Word: big
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Every now and then a strong gust of wind whipped through the big stadium at Pusan, but at first the 70,000 children and parents in the audience paid no attention. Onstage, as the restless bunting snapped and waved, a troop of comedians and singers was putting on a special children's show, and the audience giggled and roared. But some among the parents began to notice black clouds massing in the sky, and remembered that a typhoon had been reported offshore that very morning. The performers sensed the danger, too, for they began to race through their acts...
...from the bustle and night life of the big cities, The Netherlands is still dotted with some of the world's dourest Calvinist communities. Among its grimmest is the former islet of Urk (pop. 5,500), a fishing village on the Zuider Zee. On Sundays, Urkers still separate their hens from the roosters, turn their paintings to the wall, read only one book (the Bible), take only one processional walk (to church). Doing anything else is sinful. For years life in Urk was pretty routine, and the town constable's daily report invariably read: "Nothing has happened." That...
...brain behind the big b.o. caper is Joseph E. (for Edward) Levine, 53, a onetime Boston newsboy who beat his way out of the slums by chasing a rapid dollar with indiscriminate energy. Salesman, shopkeeper, restaurantman, driving instructor, art-theater owner-Levine tried them all. Then he drifted into movie distributing, and his talent for what he calls the "big, big sell" began to pay off. It is a talent for recognizing the odd and often awful stuff that the public can stomach, buying it, and then peddling it behind a rolling barrage of ads and publicity gimmicks that have...
...movie is grounded in muddled mythology; the scriptwriter seems to get Hercules mixed up with Samson, the Amazons with the ladies of Lemnos. But no matter. Few Amazons ever looked better, especially in a scene filmed against the background of an obviously modern cemetery, where one of the big, tough gals explains that this is where visiting men are buried "when we kill them after the mating season." The good guys fight the bad; Hercules topples pillars on horses and men, breaks iron chains as if they were Zippers and routs an army singlehanded. "If this picture had a star...
...when Alla herself returned from Broadway to live in one of her own villas as a paying guest, an era was ending. The old faces were fading fast; the place was soon overrun by roaches and call girls. The last big spender was a happy drunk from Kansas City who made his fortune turning out horror pictures for the kiddies. For months last year, all drinks served in the Garden bar were put on his tab, and eventually he broke the record rung up by Benchley and his pals...