Word: womaning
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This seems an unfair fate for what is perhaps Mr. Williams' major contribution to the theatre, the only reasonable competition being The Glass Menagerie. Sure it contains all the "sick" elements that have become so exhaustively familiar in his more recent work--the mendacity, the liquor, the sex-starved woman, the stud male, and so on. But the most distinctive characteristics of Williams' writing are his vivid and powerful command of language and his fascinating use of rhythmic speech patterns--sometimes lyric, sometimes syncopated like a primitive drum...
Cavada Humphrey, an excellent and versatile actress, gives us Blanche as Mr. Rabb describes her but hardly as Mr. Williams does. She is vulnerable all right, but there is no love or tenderness in this Blanche. A dimension has been omitted. What should be a woman desperate for love, protection, and security is merely a woman desperate for sex. As conceived by Mr. Rabb, it is difficult to imagine Blanche's remaining faithful even to Mitch, her Rosenkavalier, the man she wants so desperately to marry...
Towards the end of Act I Blanche says to her sister, "I want to rest! I want to breathe quietly again! But this line is delivered as though by a tired prostitute, and not by a woman with a sincere desire to escape from her past and begin life anew with the security of marriage. Likewise, the scene with the young bill collector is completely lacking in lyric quality and only the primitive element is played. The way in which Miss Humphrey delivers, "I've got to be good--and keep my hands off children," using her lower register...
...failure is perhaps principally Director Zinnemann's, but it is partly Actress Hepburn's, too. The character she plays is a woman torn by powerful emotions, but, although a sensitive performer, the leading lady seems unable to express strong feelings of any kind. She is too cool; and so is the picture. She has the presence of the sprite, not the presence of the spirit. Calm and exquisite in her habit, she looks most of the time like nothing more troubled or troubling than (if such a thing were possible) a recruiting poster for a convent...
Died. Dorothy Shaver, 61, president of New York's Lord & Taylor; of a stroke; in Hudson, N.Y. Arkansas-born Dorothy Shaver climbed up through the world of fashion by her flair for showmanship, was elected Lord & Taylor's first woman president in 1945, enlivened her store by spraying perfume at the entrance, decorating the awnings with roses...