Word: playwright
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Dates: during 1950-1950
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...Twists. The war made horror trite and started emptying the Grand Guignol's seats. Another blow: the theater's chief playwright, Andre ("Prince of Terror") de Lorde, died (in bed) at the age of 90. No new twists in torture or tricks of realism-e.g., "blood" that coagulates as it cools-could lure the crowds back. Even worse, the sounds of skulls being crushed and bodies plopping into acid vats began drawing guffaws instead of gasps. Things got so bad that couples who took the curtained boxes in the rear of the house looked to themselves rather...
Though 93 years old and 3,500 miles away, Playwright George Bernard Shaw kept a close, finicky eye on his latest Broadway revival. For nine months he badgered the producers with peppery cables, letters and postcards telling them just how to finance, cast and stage the play. He hand-picked Sir Cedric as Caesar (having coached him in the role in London in 1925), and gave Lilli Palmer his blessing as Cleopatra after Gertrude Lawrence brought her around for a visit last summer. He even passed on the production's Manhattan playhouse...
...well acted by Barry Nelson) is a saxophone player from the sticks, an easy mark who is fleeced of almost everything but his hopes; the girl (Betty Field) is a dime-a-dancer with a past (which she is living in). Playwright Kanin's slickest trick is to portray their and their neighbors' troubles in the form of little variety turns-a band that plays jazz before swiping the boy's instruments, a vaudeville has-been who bounces into his act, and a landlady with a monologue...
...just that Playwright Kanin sets theater above drama, but that he displays an almost equal lack of respect for his sordid material and his own talent. The one concern with squalor is to make it picturesque at all costs; with vulgarity, to exploit it for laughs. In the end The Rat Race gets nowhere; worse, it gets dull, repeating a lot of facile tricks and typifying a theater where, more & more, clever playwrights write everything but plays...