Word: background
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...characters are insignificant puppets; the situations are replete with refined slapstick and flippant chatter just one level above that of a mediocre burlesque show, and Noel Coward's personality remains aloof in the background. He is there; for he is, without any doubt, a superior showman who knows the mood of the public. As a movie, "Private Lives" is one of the few that will keep your interest to the end. The photography is particularly skillful in the Alps scenes, and is never slipshod. Robert Montgomery and Norma Shearer are convincing lunatics, boisterously funny...
Skoits, inelegant in the fetid atmosphere of a saloon, but still skoits. Chinamen burn while Chuck Connors' mob fights Steve Brodie's gang for possession of the fire hydrant--an especially humorous scene since we have as a background to this massacre a delightful picture of good-natured Swipes throwing a brick through a window, upsetting a kerosene lamp. Crowds throng the banks of the East River near the Brooklyn Bridge, small boats loaded with inebriated gamblers drift in a semi-circle...
Unfortunately, it is just as inescapable for the students concentrating in Fine Arts, though for a different reason. Naturally, Fine Arts 1d, essential to the cookie-pusher, is useless to the serious student. Too superficial in treatment to be of service, even as a background, it is nevertheless crammed down the throat of the concentrator, who emerges equipped with a multitude of prejudices of which he spends the rest of his college career ridding himself...
...couldn't do it. ... The air of super-seriousness that marked all our actions was depressing. ... I have come to the conclusion that the best plan for the United States to follow next year is to select a man with a youthful viewpoint, a man possessing international background, to direct the team. ... A man like Frank Hunter or Vinny Richards, for I see no logical objection to a professional ... ; or Dick Williams, if the U. S. L. T. A. insists on an amateur...
...Philip Faversham, son of famed William Faversham who was a matinee idol 30 years ago, has a bit, his second cinema part, as a frightened hoofer. The developments leading up to the dances and the NRA take too long and the line of rehearsing dancers which is their unvarying background grows monotonous; otherwise Footlight Parade is a good sample of its type. Songs: "Honeymoon Hotel," "Shanghai Lil,'' "By a Waterfall...