Word: cardsharps
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...there is one kind of hombre that clogs up Dooley's craw so tight he can hardly spit: the professional gambler. When Bret Maverick (James Garner) rides into town in search of buried gold, Deputy Diefendorfer has no trouble spotting him for the cardsharp he really is. "He's wearing a clean white shirt and a black necktie," explains Diefendorfer, "and he's winning, Muster Dooley." Outraged, Marshal Dooley heaves Maverick out of town, has to repeat the performances twice more when Maverick keeps sneaking back. "We're sure getting some strange breeds in Ellwood lately...
...repairman has long since won a special niche in American folklore. Depending on the circumstances, he ranks midway between the riverboat cardsharp and the village idiot, part freebooting buccaneer and part plain boob; or he appears, armed with screwdriver and flashlight, as a latter-day St. George riding heroically against the dragons that infest the nation's drain traps and fuse boxes. In commuter cars, at cocktail parties and women's clubs, he is the center of a game of "Can you top this?"-an endless recital of domestic triumphs and defeats. The plumber who forgets his tools...
...blast on a bookie's runner with a sawed-off shotgun. The audience is avalanched for the thousandth time with infinite details of police procedure. Relief is provided in the usual Dragnet style by tight little tick-offs of "types": a dainty curator of natural history, a folksy cardsharp, the victim's hard-drinking, one-legged wife...
Most of the links prove to be rusty or broken. His old employer is dead. And the employer's daughter, a girl who longed to marry well, has settled for a cheap cardsharp. The local priest is a sly opportunist, and the villagers are clamped in the narrow vise of ignorance...
...Collected Poems could pretty much pass for the common round of human experience. His themes are birth and death, the pain and joy of living and loving, animal vitality balanced against spiritual inner lights. At his weakest, he can and does riffle his images and similes like a cardsharp. At his strongest and best, he makes his poetry toe the line of his creed: "Man be my metaphor." In the 22 years since his first poem was published, Dylan Thomas has added mystic affirmation to his lyric rage. Almost as impressive as his growing to maturity is his growing acceptance...