Word: clutching
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...effect of the legitimate stage. "Queen Elizabeth" was the last and most highly developed of this type and since it was smoother and clearer the acting technique could be watched. Without voice or closeups the players had to resort to violent pantomime, grimacing, brow puckering, and the frightened clutch at throat or bosom...
...CLUTCH AND DIFFERENTIAL-George Weller-Random House...
Thus the "clutch" story of an impetuous bridegroom (Would You Marry a College Girl? Yes.) is prefaced with a little monolog about waiting for the delivery of a new automobile. The "differential" story of another young couple (Would You Marry A College Man? No.) begins with factory instructions on breaking in a new car, a theme whose smutty possibilities are as obvious as they are outworn. Some times Weller grinds his gears pretty badly in shifting from one tale to the next; sometimes the transitions are lightly made...
Major weakness of Clutch and Differential is his tendency to ride his theme so hard it becomes burlesque, to cheapen the wit of his stories with sophomoric horseplay...
...book is too crowded with well-to-do eccentrics to be a representative U. S. study. But literary motorists will object most to its pace, and reflect that no nation of murderously fast drivers ever chugged along so safely below the speed limit as do the slow characters of Clutch and Differential...