Word: brashness
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Edith Gwynn, a short, beryllium-hard brunette, in her late 30s, writes with the brash confidence of a columnist who knows she can't be fired. Her job, which pays about $300 a week, is guaranteed by her divorce settlement with the Reporter's Publisher W. R. ("Billy") Wilkerson. Natty, collie-eyed Billy has had plenty of experience with divorce settlements (his present wife is No. 5), but he never made a better one. Edie Gwynn's scatterbrained manner, quick bursts of nervous laughter and lavishly indiscriminate endearments ("lambie pie, beautiful cookie") hide a razor-sharp nose...
...those 17 years, Chippie had changed some, but not her voice. It was still brash and undisciplined, often nasally unmusical and handicapped by careless phrasing. But at her unpredictable best, Chippie handled the blues with the loving and instinctive expertness of her collectors' item records of the middle '20s, when she worked with Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, and Earl ("Father") Hines. She had quit singing in 1930 to bring up her four kids (later there were three more). When Jazz Pedant Rudi Blesh found her three months ago she was scraping trays in a Chicago cafeteria...
...Mother Wore Tights is a rather tepid but likable show. It is at its best during the vaudeville numbers, and there are some pleasant songs (best: Kokomo, Indiana). Brash Dan Dailey (Father) has a personality as sharp and convincing as a breath of stage-door air: he can really sing, really dance and really act. Miss Grable can sing too; her pleasure in playing a generous and happy woman is contagious enough to make up for her shortcomings as an actress. What she can really do, of course, is dance. And she still holds undisputed title to the most gorgeous...
...chief varmint of all, as Jake saw it, was a brash little guy with a quick trigger finger. His name was Bobby Riggs, twice world's professional tennis champion, and he was always yammering that Bobby Riggs was the world's greatest tennis star. Jake guessed he would have to go gunning for Bobby some...
Billy picked up the art of songwriting in his own brash but methodical way. He spent three months, nine hours a day, in the New York Public Library dissecting hit songs of the previous 30 years. All popular songs, he cunningly concluded, fell into well-defined categories: 1) love songs, 2) nonsense songs, 3) jingles, 4) songs built around a silly syllable. Of these syllables, Billy discovered, the double-o sound-"oo"-was the most successful. On this principle, he carefully constructed some sound effects called Barney Google ("with the goo goo googly eyes"). Just as his calculations had indicated...