Word: bilked
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Rich. As payment, the stars demand about half a movie's budget, and get most of it under the table ("black money") in order to bilk the tax collector. Although often of low-caste birth, they win such passionate public adulation (oddly mixed with India's idea that actresses are on a level with prostitutes) that they have to be constantly escorted by baton-swinging cops. "These are the new maharajahs," says one bitter moviemaker. "When I think of the money we gamble on them, I can't sleep...
...Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations sat spellbound as witnesses unfolded a vivid account of the latest and biggest real-estate con game: the "advance fee" racket. From its birthplace in Chicago more than five years ago, the racket has expanded to all 48 states until some 70 firms now bilk unwary U.S. property owners of an estimated $25 million-$50 million a year...
...recently ran the 1944 movie Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, it captured twice the audience of the three major networks and more viewers than all six competing stations combined. Currently, Los Angeles alone is putting some 17 hours of movies on TV every day. When other independent stations begin to bilk the major webs of their regular audience, the whole of TV will be due for a serious overhaul...
...picture of "Mr. Democrat" was most appropriate. It used to be Pendergast peering over Truman's shoulder; now it's Tammany Hall's Boss De Sapio. All are of the same ilk and bilk. When Truman complains, "We have lost heavily among the millions of uncommitted people in Asia," he seems to have forgotten under whose administration it was that the Chinese Commies were called "merely agrarian reformers." There are thousands of American casualties of Korea who weren't nearly so happy on "Harry's Night...
...promoters in Toronto have struck it rich peddling worthless penny stocks to Americans. Spurred by the boom in Canadian oil (TIME, Sept. 24), dealers have flooded the U.S. with literature on such "promising opportunities" as Hy-Flow Petroleum, Golden Fleece Mines and Uranium Explorations, Ltd., have been able to bilk U.S. suckers of some $50 million (swindlers' estimate) a year. Sample come-on: "Our first stunned enthusiasm was fully warranted . . . This is the opportunity we had always dreamed about...