Word: crawford
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Broadway's boffo Black Comedy, has had enough movie successes (including The Knack and The Jokers) to be able to say with justifiable immodesty: "I expect to see Fame arriving next week in a little, neatly labeled package." The only thing that could waylay Fame would be for Crawford himself to wind up prematurely in a neatly labeled coffin...
...Crawford's reverence for his own talent is exceeded only by his contempt for his own life. Even career stuntmen quake at his sight gags. In A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, he was almost bisected by a chariot. In How I Won the War, an unreleased film with Beatle John Lennon, he is nearly mashed by a German tank. In Black Comedy, eight times a week for four months, he has skidded down staircases on his heel, hurtled into doors face first, crashed to the floor entangled in a phone wire...
BLACK COMEDY mixes a technique of Chinese theater with stage business from vaudeville. It is strictly a one-joke play-about the goings-on when the lights go off -but the joke works. Peter Shaffer is the playwright, Michael Crawford and Geraldine Page the leading actors...
...Jokers are two wealthy, wastrel brothers (Michael Crawford and Oliver Reed) who decide to get their kicks by pinching the crown jewels from the Tower of London...
...happy heist is as much a cliche as the tale of the gun fighter who wants to hang up his shooting irons. Brisk pacing might have helped, but Michael Winner's dilatory direction slows the picture's pulse. The only theft that comes off is Michael Crawford's-and he steals the show. Currently starring in Broadway's Black Comedy, Crawford, at 24, displays a plastic face and an elastic grace-comic credentials that should allow him to travel in faster and funnier company...