Word: cliches
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Readers may be disturbed by two weaknesses in this otherwise skillful story: its occasional lapses into stilted novelistic clichés, and its too convenient ending which veils coincidence with the appearance of fatality. But for the most part, Mist on the Waters is as good as a first-rate movie thriller. With somebody like Barry Fitzgerald playing the part of Barty Fingal, Hollywood could have a story to work with...
...trouble with The Leading Lady was not that it preferred glamor to reality but that it never came close to either. It requires a little more than costumes, clichés and a liberal sprinkling of famous names to make a period and a profession seem lustrous; simply calling a bit-player "Maudie" does not make her Maude Adams. The Leading Lady, to be sure, had its moments-thanks largely to such accomplished character actors as Ethel Griffies and William J. Kelly-but there were not enough of them for the play to. run more than one week...
...descriptive talent that can make the heat, the stench, and the occasional beauty of the African jungle almost tangible. Stripped of its pretentious symbolism, its agonized soul-searching, this could have been a good travel book. But the vivid jungle is matted and twined with the perilous Africa cliché, reminiscent of Hollywood's stock treatment: "Well," he muttered, staring up at the constellations, "don't go too deep into Africa. Don't try to grasp her. Don't try to penetrate her. Don't get sucked into the whirlpool. The deeper...
Were the congressional investigations of Communism in government just a political red herring? Harry Truman said they were-in an anomalous use of a cliché much fancied by Communists. Republicans scoffed that the President's accusation was just a political dodge to get his party off an uncomfortable election-year spot. Of course it was a fact that both parties were playing election-year politics...
...beard as frothy as "a zabaglione." The pair of them were eventually put under contract to make a trip round the world for Holiday magazine, and the result, excellently illustrated by Artist Hirschfeld, is one of the funniest books that Perelman has written. Subtitled "Around the World in 80 Clichés," Westward Ha! is both a juicy parody of the average globe-trotter prose and a ferret's-eye view of the international scene...