Word: awkwardness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...link between money and merit, Americans are too shrewd to make the comparison absolute. Still, "My money is as good as his" is accepted American doctrine. Where it does not prevail, as in country-club memberships but even more in discriminatory housing, the contrary practice is usually covert, generally awkward, often shamefaced and sometimes illegal. Yet even though the phrase has the required democratic ring, it usually means asserting a common right to spend to achieve an unequal advantage...
Raquel Welch's surprisingly pleasant performance is a good example. As a sex symbol Welch was never very sensual because there was something awkward and cold-blooded about her. But the movies she played in never acknowledged this, and she didn't either. She didn't transmit the intelligence of a Jane Fonda, who showed in her eyes that she half-knew she was exploiting and being exploited, and kept flashing a curious dignity above the demeaning roles. But Welch was in on the cheat. Predatory, she'd wriggle up out of the water, reptilian and sleek, looking like...
...Haven, the racketeer who backs the Parkers' whiskey-making project. A one-time killer, he poses a direct threat to the family, for their business arrangement makes him their master. Blue should be detached, evil, and frightening, but his threats are simply deranged and anti-social. David Wilkins's awkward handling of his cane and sunglasses, ostensibly affected to make him cool and scary, only compounds the problem...
...crisis to match Britain's economic crisis. Not since 1924, when the first Labor government took office under Ramsay MacDonald as a minority government with support from the Liberals, had the political situation been so uncertain. It was possible that Queen Elizabeth could find herself in an extraordinarily awkward position for a modern constitutional monarch: deciding which party or parties would be best able to command support in the House of Commons and thus run the government. The Crown could even be dragged into an unseemly political row if the Tories tried to cling to power...
...spirited Funeral Dirge." Rosenwald even makes Grusha's flight on a rotting bridge spanning a 2000-foot abyss convincing, with a little help from Susanne Boyce, who did the props: the bridge is just a plank between two bundles of hay, but it works. So do the conceivably awkward fadeouts between the play's brief scenes, which are linked by the resonant narration of John Philips as the singer...