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- The Children's Hour
-
-
- (December 3, 1934)
-
- In The Children's Hour, Playwright Lillian Hellman, divorced
- wife of Cinema Scenarist Arthur Kober, has learned how to put
- a play together. She is also wise to the arcane criminality of
- childhood, to the no less delicate subject of female
- homosexuality.
-
- To the Wright-Dobie School for girls goes little Mary Tilford
- (Florence McGee), granddaughter of the young institution's
- chief patroness. As poisonous a moppet as ever twisted a
- playmate's arm. Mary is a prodigal liar, an incorrigible
- marplot, the school's petted problem child. Punishment for her
- misdeeds arouses in her a persecution complex and a thirst to
- revenge herself on the Misses Wright & Dobie. Armed with
- information clandestinely gathered from Mlle de Maupin, Mary
- convinces her righteous grandmother that Miss Dobie is in love
- with Miss Wright, that she has witnessed grave misbehavior. The
- grandmother ruins the school by spreading the tale. The accused
- young women ruin themselves by pressing an unsuccessful libel
- suit.
-
- Alone in a deserted classroom, Karen Wright (Katherine Emery)
- and Martha Dobie (Anne Revere) are faced with a hopeless future.
- In her morbidity, Martha reveals that although Karen is
- innocent, she, Martha, has not been entirely guiltless in
- intent. She goes to her room. There is a gunshot. In one of the
- soundest bits of acting seen this season, Actress Emery lets a
- full half-minute pass before she reacts to the report.
-
-