Word: awkwardness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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West Germany. Its prosperity steadfast; its politics momentarily jolted by Konrad Adenauer's awkward handling of an aged man's transfer of power...
...battle, great victory!"-though it had been such a blood bath that a Swiss traveler, Henri Dunant, shocked by the lack of medical facilities, hastily set up the beginnings of what became the International Red Cross. Like most European reminders of past alliances, this 19th century campaign had its awkward details (Napoleon III had then grabbed Nice and Savoy for himself), but De Gaulle was happy to invoke the memories of Magenta and Solferino as he landed in his sleek Caravelle jet plane at Milan's Malpensa Airport...
...overeating), Germany's Handel became a symbol of beefy British solidity. Since his death, he has often been thought of as a kind of stodgy musical ecclesiastic, partly because of the ceremonial repetition of his Messiah, partly because of Handel's own susceptibility to mawkishly awkward texts-most notably in the numerous bird songs like "Hark! 'Tis the linnet and the thrush" in Joshua...
...show; as an attempt to produce a great work of cinematic art, it is a sometimes ponderous failure. The fault is not entirely Producer Goldwyn's. The original Broadway musical ('TIME, Oct. 21, 1935), a good try at the great American folk opera, is troubled with an awkward, ill-paced plot-the last act falls flat because all the best tunes are used up in the early part of the show. The libretto, by Charleston-born Novelist DuBose Heyward, is full of the sort of amiable condescension toward the "darkies" that used to pass for progressiveness...
...mother. It is even worse than he expects; she is a liberal on the matter of race, and she turns up with a Negro college student she has met on the boat. Could the son let the Negro stay at his flat for a few days? His refusal is awkward-there is no room, really-but the mother accepts it and says no more. It is only after the son has dutifully squired her on the tourist's round and packed her back to Africa that he comes to a tormenting realization: "She may well...