Word: avidity
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...emergencies, says the police have been "very helpful." In their enthusiasm, the aficionados disdain such pallid Yankee conventions as waiting at the stage door for autographs. When they wanted the signature of Mexican Cowboy Singer Negrete, hundreds of them piled right up on the stage. But they are avid practitioners of the U.S. custom of whistling in approval. The piercing whistles once drove a singer to tears when Manager Montalban forgot to explain beforehand that this was not the traditional Latin catcalling...
...There was nothing romantic about the Bevans' tiny four-room house with its sanded floor. "There were never less than seven of us in the house, and an invalid relative occupied one room," recalls Bevan, now the King's minister in charge of housing. He was an avid reader. As he trudged along Tredegar's streets (as an errand boy for the butcher), he was usually absorbed in an adventure story-Rider Haggard or Baroness Orczy...
...longer a novelist, but he is everything else-a critic who writes a knowing account of royal mistresses, an avid traveler whose "escapes" abroad produce delightful travelogues, a father who often yearns for solitude. He is also drinking more than he used to, as a result of his failure as a novelist, but he is raising his standard of living as a result of his popular "success." In short, he is a dead duck...
...going alone to Miami . . .? Don't worry. You'll have no trouble meeting an attractive American girl, avid for company and distraction. But don't think you are in Cuba. After the dance, the drinks and the laughs, she will tell you she's sleepy . . . and there ends the night of adventure. Perhaps there are persons who have better luck, but that's the rule...
...crowded combination living room-den where wife Gertrude's furniture is pushed aside to make room for a grand piano, a harmonium and an easel, Schoenberg works at manuscripts magnified for his weak eyes. Until six years ago, he played avid tennis: "Then, suddenly, no one wanted to play with me." He realizes that his opponents knew he shouldn't be playing: his asthma is so bad that when Who's Who asked him to list his recreations several years ago "I was tempted to say 'oxygen inhaling...