Word: dourness
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...dashed off impetuous watercolors for pleasure, but turned a cool New Englander's eye to his investigations of famous men. His first portrait was of the late E. E. Cummings as a baby, and his later works ranged from John D. Rockefeller Jr. to Herbert Hoover and a dour, purse-mouthed Calvin Coolidge, which now hangs in the White House Green Room. Roared Oliver Wendell Holmes, on seeing his own leonine likeness: "That is not I, but perhaps it is just as well that people should think it is. How did the damned little cuss...
Last year's spectacle, in the era of the bunny ball, was dour Roger Maris grimly slugging 61 home runs over assorted fences to break Babe Ruth's 34-year-old record. The day seemed not far off when bleacher fans would wear the gloves and ballplayers would drink the beer. But this year, excitement suddenly came back to baseball-at least in ballparks where a coil-spring, 30-year-old shortstop named Maury Wills was playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers. In 161 games, with two games to go, Wills stole an even 100 bases, shattering...
Most Frenchmen would be delighted to have Brigitte Bardot as a neighbor, but dour fellow farmers in Orne, west of Paris, remain faithful to the stern old cult that holds: "Grazing and tilling are the two breasts of France." They call BB a cumulard, or land-grabber, and bewail the fact that in recent years the actress and 37 other wealthy city slickers−among them Movie ActorJean Gabin−have all staked out exurbanite estates in Orne. This has inflated land values (current price: up to $900 an acre) and displaced tenant farmers, who complain that they...
...Malvolio, Thom Babe exhibits control far beyond refusing "cakes and ale." Dour and stern at the start, he convinces us that he has heard no bells at midnight; and so, when he breaks into smiles and puts on yellow stockings, the joke succeeds superbly...
Harry Smith's Puck, by contrast, is a curiously dour figure. An extremely active and athletic Puck, he nonetheless refuses to enjoy himself; "Lord, what fools these mortals be" comes out as a hoarse shrick of despair. He is a virtuoso, but he as not Puck. Yet with the help of Barbara Channing's costume (all her costumes are delightful) and Gregory Levin's music he performs some bewitching dances. I wish I could say as much of the fairies (one of them, oddly enough, is missing), who dance capably enough but who sadly jar the harmony of court-yard...