Word: broken-down
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...Director Melville Brown's first production, Her Big Night, was so successfully and hilariously funny that the stupidity of this, his second effort, is acutely painful. The comedy is supposed to flow from the well-intentioned blunder of a hero so nitwitful that he pays $300 for a broken-down taxi on a rainy night. Marion Nixon is cute, opposite Edward Everett Horton, lummox...
...Deputy and Senator for 35 years, I tell you now that M. Monis is alive, but destitute. . . ." The Premier told then of how he had found M. Monis, now 81, living in a wretched single room, forgotten, barely able to keep alive by the pittance he earned as a broken-down lawyer's clerk. "Think! A clerk," said M. Poinaré. "Remember that in his day Antoine Monis was among the great lawyers of France, that is to say of all the world. . . . "Messieurs. For the honor of France we must rescue Antoine Monis from destitution. The Government lays...
...this broken-down Napoleon sits in his back yard, surrounded by as many private detectives as an Attorney General or a Pittsburgh millionaire. It must be a bitter pill for the great Poseur to have to pretend a demure shyness to tempt the photographers Lo, he used to treat Gott with condescension. But now he even bores the League of Nations. No one cares what becomes of him. He is de trop, passe...
There are moments when it is a little doubtful just what the author intends: even for a newspaper man Breck seems unduly credulous about the price of broken-down buggies and the efficacy of cocktails as cow-medicine, and the farmers in their twin make-up suggest vaudeville. But, farce or comedy, it is always entertaining and the characters are people whom one is glad to have met whichever way one takes them...
...remains traceable throughout the play--a beautiful society maiden (she actually is beautiful) who wants to be a star; her sus- ceptible and perfectly-dressed papa; her amiably aimless admirer; a furtive and ominous villian; a mercenary manager; a dejected dinge; and various actors and would-be actors. The broken-down tragedian supplies an element unexpected in musical comedy, for Mr. Hodges succeeds in bringing out the full farcical effect and at the same time a suggestion of the pathos of the proud old actor who really could do "straight heavy" if he only had a chance. The act goes...