Word: contortionistic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Must a headmaster be a contortionist, or is "Big Dick" Richards an exception? TIME does not specify, but the description (Aug. 10) is vivid: "Throwing his leg over the arm of his chair and scratching the back of his head...
...popular preference for acrobatics instead of music that started Mr. Ringling, youngest of seven Ringling Bros.* on his career as circus-man. Back in the late '70s, the brothers organized a concert troupe, discovered that the addition first of a contortionist, later of a trapeze act, materially increased box office business. Then came a menagerie in the shape of one hyena, to the laughter of which was later added the roar of a lion and the leaps of a kangaroo. It was not until he had been for several seasons a circus man that Mr. Ringling even saw an elephant...
There was always a trick in Houdini's more startling performances, something like a false bottom or a split ring. It seemed perfectly legitimate, because the public goes to see a contortionist to be amusingly deceived. There was a trick in the Littleton release of Sinclair, too, only when the verdict was announced, the public did not seem amused...
Toto, who weighs 118 pounds and can enclose himself in a two foot cube, is generally thought to be double-jointed. Disparaging this rumor, Toto said, "There is no such thing as being double-jointed. Every trick I perform is made possible through practice. Houdini was not a contortionist; he was a trickster. Each of his acts were done by subtility, and not by muscular coordination. Anyone can double himself into a small space if he will only practice...
Barney Barnato. Solomon ("Solly") Joel's re-emergence into the news revived interest in his dare-devil uncle, the late famed Barney Barnato, ne Isaacs, one-time Jewish peddler and contortionist on the streets of London, founder of the fabulous diamond fortune of the Joel and Barnato families which now totals at least $100,000,000. Young Barney drifted out to South Africa in the '70s when individual diggers spaded the surface soil and "panned" it for diamonds, each man with his own teetering sieve. Since "diamond earth" occurs in huge cones pointing downward, the diggers soon found...