Word: debunker
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Another duty of the Dean of Freshmen is touring the country's high schools as a salesman for the University. Dean Leighton's circuit includes Illinois, Nebraska and lowa. On these trips he particularly tries to debunk the notion that boys west of the Mississippi don't do well at Harvard and after graduation are no good to the folks at home. Mr. Leighton points out, by way of example, that two members of his class are now police chief and fire commissioner of Tulsa and Oklahoma City...
There are two schools of writing, this shaggy-browed poet tells the class; inspiration and craftsmanship; he then proceeds to debunk the notion, ("a hangover from romanticism") that all writing is the produce of the divine word alone. The artist must create from within, the says, but it can't be done until techniques becomes habit, and devices spring up automatically. Craftsmanship is the key to the successful writer's trade. Only when the apprentice learns the craft and chooses his weapons will his message, no matter how great, be heard. "But no real prose talent is going unpublished...
...Movies is a broad, awed survey of how U.S. movies are produced, distributed and exhibited. Coming: Film Actors (M-G-M), which will prove that, underneath, the boys & girls are really just hardworking, clean-living kids; The Art Director (20th Century-Fox), which will debunk such box-office attractions as earthquakes and moonlit water by disclosing trade tricks of process photography and set construction...
...took lessons for only seven years, still hates to practice and seldom does (says he: "I practice in my head"). His teacher, who was,a close friend of Brahms, took him along on several of Brahms's famed walks in the Vienna woods. Schnabel loves to debunk the pressagent story that Brahms discovered him at his first recital, and praised his genius: "I fully expect to read some day that I played billiards with Mozart." Adds Schnabel, with a burgher's chuckle: "The only thing Brahms ever said to me was 'Are you hungry, boy?' before...
...Paul R. Hawley, tubby medical chief of the Veterans' Administration, loves to tell tall tales (he files his favorites in a little black book, which he carries around with him). An ardent student of military history, he also likes to debunk such heroes as General Custer (TIME, Aug. 18), and to refight old battles (once, toting an armload of Civil War books, he visited Gettysburg and reconstructed the battle so vividly that his account is now the official one taught at the Army War College...