Word: wildernesses
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Thornton Wilder, during his year here (1950-51) as Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry, gave assistance to the HDC in its production of his Skin of Our Teeth. While living in Dunster House, Wilder did quite a bit of work on a play called The Emporium, which contained much intriguing material. Wilder is an exceedingly slow and self-critical worker; and he still has not completed this play to his satisfaction...
...play, The Secret of Freedom, which was printed in the October issue of Esquire. Penned expressly for television, it will be broadcast later this season. This is his first prose play, and it is an avowedly propagandistic piece. It deals with folks-next-door-and-around-the-corner, like Wilder's Our Town but less artfully. Structurally, it flows well. One arresting feature: from time to time as a character speaks he will vanish from the screen and become merely an auditory commentator, while the screen shows film-clips from newsreels and documentaries...
...Wilder is not merely ingenious; he is down-right clever. And Some Like It Hot is not merely titillating, but very funny. Jack Lemmon's portrayal of the hungry little boy turned loose in a lollipop factory with his hands tied behind his back (he's got to keep pretending he's a girl) is one of his most delightful movie performances. Marilyn Monroe is perfectly cast, and she is great. And she sings, too. Tony Curtis makes one of his rare appearances as something other than a stud, and though he lacks Lemmon's and Monroe's sense...
...minor parts were written by Mr. Wilder with sharp satiric bite, and they are played by just the right actors. Pat O'Brien is the loud-mouthed cop who always catches the crooks just after they've destroyed all the evidence. Joe E. Brown plays a millionaire who's hot after Lemmon, not being able to see through the disguise. And George Raft plays Spats Colombo, the dapper bootlegger, the part he's been playing since they started making gangster movies...
...Billy Wilder's ingenuity and cleverness are beyond reproach. But he has more, much more; he has virtue. At the end of the movie, after what has seemed to be pure fantasy and games, he manages to include a few scenes in which Tony Curtis, who has all along been playing poor Marilyn for a sucker, discovers suddenly that deep down where it counts he loves her after all, and does the noble thing. These scenes call to mind the "Love Slave" movies in which the hero finally escapes from his immoral torturers and flees to his faithful fiancee...