Word: iago
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Jose Ferrer, playing the wily villain of the play, Iago, threatens at various moments to steal the show from Robeson. He portrays with evil genius the wicked shrewdness and the twisted mind that produces the tragedy of "Othello" by mastering the simple strength of the Moor. By a crook of the finger, a clearing of the throat, a lift of the eyebrow, Ferrer probes the depths of the villain's complicated character more thoroughly than could a less capable actor by an entire speech...
...Southern American Negro" was Frederick Ira Aldridge, the date 1826. Among his Desdemonas: Ellen Tree, whose husband, famed Charles Kean, played Iago. In Europe's capital Actor Aldridge also played other Shalespearean roles (e.g., Lear, Shylock, Macbeth.) He married a Swedish baroness (by whom he had three children), died as he was about to return to America to set the record that had to wait 76 years for Paul Robeson...
Gaunt, 37-year-old Actor Carradine has played in 175 movies (at a top $3,500 a week) without wanting to play in any. His passion is Shakespeare (to understand the peculiar relationship of Othello and Iago, Carradine at first alternated in both roles); he got his first movie job because Cecil B. De Mille heard him spouting Hamlet as he tramped Hollywood Boulevard looking for work. For his present nationwide venture, Carradine sold his yacht and mortgaged his house. He is his own producer, director and sole owner as well as star. Says he: "That's the only...
...Iago, José Ferrer was no longer dwarfed by Robeson, but a proper foil. Too mild a villain last year from not wanting to be too melodramatic a one, Ferrer now is supple, mettlesome, lightly Mephistophelean-a virtuoso who lays bare the workings of Iago's fiendish mind, though not the mainsprings of his enigmatic nature...
...Paul Robeson is acting an extremely difficult role as Othello. At least, in spite of the duality of his character, Iago has a dynamic part in the play. He is the center of all the action; he is the force which is allowed to run freely through the characters in the play, tying them in inextricable knots as his "motiveless malignity" see fit. But Othello must stand as an object great enough for his fall to shock the audience. That is almost calling for the superhuman. And it's debatable whether Robeson is quite such a superman...