Word: scripting
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...journalist is expected to observe with sympathy, but write what he must. McPhee, admiring Burton immensely but finding himself writing of him at a negative time in the actor's life, wound up feeling about his task as Burton did when he first saw the script of Camelot. "I think it can be done," Burton told his wife. "I think that I can just about tightrope...
...Morey's script bulges with literary goodies--deft word-play and shamelessly brazen puns--and merciless attacks on word-hawkers and discounters of good English. The advertising business, of course, gets hit hardest--I confess I am easily bored by anti-adman jokes--but Morey is at his best ridiculing Socratic sophistry, New Critics, and weary old critics. Unfortunately, Mr. Morey has made his towns folk tiresomely stock and sappy (the female romantic lead is called "the Romantic Lead"), perhaps for good reason, but with--as some weary old cur might say in the Trib--exceedingly mixed results. The players...
...since the play's points are made in delightfully lengthy digressions, these lapses in the script only interfere a little with the fun; they don't spoil it. Besides, most of the cast knows better than to take a musical's plot seriously, and they share the audience's amusement in discovering how easily gulled the Babelites are by slick talk. The gab is dispensed by a down-and-out swami (played by Mr. Morey's collaborator, Robert Paul), who wanders into Babel, promptly sells the Babelites the world, and, to dispose of a bag of cement, persuades them...
Arabia or Palm Springs? Spiegel, too, has got what he was after. He describes his esthetic attempts with a certain convolution more fitting to script-writing than speech: "I want to explore the variations on the theme of a man being basically in conflict with his own destiny, asserting his instinct for constructiveness, conflicting with the destructive forces around him." But his search for motion-picture reality is earnest: he built miles of roads in Ceylon while making River Kwai, hired 16 elephants to haul the 30,000 cu. ft. of timber used to build the bridge. "One Hollywood joker...
Anne Lilley Kerr, who played Agnieszka, deserves the most credit of all the cast and staff. Showing a good deal of poise throughout, she helped her fellow actors when they had difficulties, and at times brought out the best aspects of the script. If one player could save an entire production by skill and determination, Miss Kerr would have done it; her effort was a joy to behold...