NEW WESTERN AT BROOKLYN PARAMOUNT
NEW WESTERN AT BROOKLYN PARAMOUNT STILL-LIFE OF A SALESMAN In his Death of a Salesman (directed by Elia Kazan; presented by Kermit Bloomgarden and Walter Fried; at the Morosco...
...But the story gathers momentum until, swept on by adroit staging, it Hows like a motion picture...
...Siegfried Lehmann and Dhotoi?ranhed bv HHmnr LersV' THE SAVANNAH'S SPRING SHOW OPENS The Savannah Cafe (68 West 3rd Street) announces its spring show...
...a life erected upon the idea that if you are "well liked" you will be a success...
...Whether or not this picture is the author's intention, I cannot be sure...
...Tlie film, directed bv John Farrow, costars Audrey Totter and Thomas Mitchell The plot revolves around the efforts of Milland to destroy Mitchell, a courageous politician...
...Making her singing debut at the Savannah as a featured entertainer will be Ruth Mason, who, in addition to having a fine voice, would be a contender for any "Miss Colored America" contest...
...in which Hay Milland plays the title role, is in its final week at the New York Paramount...
...Death of a Salesman does yiot...
...Put yourself over— no matter how—and you have won...
...smiled at by his father when he swipes planks from the eonstruction job next door or 'borrows" a school football to Practice with at home...
...He talks too much...
...and other events take place only in Willy's mind...
...On the same program is William Gaigan and Virginia Welles in "Dynamite...
...Take, for instance, the basic theme of the play, the intertangled failures of Willy and his promising son Bill...
...ALAN LADD STARS IN PAR AMOUNT'S "WHISPERING SMITH" For the first time in his career, Alan Ladd comes to the screen of the Brooklyn Paramount Theatre in a Technicolor production, "Whispering Smith...
...Tony, the old Italian, gives Paul Muni a field day...
...Joseph T. Shipley...
...There is no time, before the final curtain, to raise such questions as consideration breeds...
...Weitman will supervise the theatres in Philadelphia in which Paramount is interested...
...the other is a bum and a thief...
...The treat inent of space in the play varies between, rather than fusing, fan tasy and realism: in (lie skeleton of a house...
...Weitman will continue as the supervising director of the New York and Brooklyn Paramount theatres...
...ALIAS NICK BEAL" IN LAST WEEK AT PARAMOUNT "Alias Nick Beal...
...So Willy kills himself...
...In truth...
...then Diff catches his father in the "deist of a sordid affair...
...he is just an incompetent practitioner...
...As Amy, who comes in search of a home, is shocked to discover the young photograph sent her is not Tony's, then alter her one spurt of rebellion comes to love tin kindly, open souled old fellow, Carol Stone is excellent, in a part previously played by Pauline Lord and June Walker...
...It seems to me that this eonfusion reaches into every aspect of the drama...
...but Ben's appearing and giving advice when Willy is contemplating suicide can occur only inside Willy's cranium...
...you are selling, not your product, but yourself...
...All these obstacles to accept ance of the play's mood combined lo make impossible my emotional flow with tlie story...
...she controls and conveys it with more restraint and there1 fore more power, and makes the plight of the girl sympathetically and genuinely real...
...In this mystery, Milland has an experience unique in filmmaking...
...And as it carries its characters along, it hurries the spectators past a number of considerations over which they might wish to linger...
...that is, you will make money...
...Kirk Douglas is starred, with a supporting cast, headed by Marilyn Maxwell, Arthur Kennedy, Ruth Roman, Lola Albright and Paul Stewart...
...one of the great sport stories of modern times, wi ittcn by Ring Lardner and starring Kirk Douglas, by Stanley Kramer, will have its world pre miere at the Globe Theatre on I Saturday, April 9th, it was an- j hounced by United Artists, dis I tributors of the new screen sue- j cess...
...And that is why Death of a Salesman, for all its glib success, essentially fails...
...But Biff also believed in his father, who loved lo lie with and laugh with his "ife and the boys at home...
...In person the Paramount pre sents The King Cole Trio, Larry Storch, Helene & Howard, and Elliot Lawrence and his orchestra ROXY HJOLDS SHOW The Roxy Theatre's new triple entertainment program will remain for a second week and includes the- new 20th Century-Fox Technicolor comedy, "Mother Is a Freshman...
...But the play as a whole fails to carry equal intensity or conviction...
...Willy is not a victim of a bad system...
...He thereafter loves his mother with a more intense love, a\ though to compensate for Willy's cheating...
...at the age of sixty three, he is n failure...
...and she will get the insurance it he dies...
...One of his sons is a liar and a lecher...
...Bid seems less a failure than a misfit: we are repeatedly told he could be happy, not as a salesman, not as a shipping clerk, but where he has tasted happiness, outdoors on a farm or a lanch...
...thus the early appearances of Willy's brother Ben may be actual, or remembered...
...The acting of Arthur Kennedy, as Biff, seems especially good...
...but this may be a eonsequence of the various levels of interpretation the play necessitates...
...The film was conceived by Director Dr...
...So much does Muni act, indeed, that we forget the mood and meaning of his part just watching his busy "business...
...The author, quoted in a program note, said that "the story of this play, in its noblest form . is proudly derived from the legend of Tristram and Iseult...
...His wife, at least, is a loving woman, though lapsed to a gray drudge...
...Willy Loman—Arthur Mil ler's salesman has not won...
...At its present level, the sociological picture of Hill wars with the psychological...
...HADASSAH FILM DUE AT THE STANLEY SOON Jewish Films Distributors announced that it has completed arrangements with Hadassah for release of that organization's first full-length feature film, "Tomorrow's a Wonderful Day," Filmed in its entirety in Israel, "Tomorrow's a Wonderful Day" is a> factual documentary-drama depicting life in a children's village "somewhere in Israel...
