Word: chichiness
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...with a cultivated zaniness and a woolly collection of characters that faintly echo the bite of bigger wits now departed from the TV scene. There is Charles Vichysoisse, the leering Continental Crooner, perpetually at odds with his pianist, his white gloves and an undisciplined audience at Club Chichi. With rapid-fire changes, Soupy may become Wyatt Burp, the craven, belch-prone sheriff, or Calypso King Harry Bella, a wild-eyed, mop-domed South American who rolls drunks for a living...
...time. Unlike most, he devoted himself from the start strictly to politics rather than other topical matters, praising democrats and making fun of strongmen. During the 1952 Panamanian elections he made his professional breakthrough with a glowing ditty about a democrat of sorts, the late President Jose Antonio ("Chichi") Remon. The lyrics, shunning excess modesty, called Remon "the saviour of Panama"; Remon used it as a campaign jingle, and after he won the election sent Kontiki a check for $250. For any rising young calypso singer, the next step was clear. Then only 16, Kontiki strolled into a local ginmill...
Soviet emissaries lead him into a web of indiscretion with their caviar, theater tickets, and Paris dresses for his wife. And there is also the Burgess counterpart of this story-Kevin Chalmers-whose chichi accent is cruelly transcribed: "I'd just had about four gallons of a positively toxic firedamp called a Gibson ..." Chalmers is not only a drunk who has been kicked out of the British embassy in Washington (as was Burgess), but a pervert and a brawler. Chance, security officers, and their own folly put him and Gleave in the same boat, headed for anonymity and dishonor...
...guest at a chichi Hollywood hotel stood blinking one recent day at a scratchy note that had just been shoved underneath the door of his suite. "Please don't use the bathroom in the mornings." it read. "You are disturbing the world's greatest actress." He asked the manager what the message meant. It meant, he was informed, that Italy's Anna Magnani had come to Hollywood...
...Alain is the famous proprietor of Paris' most chichi beauty salon, a bewildering institution where the elegant clientele has its hair dried in battalion formation, and even the elevator boy speaks English. As Alain, in a ruffled shirt, Fernandel minces convincingly through a parade of slapstick situations, slathering cold cream on a dowager's jowls, roguishly examining a shapely leg, fawning over the telephone...