Word: scriptful
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Life Begins at 8:30 (20th Century-Fox) combines the talents of one of Hollywood's funniest script writers, Nunnally Johnson, and one of Broadway's funniest actors, Monty Woolley. Unfortunately it also is based on one of last season's dullest Broadway plays, Yesterday's Magic. The result is not worthy of Johnson & Woolley, but they contrive to make the film fairly entertaining...
...leading part, however, is far from the ideal, and even farther from the script. Russell E. Offhans, "known to New England radio audiences as 'Farmer Russ'"; does his best, but he is completely miscast. His peculiar delivery has played havoc with the supposedly swift pace of the play...
...rust. They also enliven the evening with a series of vaudeville acts. Actor Lunt dances, does magician's tricks, fakes tightrope walking. Actress Fontanne goes into a trance, does half a striptease. Two other characters indulge in a crap game. In view of all this, perhaps a decent script would be an intrusion...
...outran Seabiscuit in a race at River Downs. But the biggest kick he ever gave his admirers was his performance in the Rhode Island Handicap at Narragansett Park four years ago. Setting the pace for famed War Admiral, Kentucky Derby winner the previous year, he rewrote the script by holding off the Admiral's bid until the homestretch, then, in a spine-tingling stretch duel, reached the wire close on the Admiral's heels...
When the drugstores' agent suggested that the rejected pair might make a good team, they decided to try. They were an instant success with the Thrifty Stores and their public. Truculence was the keynote of their first script. They climbed all over Charles Lindbergh ("The Molting Eagle"), Senator Burton K. Wheeler ("The Voice of the Montana Sheepherder"), Senator Rush Holt ("Marco Polo in Rompers"), and America First ("America Last"). Hordes of listeners thought the team's colloquial views of the world situation made sense. Typical was an October 1940 broadcast...