Word: cracked
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...tense goal-to-goal situations, Plunkett is poised and powerful. Sitting in his modest Chestnut Hill apartment, he's ill-at-ease and soft-spoken. He'll crack a smile about as often as he'll fumble a football--hardly ever...
...envy and resentment among those forced to do business with it. Among them you can number a smalltime diamond dealer (Charles Grodin), who is always being put down for violating its dress code or smoking in the waiting room, and a power-crazed tycoon (Trevor Howard) who wants to crack the vaults just for the hell of it. The third malcontent is an employee (James Mason) who is dying of cancer after 30 years of service, but just before the firm's unbending insurance program would cover his family...
Abetted by Candice Bergen, as a thrill-seeking but good-natured deb, they determine to crack the uncrackable safe. At this point, what looked like just another spoofy heist picture takes on a wayward comic life that is about as refreshing as any adventure movie around these days. The grand plan calls for the orchestration of such oddly diverse elements as hand-painted cockroaches, an enormous piece of chocolate cake and a giant vacuum cleaner. Better still, it requires Grodin to convert himself from a chronically depressed victim into a man of action. That development-as his voice-over narration...
...exuberance, slouch in doorways to show anxiety and uncertainty, and practically pant after a handsome young courtier whose love she fears. "I want to be loved!" Christina complains to a wily minister (Cyril Cusack). "The people love you,"the minister answers. Christina replies: "Send them to my bedroom" -a crack that qualifies her as a sort of 17th century Ann Sheridan...
...hired Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis at $200 for his opener. Toast of the Town (later The Ed Sullivan Show) was gored by critics but cherished by millions of fans; their loyalty kept it on the air until 1971. Sullivan's bashful, stiff-necked, tongue-tied and knuckle-crackingly nervous mannerisms won him as much affection as ridicule. Comedians competed to crack a smile on his stony face; mimics used him as a lab specimen. His malapropisms became legend. "Let's hear it for the Lord's Prayer," he once intoned after Sergio Franchi sang that hymn...