A Majority Of One

Gertrude Berg and Cedric Hardwicke were the leads in the Broadway show that ran nearly 600 performances. Berg, who had been one of America's favorite radio and TV actresses in her creation "The Goldbergs," played a role she'd done many times before. Hardwicke, when seen across a theater's distance, could be believed as being Japanese. However, the casting of eminently WASPish Russell and very English Guinness works against the charm of the script because we see them in close-up on the screen, and Russell, despite being an excellent actress, fails to convince anyone she is a Jewish widow. Guinness fares a bit better since his job is to be inscrutable, which is much ...