Word: charm
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...book is one of those narrative toothpick trees that the '20s musicals utilized only to festoon with girls and dances. The central figure is a near-millionaire Bible publisher, whom Jack Gilford plays with gullible charm. Gilford is a kind of platonic sucker who has been gilding the palms of three avaricious flappers without any amorous return on his investment. He doesn't want his wife (Keeler) to find out about it, and he orders his lawyer (Bobby Van) to buy and bargain his way out of the mess. It all adds up to a kind of microminiature...
...small part of the Allingham charm is her chariness with detail. Where Sayers gorges the reader with information about Lord Peter's mulish family and elegant tastes, Allingham drops only a few facts per book. In Police at the Funeral, for instance, the reader learns that Mr. Campion loathes and suppresses his Christian name, Rudolph, which makes it all the more astonishing to discover-eleven books later-that he has called his own son Rupert. Gradually, too, as the series progresses, a caste of semiregulars assembles: the policemen Gates and Luke, the trouble-prone Faraday clan, Sister Val. Perhaps...
...disposal during his five-year term as secretary of state, he was able to enforce his oft-stated fondness for doling out jobs and commanding loyalty. "I can smell the meat acookin'," Powell said whenever the subject of state jobs was raised. He also had a certain charm, summed up by a boyhood friend: "Paul was just a big old country boy-he could shake you down and make you like...
...Envoy of Charm. When her husband lost his post as prefect in Brussels, she composed her charms and went to Napoleon. He "placed his beautifully shaped hand on my arm" and she went home with the prefecture of Amiens. Sitting on a sofa next to King William I of The Netherlands, she assiduously promoted the diplomatic career of a son-in-law. She knew Great Men in her time, from the Duke of Wellington to Alexander Hamilton, and she leaves a delicate but firm impression that none of them-kings and emperors included -was quite safe in her company...
...perception, in stacking up details to make a convincing picture of one mad housewife. Tina clarifies the position of the housewife in general, but she is no flat generalization. And for once children are portrayed without any of the usual cuteness: Tina's two girls are devoid of any charm. They are brats pure and simple. Benjamin is slimy and nervous, like a persnickety housewife himself: everything must be just so-the salad, the furniture, the damson plum preserves. Snodgrass' real housewife is suitably hassled and frustrated by the mad world around her, but she meets it head-on: this...