Word: hammerstein
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Died. William ("Billy") Gould, 81, oldtime vaudeville star, once a $3,500-a-week performer at Oscar Hammerstein's Victoria Music Hall, later a $22.77-a-week WPA hand; in Manhattan...
...Happy Time (by Samuel Taylor; based on Robert Fontaine's book; produced by Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II) wheels into position another of the aggressively picturesque families that enjoy great popularity on Broadway. The Bonnards, headed by jaunty, Gallic grandpere (Edgar Stehli), are French-Canadians living in Ottawa in the early 19205. There are grandpère's three sons-a "crazy violinist" (Claude Dauphin), a round-the-clock tosspot (Kurt Kasznar), and a round-the-town ladies' man (Richard Hart); his often disapproving Scottish-Presbyterian daughter-in-law (Leora Dana); and his grandson (Johnny Stewart...
...some funny lines, but not many; and some nice performances, especially Dauphin's. The outstanding thing about it is its phenomenal memory: it exploits every type of gag, farce twist or comedy situation that ever made good in the past. It is one more of the Rodgers & Hammerstein-produced hits (John Loves Mary, Happy Birthday) that give the obvious and the mediocre a finishing-school education, and that hug a safe, tried formula on the theory of nothing venture, nothing lose...
Robert Fontaine's book, "The Happy Time," from which Samuel Taylor has constructed the present version for producers Richard Redgers and Oscar Hammerstein, was probably as episodic as are most such books of family reminiscences. Mr. Taylor has chosen the best of these episodes and welded them together in the play--but not without the joints showing. Consequently, there is really no plot in the usual sense, but rather a series of amusing incidences which happen to occur in the same room and to the same people...
...salesman, Frank Baxter did not start out to be a teacher at all. He began as a waterboy in Philadelphia's Hammerstein opera house (he carried glasses of water to singers in the wings), later became a clerk and bookkeeper for a manufacturing company...