Word: dourness
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Much of the toughness was picked up from his Scottish immigrant father, James Clydesdale King, who was as dour and granitic as the foggy vale for which he was named. He drove hard bargains with his son, and forced him to keep them. Ever since, Ernest King has driven hard bargains and resolutely kept his promises. Because he made it a point of honor to be fair to subordinates, Sundowner King cannot understand why they seldom warmed to him. Neither can he understand why a taut ship is not automatically a happy ship...
...Britain's great houses is vast and dour Buchanan Castle, near Drymen (rhymes with women), Stirlingshire. Back in 1935 James Graham, Sixth Duke of Montrose, decided that Buchanan cost too much to live in. He had already sold the mountain-famed Ben Lomond-that stood in the castle's backyard. He built himself and his Duchess a cosy, eleven-room house on the castle grounds, leased 60,000 acres of shooting land to a Glasgow businessmen's association, and turned the castle itself into a hotel...
...other episodes. The Cop and the Anthem wisely casts Charles Laughton as a dapper old bum who unsuccessfully tries to get himself locked up in a warm jail for the winter. A burlesqued version of The Ransom of Red Chief presents Fred Allen and Oscar Levant as dour confidence men who, after making the mistake of kidnaping a little monster of a hillbilly boy, finally pay his parents a reward for taking him off their hands. Sample dialogue (strictly not O. Henry as the boy sicks a bear on his terrified captors: "He's a cinnamon bear," says Allen...
...soot-blackened spires of the Old Town and battlements of the ancient castle were brave with banners. Flags of many nations streamed gaily from each two-decker tram. Shop windows glittered with Scottish silver and tartans. Even dour taxi drivers got into the spirit of the thing and gave unsolicited lectures on local points of interest. The sixth Edinburgh International Festival of Music and Drama was in full swing...
...Proletarian" painting, the high-style school of U.S. art in the late '30s, is out of fashion today-but one of the A students of that school who still commands attention is dour Jack Levine, 37. Even abstractionists, today's darlings (whom he sneeringly refers to as "Space Cadets"), respect his work; and conservative as well as advance-guard museums collect it. This fall Levine's paintings will get more attention than ever before: a retrospective show opens this month at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art, and will be seen later at the Colorado Springs...