Word: detracted
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Alded and abetted by Ethel Merman, whose singing is almost as bad as Cantor's, the beauteous Sally Eilers, and stooge Parkyakarkus, Eddie's latest certainly affords your ticket's worth of amusement. The utter impossibility of the last fifteen minutes of trick photography does not detract from its being darn funny and surprisingly breath-taking...
...sublime their husbands were, for not all relicts of the great write books about their husbands. When they do, the experiment often turns out to be a flop. A more dangerously intimate observer than even a valet, a wife with the best will in the world is likely to detract more than she adds to a man's reputation. But now & again, in spite of its stained-glass windows, a widow's memorial lets in an occasional shaft of light on the human figure within. Like Frieda Lawrence's book on her late great husband...
Here is surely God's plenty for the biographer. Mr. Thompson has given us a good selection of the old stories about Count Rumford and has added some new ones which were worth telling. But his facetiousness and his habit of using Shaksperian tags on every possible occasion detract from the effect which the stories would have had if told in a less decorated manner. The common reader, for whom this book was obviously intended, need not be frightened by the semi-scholarly appearance of the book (bibliography, scattered footnotes, though no index). He may even find himself wishing...
...Ross Alexander, as the lovers bemused by his potions; the spectacle of Joe E. Brown cracking lichee nuts in a manner derived from Once in a Lifetime, as he impersonates Flute, the bellows-mender; and the over-energetic jabberings of James Cagncy as Bottom, the weaver, effectively combine to detract from the real merits of the production. Omitting much of the superb poetry which is the play's chief virtue, the screen version still contrives to run too long (2½ hr.). Nonetheless, by grace of Hal Mohr's magnificent photography, which makes the backgrounds far more effective...
...appear in his discussion of Dryden's "Annus Mirabilis," and though they posses a universal validity, they do not apply, with any exactness, to Day Lewis, for that poet has worked them into his verses in such a way that they do not stand out as novel words which detract therefore, from the meaning of a passage as a whole...