Word: clowned
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...Broadway last week, He seemed a good deal less freighted with inner meanings. It seemed, in fact, what it doubtless always was-a piece of theater, of emotional bravura, of florid fiddling. Behind its clown's make-up there was nothing much of a face. Yet the makeup, at first glance, was by no means unstriking. For half the evening, indeed-while its melodrama seemed crouching to spring-He had a jittery tension, a rataplan rhythm, a glare of circus lights and blare of circus music, that were theatrically vivid. Then things got fuzzy and highflown, and the melodrama...
...main character is a celebrated man who, betrayed by his wife and best friend, masochistically underscores his humiliation by becoming a circus clown named Funny. Most of the others in the circus, he soon learns, are unhappy too. Funny (Dennis King) falls in love with a charming, childlike little bareback rider whose depraved nobleman of a "father" is on the point of marrying her off to a rich, lecherous baron. When he finds he cannot stop the marriage, Funny, with considerable fanfare, poisons himself and the girl...
That is about the only stage talent Danny does not possess. Even his first performance, as a watermelon seed in a play at Brooklyn's P.S. 149, showed he had a clown's heart. He was 5½ years...
...Gets Slapped" still revolves around its tragic hero, an intellectual and philosopher who has been driven into the anonymity of a circus clown by a pupil who achieved fame by popularizing his ideas--and has an illegitimate son by his wife. John Abbott, making his debut on the American stage, is highly successful in this difficult role; although his portrayal of "Funny" is probably more dashing than was that of Henry Travers in the Theatre Guild's original 1922 version, his development of both the man's embitterment and pathos is remarkable...
...Burrows is a wit's wit, a clown's clown. The late Robert Benchley called him "the greatest satirist" in the U.S. The men who make the public laugh-Danny Kaye, Groucho Marx, Fred Allen, Jack Benny-split their sides laughing when Abe performs. Outside a little circle of Hollywood and Manhattan partygoers, few know the 35-year-old, balding, blinking radio writer whose hobby is poking fun at Tin Pan Alley. But last week, Abe agreed that his stuff was too good to keep. He began a $3,000-a-week job writing a new CBS comedy...