Word: alecks
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...institution. His mother's fam ily were among the remnants of a once-flourishing, 19th-Century Utopian colony who lived in a rambling, 85-room house near Red Bank, N.J. Father Woollcott visited his wife, said "his disgruntled in-laws, "chiefly for breeding purposes." and little Aleck's arrival was considered "a scandal and a calamity...
...only dependable man in the Utopia was Grandfather Bucklin, a rangy 88-year-old who strode the porch in a bathrobe and forbade the children to utter a word. Right after Grandfather Bucklin's funeral, the hitherto-speechless Aleck burst into a torrent of verbiage that left his mother speechless with admiration. It is no wonder, says Biographer Adams, that Woollcott grew into "a devoted crusader for free speech and independent thought...
Once, when Father Woollcott came home and kissed his son, little Aleck tried to stab him with a fork. Dressing up in his sister's clothes was his favorite pastime. By the time he went to school, the boy was a weak-eyed, skinny mollycoddle and prig, already "pathetically conscious of being a misfit." He would jeer at anyone who had a squint or a clubfoot; homely girls made him burst into hysterical laughter. He thrilled with the hope of being kidnapped. Charles Dickens and Louisa M. Alcott were his idols. To confidants he showed a collection of photographs...
Henreid tries to make love like Boyer and falls miserably, while smart-aleck Garfield, though he often over-plays his supporting part, steals the show. A verbal tiff between Coulouris and Garfield, injects a little social consciousness into the story, with good effect. Except for Henreid and a young woman whose name is new and easily forgotten, "Between Two Worlds" is well acted and well directed; it's just too long and knocks itself from grade A by artificial loftiness...
...clerk, bewigged and begowned Sir Gilbert Campion, rose and pointed silently at National Liberal George Lambert, M.P. since 1891. Lambert then proposed Colonel the Rt. Hon. Douglas Clifton Brown, an Old Etonian, veteran of the First Dragoon Guards and the Northumberland Hussar Yeomanry, and Deputy Speaker since 1938. Smart aleck Captain Alec Stratford Cunningham-Reid, a maverick Conservative who is regarded as a noisy nuisance by his own party, maladroitly interrupted the proceedings: he said that he did not object to Brown personally, but did object to his being thrust on the House by the Conservatives. Loud cries of "Rubbish...