Word: doyen
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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What nettled the doyen of British critics most was a performance of Rossini's Semiramide Overture by the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir John Barbirolli. "No really musical person," groused Newman, "would leave his comfortable home . . . specifically to hear this . . . But bring, at great expense, a German orchestra all the way from Berlin to play this negligible bit of Italian music in the capital of Scotland, and an English conductor all the way from Manchester to conduct it, and apparently it becomes, by some magical transformation . . . a 'festival' work and we trudge all the way to Edinburgh...
Motley Hollywood society tends to split clannishly along party lines (the kind of parties they go to, not the kind they belong to). There is the right little tight little English huddle, typified by their doyen, C. Aubrey Smith. They drink tea, have garden parties and play cricket. There are the tumbler-tilting Celts of Jimmy Cagney, Pat O'Brien. There is the racy crowd around Bing Crosby, the young blades of whom Mickey Rooney and Jackie Cooper are gleaming Excaliburs...