Word: scripting
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Sammy is a remake of The Merchant of Venice? Well, not quite. But its come-on is the same as Shakespeare's, and after four centuries the come-on still comes on fairly strong. Britain's Ken Hughes, who directed the picture and wrote its script, keeps Sammy running fast and running wild-his film falls flat on its face at the finish but in its maddest moments generates the glorious ungartered go of a Charlie Chase chase. What's more, Cameraman Wolfgang Suschitzky supplies some hilariously horrible glimpses of the crummy comether that passes for Sohociety...
...script, intended by Labiche to provoke abundant laughter and no thought, is only sporadically successful. If written today it might not find a publisher. But since it has the dignity of age, audiences, particularly Harvard ones, are bound to respect it, and some clever situations do develop in the course of the evening...
Miss Hamlin captivates the audience with her lisping Baroness, an extremely funny addition to the original script. Her accent was reminiscent of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Kerr, as her fawning Viscount, was a real dandy, whose reactions to the bewildered Fadinard provided some of the best moments in the show...
...seems a pity that more of the production could not have been choreographed like the final scene. Labiche's script calls for music and song, and the addition of these elements at the end indicated he was right...
...play is written with Hellman's customary vigor and elegance, and James Poe's script incorporates almost all of it intact. What's more, Geraldine Page slithers through her role with the sinister sweetness of a chocolate-covered cobra, and Dean Martin demonstrates impressively that he can act. But something is terribly wrong with this picture. It is cold, mechanical, dead. The central situation is contrived, and the characters are about as sincerely Southern as a bouquet of nylon magnolia blossoms. Playwright Hellman left New Orleans when she was still a child, and time has strewn cobwebs...