodrama that hinges on this case of mistaken paternity is remotely interesting only because perennially bestselling Author Weidman (I Can Get It for You Wholesale, The Enemy Camp) has fashioned Ben Ivey in the unmistakable outer image of Harry Hopkins, that famed, dark-grey eminence of the New Deal...
...while Newman broods (Newman does little but brood in the film, perhaps because of overexposure to Tennessee Williams). The lover is a psychiatrist, incidentally, and therein lies a small triumph; Hollywood, mindful of protests whenever it portrays a red Indian or an Italian gangster, has at last found a villain whom everyone can hate...
Envy is the true villain of the piece. Edward Henderson is a middle aged, mild little accountant who envies his fishing pal's fine body, the virility of his 25 years, his casual good looks. Roger, a simple mechanic, in turn is envious of Henderson's tidy income, his complacent marriage. Henderson is the amateur hypnotist, Roger the willing subject, and one night when their mutual covetousness is at its height and hypnosis is at work, the switch takes place. Author Glaskin is the kind of fantasist who keeps things on a plane so practical that anyone...
...blow the town down-he stands for Innocence. The heroine (Debbie Reynolds) is a hoofer who expected to wrap show business around her pretty little figure, but after two years of tryouts is still suckering sailors in a dime-a-dance hall-she stands for Experience. And the villain of the piece is the great big city, a sort of cold-water Sodom populated by pimps, prostitutes, land pirates, tourist trappers, gay young switchblades, softheaded bartenders and hard-nosed landlords...
Experience warns Innocence what to expect from the villain, but Innocence of course gets left with the hole in every doughnut and blithely keeps on buying Brooklyn Bridge until all his cash and even his saxophone are gone. The taxi dancer, who by this time is in love with the twerp, wants to put him back in the music business, but how can the poor girl make $200 to buy her jazzbo a new set of tubes? In New York, says Scriptwriter Kanin grimly, there is only one way a poor girl can make that kind of money. Will...