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Benjamin Dreyer

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20 Dec, 8 tweets, 2 min read

Happy Irene Dunne's birthday!

Say, wait a minute, don't anybody leave this room, I've lost my purse!

Pensive Irene Dunne's birthday!

Is Irene the only Kennedy Center honoree to date not to have been present at the ceremony?

"What Helen Hayes and Irene Dunne, I have also did."

Visiting the alternate universe in which Gertie Lawrence continued to refuse to sign her Lady in the Dark contract and Moss Hart made good on his threat to hire Irene Dunne (or so I recall the story), and Irene did The King and I as well because why not.

And as always happy to note that though The King and I purports to be based on Margaret Landon's novel it is most certainly based on the Anna and the King of Siam screenplay.

I’m having thoughts about how best to coexist with Show Boat and Anna and the King of Siam, but they’re still on the inchoate side, thoughtwise.

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More from @BCDreyer

Benjamin Dreyer

@BCDreyer

21 Dec

Why Do Some People Type Entire Tweets in Title Case? Isn’t It Twice as Laborious? Plus, It Thwarts Spellcheck.

Title Case Is Not the Same Thing as ALL CAPS: A Monograph

you know who typed in all lowercase? shirley jackson

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Benjamin Dreyer

@BCDreyer

21 Dec

I had somehow never noticed before that Shirley Jackson uses semicolons in dialogue; she gets away with it.

[I still don't recommend their use in dialogue.]

When I was (carefully) copyediting the volume of SJ's work we published as Let Me Tell You, I recall encountering two extremely lengthy multiclause sentences held together by a single semicolon, and to be honest my response was:

Madam, this is why we have periods.

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Benjamin Dreyer

@BCDreyer

21 Dec

Five people DM'd me overnight to ask whether the third sentence of the third paragraph of That Story is grammatically faulty.

It most certainly is.

*She fell in love with a defendant whose case she not only covered but of whose arrest she also broke the news, of.

*Not only did she fall in love with a defendant whose case she was covering, but when they got around to arresting him, there she was, breaking the news therof.

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Benjamin Dreyer

@BCDreyer

19 Dec

Noting that The Haunting of Hill House is fully 50 percent over, almost to the page, before SJ finally comes after you hammer and tongs.

Good Lord, I just realized who (with all respect to Robert Wise and the watchful ghost of Val Lewton) should have filmed The Haunting of Hill House:

Henri-Georges Clouzot

Either he films it in English, or Claire and Julie learn their roles in French (which I imagine they could have managed), or: THEY'RE STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU.

Read 4 tweets