Word: crooner
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Harry Angel is investigating one such compact. Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro), a dapper gent with long fingernails that could rip your heart out, has hired him to find Johnny Favorite, who hit it big as a crooner before the war, then disappeared, body and soul, welshing on a commitment to Cyphre. The people who knew Favorite -- a junkie physician (Michael Higgins), a blues guitarist (Brownie McGhee), a society girlfriend (Charlotte Rampling) and her father (Stocker Fontelieu) -- share two annoying habits: they won't tell all they know, and they keep turning up dead, in circumstances that implicate Angel...
...tabloid, apparently eager to dismiss the celebrity as a wanton hussy, called him "gender-confused pop star Boy George." This was a clear violation of journalese's "most-cherished tenet": while doing in the rich and famous, never appear to be huffy. One magazine settled for "cross- dressing crooner," and many newspapers temporarily abandoned the hyphenated tradition to label George "flamboyant," a familiar journalese word meaning "kinky" or "one who does not have all of his or her paddles in the water...
...name is Sinatra, and he considers himself the greatest vocalist in the business," remarked the bandleader Harry James, alternately amused and astonished by the young singer he hired in 1939. The crooner turned out to be a shrewd self-appraiser, and what he said about himself 45 years ago still stands. In Sinatra: An American Classic (Random House; 251 pages; $29.95), Music Critic John Rockwell deftly analyzes the Chairman of the Board's technical proficiencies, and his examination of Sinatra recordings of One for My Baby is a nice combination of a scholar's observations...
HOSPITALIZED. Engelbert Humperdinck, 48, British crooner (Release Me, After the Lovin'); for severe fatigue and bronchitis after he collapsed in his dressing room during a six-day engagement at the Westbury (N.Y.) Music Fair; at Massapequa General Hospital, in North Massapequa, N.Y. He was released the following...
Mick Jagger would smile on the Harvard women's water polo team. Over the last four years the aquawomen have struggled and finally proved the crooner's adage that you get what you need...