Word: humorous
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Better English Institute to buy full-page ads in the slick publications proves that there is a paying public interested in education and self-improvement. This fact will not forever be lost to advertisers. We have in recent times seen the decline of the supposedly eternal gag type of humor, and its slow replacement by the situation comedy of Morgan and Fred Allen. The quiz shows and soap operas are wearing thin in their turn. When sponsors do realize that the American's concern with his personal inadequacies is not limited to "cathartics and mouth-washes," and turn their shame...
...balance its suspense, this type of movie generally tries for incidental humor. Johnny O'Clock tries almost too hard. (In a checkered-tablecloth restaurant, the waiter serves Powell & girl two unordered straight shots. Powell: "Who ordered these?" Waiter: "Ever eaten here?" Powell:"No." Waiter:"You'll need 'em.") But the show's biggest laugh is unintentional. During a gambling session, Powell and his partner, by this time sworn enemies, step outside to split their profits and call it quits. After they have been gone a few tense minutes, the sound track shudders with a rattle...
...long since given him up for dead, but old Madame La Hourie believes that he will soon return. She hangs out his yellowing shirts to air, orders a servant to drag down from the attic the mattress on which he used to sleep. Françoise tries to humor her mother-in-law's obsession, but in the end becomes almost as obsessed herself...
...exodus of underpaid teachers from the profession and the slackening of registration in teachers' colleges. President Conant winds up the "March of Time" with a short speech, and is followed by Donald Duck, and Mickey Mouse, and Pete Smith, and at least one other comical feature. This procession of humor is overpowering: all but ardent Pluto fans are advised to synchronize their entrance to the U.T. with the beginning of "The Jolson Story" and their exit with the end of the "March of Time...
With little deadpan humor, the picture is full of obvious but fairly amusing jokes about the insularity of Boston patricians and of obvious, rather anachronistic japes about Freud. Ronald Colman has gentle grace in the title role; Edna Best as his wife and Percy Waram as a brandy-muzzling relative are effective; Paul Harvey is excellent as the Worcester girl's forthright father; and Peggy Cummins (who won and then lost the lead in Forever Amber) is a very pretty though not very Bostonian daughter. The real star of the show is an ex-Quiz Kid named Vanessa Brown...