Books in Brief

Children, presumably sterilized in progressive schools, continue to snap to attention when the Coburn-type performer saunters on the television screen. The word gets around about Charles Laughton’s job in Witness for the Prosecution and people who haven’t been to movies in years begin lining up at the box office. But these are jewels—set few and far between in a rosary of lead—and most of us know that the end is in sight.

Charlie Coburn, as early as 1935, also knew that the end was in sight. Perhaps he alone could not rescue the royal theater from “the little people” who held it in bondage, but’ by Gad, sir, he could unlimber a few of the big guns just once more to blow the rats out of the rigging and to light up the sky with real fire! In so doing, he could advance his own career and maybe, just maybe, he could tear some kind of a hole in the enemy’s smothering velvet curtains so as to let in a little sun and fresh air. When his Festival folded, his disappointment must have been acute— but there is no evidence of his having marched on Washington to demand federal aid. Instead, at the approximate age of 65, he watched the wreckage go down, screwed the monocle deep into his eye and stepped out onto a Hollywood sound stage to blast their mikes, walk all over everybody’s lines and make lots of money.

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Children, presumably sterilized in progressive schools, continue to snap to attention when the Coburn-type performer saunters on the television screen. The word gets around about Charles Laughton’s job in Witness for the Prosecution and people who haven’t been to movies in years begin lining up at the box office. But these are jewels—set few and far between in a rosary of lead—and most of us know that the end is in sight.

Charlie Coburn, as early as 1935, also knew that the end was in sight. Perhaps he alone could not rescue the royal theater from “the little people” who held it in bondage, but’ by Gad, sir, he could unlimber a few of the big guns just once more to blow the rats out of the rigging and to light up the sky with real fire! In so doing, he could advance his own career and maybe, just maybe, he could tear some kind of a hole in the enemy’s smothering velvet curtains so as to let in a little sun and fresh air. When his Festival folded, his disappointment must have been acute— but there is no evidence of his having marched on Washington to demand federal aid. Instead, at the approximate age of 65, he watched the wreckage go down, screwed the monocle deep into his eye and stepped out onto a Hollywood sound stage to blast their mikes, walk all over everybody’s lines and make lots of money.