Word: woodenness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...cathedral audience was tense with expectation when the aging (74) composer himself appeared, looking something like an animated Gothic gargoyle. He conducted with clenched fists and wooden fury ("He loves to conduct," whispered one listener, "but he can't") while flashbulbs stabbed the darkness and lit up the cathedral's golden treasures...
...version of Sophocles' Antigone was given a striking, modern-day adaptation by Worthington Miner on NBC's experiment-happy Kaiser Aluminum Hour. As Creon, Claude Rains was a fine old despot, and once even squeezed out a real tear. But Rains was all but overborne by the wooden acting of Hollywood Starlet Marisa Pavan. In the title role of the girl trying to bury her brother, Italian-born Marisa was lovely to look at, but she spoke as if she were still lying around the Roman ruins with Gregory Peck in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit...
Anybody who thinks that wooden-faced Audie Murphy is trying to play the man in front of the cigar store is wrong...
...brand her flesh with a red-hot iron to prove her love. Instead of a total commitment to life, there is more often a quiet acceptance of fate. Mel Ferrer's Prince Andrey has a certain sullen grandeur, but his diction is often unclear, and he is more wooden than reserved, more testy than proud. Henry Fonda's leanness at first seems all wrong for the massive, moonfaced, soul-tortured Pierre. But Fonda builds beautifully into his part, using a physical clumsiness as a counterpoise to his soaring spirit, making his rages seem the more terrible since they...
...first reaction of Gabrielle to the life of a nun was shock-the electric buzzer shrilled at 4:30 a.m. Another shock was the lack of privacy; each of 200 cells was semi-partitioned with thin cotton hangings, contained only a chair, a table and a straw pallet on wooden planks. It was a world without mirrors. There was sign language at meals to preserve silence. Down-hooked middle and index fingers said, "Fork, please"; two humble taps on the breast said, "Excuse me." One of the strange episodes was the shearing of the lambs: "Postulants from a previous group...