Word: custards
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...Vote. How little, muses Graves, does today's crude swearer reflect the high polish of his Chinese predecessor. On the other hand, he has also lost the Elizabethan faculty for fairly plastering his "opponent" with a custard-pie onslaught of laborious, invidious obscenities. Moslems still manage this very well, says Graves, but some of their English-speaking contemporaries have grown so dependent on the single epithet "bloody" (probable origin: "by 'r Lady") that they can hardly grasp the meaning of any word without its assistance. As instance, Author Graves quotes two Britons discussing whether any man should...
Given half a chance, the pair of them, with their timing, their teamwork, their contrapuntal growls and purrs, can put any scene across. And now & then, amid large blobs of stage custard, Playwright Behrman obliges with a nice witticism about husbands or Boston. But unhappily there are long stretches in I Know, My Love when there is neither any play on the stage nor any Lunts...
...Continent. One Hellzapoppin road company is still in England; another is touring New Zealand. Both men have invested their huge earnings (they grossed $227,000 in 16 nights in Chicago; $387,000 in 14 days in Toronto) in real estate and in such enterprises as a string of frozen-custard stands on Long Island and an ice-skating rink in California...
...Custard Principle. Ventre hit a deep strain in Spectator readers. But would his philosophy work? Wrote one: "Kick the cat, snap asunder the shanking mashie . . . show resistentia that you will stand no nonsense. But this is bad for the blod pressure . . . Ventre gives no guide in this dilemma." Wrote another: man might still "divide, deceive and sometimes rule. A lawn perishing from drought may be saved by its owner's . . . leaving a valuable book outdoors. By a variation of this principle, the grim persistence of watched pots in not boiling can be harnessed to prevent the ruin...
...Laffmovie is one of a chain of three, the other two being in Baltimore and New York. Since the founding in 1943 the policy has remained pretty constant, "the more custard pies per reel the better." There have been deviations into more sophisticated comedy of the "Topper" type, "but," says the Boston advertising manager, "the kids didn't get the hang of the double entendre," And so, since the giants of the deadpan and the thrown pie are no more, the theater sticks to the oldies. "There are very few good new ones," the Laffmovie's spokesman says sorrowfully...