...In the next scene, Linda, putting flowers on Willy's grave, remarks that he has died just when the final payment's been made on the mortgage: instead of ringing as a final irony, this woke further echoes of the old tear-jerking melodrama...
...Ruth is a protege of Duke Ellington and is destined to make Hollywood Master of ceremonies will be Manhattan Paul, the bebop entei tamer, who just signed an RKO contract...
...A logical successor to United Artists' box-office boxing champion of last year, "Body and Soul," "Champion" is already being hailed bv motion picture critics and sports commentators as one of the hits of this season...
...It might seem that Willy fails because his ideals are shallow, his motives are mean, his methods lack integrity-because the system he represents, the American way of business, is bad...
...but because he cannot meet them: he is not "well liked...
...There is, thus, no deep feeling for the characters involved...
...Willy's suicide occurs beyond the dark and empty staee, to a crescendo of eerie cacophony that suggests the gathering of a doomed automobile and I almost looked for the dashing car on the screen...
...The vine grower dismisses the overhelpful helper, but keeps the wife and child...
...Whispering Smith," based on the novel by Frank Spearman, costars Robert Preston, Brenda Marshall and Donald Crisp with Alan Ladd...
...Yet, despite the revulsion from his father's dishonesty, Biff himself grows more dishonest, stealing a carton of basketballs, steal ing a gold pen—petty acts that (since he did not oppose his father by becoming rigidly honest, almost puritanical) call for more explanation than the author grants...
...Stanley Kramer produced for United Artists release through Screen Plays, Inc...
...In her earlier appearance, the author gives no hint as to a motive...
...and the stir creates a superficial glow that replaces understanding...
...A new kind of action, that of a fullfledged Western hero, complete with six-guns, a fast riding horse and plenty of ban -raising excitement, is all demonstrated to his fans in the best style of the "horse operas," co related with the manner which has firmly established Alan Ladd as one of the top names of the screen...
...Carl Foreman adapted the story for the screen and Mark Robson directed...
...Your own integrity does not matter...
...shortly after, characters walk nonchalantly onto the street through the invisible front wall...
...With accent, facial expression, and gestures that sweep his hands about but involve his shoulders and »t times the sway of his whole body, Paul Muni munificently performs the eager, then the crippled but still ardent, grower of the vines and hope for a wife and three bambinos...
...The value of his standards is irrelevant...
...Weitman's new duties will include representing Paramount in connection with its theatre mteiests in the South...
...But when such questions rise, a play must answer them...
...In the case of Bill, the uncertainty becomes confusion...
...In addition, Mr...
...he fumbles...
...The time pattern of the story is complex...
...J. T. S...
...It is overlong in the telling at first, as in Linda Loman's attempt to make her two sens understand then father Willy, otherwise one of the most moving moments in the play...
...We cannot always know which is which...
...with the management of the New York and Brooklyn Paramount theatres under his direct supervision, togothoi with other production activities...
...A look-see at the line-up bears out the fact that it will be one of the most ambitious colored productions ever staged in New York...
...Not at all...
...1 feel that Lee J. Cobb, as Willy, overacts...
...Is this tt'hy Biff grows to be a vagrant and a thief...
...Willy opens the frame of a door with a real key that clicks in the lock...
...Weitman has heretofore been working under Mr Golden son as vice-president of Paramount Theatres Service Corpora tion...
...He fails, not because his standards are bad...
...she comes out, we must conclude, because the author wants Bill to catch his lather "in the act...
...THET KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED" AT THE MUSIC BOX The revival of They Knew What They Wanted, Sidney Howard's Pulitzer Prize Play of 1925 (presented by John Golden...
...At the Music Box) proves a tame and tepid entertainment...
...This story is told with earnestness and fervor...
...His failure is by no means an "American" failure...
...We are shown a young man brought up believing in his father's standards: happy-go-lucky...
...he cues out in anguish "You're a | i>honylH and breaks away from home broken-heatrted...
...Not only is the Technicolor of the picture new to Ladd...
...Leon D. Netter...
...The play, as I have said, grows to a pace that keeps things stirring...
...Directing the entire show is Clarence Robinson, who staged the Cotton Club and Zanzibar extravaganzas...
...CHAMPION" TO OPEN AT THE GLOBE APRIL 9th "Champion...
...he lacks selfconfidence...
...it is the personal failure of an incompetent...
...Her role, too, has a wide emotional range...
...flash backs leap fifteen years, some of the old scenes actual, some of them as Willy's mind now sees them...
...much occurs in "the) present...
...But it is far from its noblest form, in this tale of an aging Italian vine grower and bootlegger in California, wed after a correspondence wooing by a young girl who sought security— and who then is got with child by the vine growers helper...
...Toward the end, the likeness to a motion picture increased...
...Why, for instance, does Willy's mistress come wantonly out of the bathroom, with a llippant remark, to betray the situation to Biff...
...In his intriguing role of a devil incarnate, Milland goes through the entire drama untouched and untouchable...
...ignoring his high school studies, is he not Captain of the football team...
...There is some repetition, as in the flashbacks showingBilt Lqman as a football hero, worshiped by his brother Happy...
...starring Loretta Young and Van Johnson, the variety show headed by Phil Baker and Cab Calloway, and all-new lavish ice revue...
...Less important questions multiply...
...at the Morosco Theatre) Arthur Miller shows the frustrate end of the life of an American business man...
...BOB WEITMAN PROMOTED TO NATIONAL PARAMOUNT CIRCUIT EXECUTIVE Leonard H. Goldenson, vicepresident of Paramount Pictures, Inc., announced the promotion of Robert M. Weitman to be the executive in the home office who will replace Mr...
Vol. 32 • March 1949 • No. 12
