Word: websters
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...celebrate the 183rd birthday of Lexicographer Noah Webster, 500 citizens of the well-heeled, suburban town of West Hartford, Conn, tricked themselves out in costumes and gathered before their Town Hall. For West Hartford's most famous native son is Noah Webster...
Focus of this celebration was a huge 13-foot, beetle-browed, unfinished marble statue of Lexicographer Webster which stared glumly down at them through a surrounding clutter of scaffolding...
...Daniel Webster had to trick the Devil into having any trial at all. Webster: "I never heard of you claiming American citizenship." Devil: ". . . Am I not spoken of, still, in every church in New England? . . ." Webster: "Then I stand on the Constitution! I demand a trial for my client...
Before this prejudiced judge and jury, Webster begins to talk. He reminds the jurors that each made the same deal Jabez made. He tells them that an American can't enjoy a souless America. He appeals to their patriotism: "Clean American air was in your lungs, and you breathed it deeply for it was free. ... He concludes: "You are Americans all, you can't be on his side. . . . Gentlemen of the jury, don't let this country go to the Devil! . . ." The jury is won over...
Dieterle wisely lets Actor Arnold play Daniel Webster without trying to look like the great man. His Webster is not the violent Massachusetts statesman but a homely, gusty humanitarian. Jabez, his wife (Anne Shirley) and his mother (Jane Darwell) are first-rate as the kind of people who made New England "out of hard luck and codfish...