Word: bigs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Meanwhile, though he continued to live like a little shot in a lower-middle-brow home in McLean, Va., he began to act more & more like a big operator and a man who knows the right people. As a result, the Senate's special investigations subcommittee called him in to ask him if he was causing the republic any harm...
When a whim gets into big (250 pounds), jolly Congressman Frank Boykin, it sits there gnawing like a boll weevil until he does something about it. Like when he was 16, a poof farm boy, and got the urge to make money. Frank went out, became one of Alabama's biggest lumber and turpentine tycoons, and made himself a few million. Or like the other day, when he got the idea he should do something for his old pal, Speaker Sam Rayburn...
...says Frank, "everything's made for love." So why not toss a testimonial dinner for Sam, just to show how everybody loves him? Frank hired the main barroom and big banquet hall of the capital's Washington Hotel, sent out invitations to every big shot in town and a slew of industrialists, statesmen, bankers and railroad executives. (Winston Churchill cabled his regrets.) Once before, when Sam Rayburn lost the speakership to Republican Joe Martin, Boykin had wanted to do something for him, and he raised money to buy as handsome a Cadillac as the official...
...little buffet Frank had scraped together from his 100,000-acre hunting preserve in Choctaw County, Ala. and Deep Freeze lockers down home in Mobile -salmon from Quebec, venison from Alabama, elk from Montana, bear meat from the Okefenokee Swamp, turkey from Georgia, antelope from Chugwater, Wyo. Also a big batch of coon, possum and .'taters from Alabama's First Congressional District which, proclaimed the booming host, is God's country. Then, after a few cases of Scotch and bourbon to wash down the appetizers, there was the dinner itself-fresh shrimp, green turtle soup, Steak Rayburn...
Except for his rages, Joe's most impressive feature is his unpredictable size. At one point, in a tussle with some furious lions the size of overgrown rats, Joe looks about as big as a house. Later, little bigger than a normal gorilla, he blandly climbs into a standard-size moving van. In reality, Joe is a puppet of fur-covered aluminum, probably not more than twelve to 18 inches tall. His minutest movements were photographed frame by frame, like the drawings in an animated cartoon, and synchronized with scenes with live actors...