Word: jess
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...story begins a little slowly in the shabby dwelling of Jess Oakroyd, a carpenter and joiner out of a job; but it doesn't take long to start Jess on the highway in search of adventure and employment. This deliciously slow provincial Englishman, with his aromatic pipe and pungent quips, wanders into a troup of third-rate travelling players and becomes their stage carpenter and jack-of-all-trades. But besides propping up scenery for the troupe, he sustains the whole show for the Boston audience. The troupe has been further augmented by Young Love, male and female. And when...
Thanks to Jess, the interest rises as it should throughout the first act, at the end of which the little troupe gives a dinner in some provincial hotel to toast the new young blood and rename the troupe "The Good Companions." The last scene of the act comes off splendidly. There is an authentic esprit-de-corps to this ill-assorted group of broken-down actors and novices, a rather poignant spirit that can be recalled in parallel scenes in "Trelawney of the Wells...
...final act is anticlimatic. Though it takes Jess back to his dingy home again, while managing to make his crazy adventures of the troupe seem a dream, it never gives a final accounting for the members of the troupe that are left. To be sure, they have been laid low by tomatoes in a theatre too dismal to boast grapefruit; they have lost a hero and heroine to the London stage; and they have lost Jess, but somehow the corporate ghost of "The Good Companions" lives on and is not to be laid without special attention from the playwright...
...LEMLY ERNEST BAKER W. M. FUTCH A. L. LEONARD JESS O. COOPER...
Some of the things you may have forgotten: Man Jong, Floyd Collins, the Boston Police strike, Coué, Jess Smith, Jane Gibson; the first radio station (KDKA, East Pittsburgh, Nov. 2, 1920), first bathing-beauty contest (Washington, D. C., 1921). A revolution in manners and morals accurately indicated by changing skirt-lengths had its beginning, middle and end in the last decade, says Author Allen. Advertising changed its key. "In 1919 the Listerine advertisement said simply: 'The prompt application of Listerine may prevent a minor accident from becoming a major infection,' whereas in 1929 it began a tragic...