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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
Wolcott Gibbs on the 1951 production of "Twentieth Century"
By 1934, when Howard Hawks's screwball comedy "Twentieth Century" was released, America had fallen victim to the twin catastrophes of the Depression and the Hays Office (the film industry's watchdog agency, inaugurated in the late twenties to prevent any exposure of female breasts, suggestion of cohabitation, or unconventional kissing from taking place onscreen). While F.D.R. was pioneering new ways to combat economic austerity, the screenwriters Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, with their rapid-fire wisecracking wit, found a way around the erotic stringencies of the day by discovering a new erogenous zone: the ear. The sexy war of words around which their scripts were built opened up a new arena of competition, insinuation, and penetration. (The clamorous "His Girl Friday," which was adapted from a Hecht-MacArthur play, clocked in at two hundred and forty words per minute, almost double the average speaking pace.) In the midst of social and financial fiasco, Hecht and MacArthur's fast talk provided the republic with the hypnotic sound of potency. For both the characters and the public, the act of flamboyant self-assertion gave the illusion of coherence, courage, and clout.
"Twentieth Century" (in revival in a Roundabout Theatre Company production at the American Airlines) took its name from the deluxe, streamlined transcontinental train that epitomized the American delirium of momentum; in John Lee Beatty's clever Art Deco...
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