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Word: drollness (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
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Brady's humor ranges from jolly quips to droll deadpan. Shortly before the shooting, he was the guest at one of Washington's institutionalized breakfasts with reporters. Instead of the light banter and gentle questions that tend to open such discussions, he was immediately slung a sharp query on conflicts within the Administration. After a pause he responded with perfect poker face: "Where has foreplay gone?" At last month's Gridiron Club dinner, an event that features journalists performing parodies of politicians, a Brady impersonator lampooned the report that Nancy Reagan had opposed his appointment because he was not "good...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Caught in the Line of Fire | 4/13/1981 | See Source »

...played by a black, and a Marlene Dietrich who is downright frumpy. A medal of merit should be struck for Zoë Wanamaker; as the prostitute pal of Piaf's who later achieves smug respectability, she is a perfect foil for Lapotaire, and their scenes together are wickedly droll...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Theater: Lucifer's Toy | 2/16/1981 | See Source »

When he launches into one of his droll, deadpan stories, Brady's Buddha-like face tries to conceal an impish grin, with all the success of a novice poker player hiding a royal flush. He relishes answering questions by formulating quotable one-liners and piling adjectives upon metaphors. Occasionally, when he crosses the line from irrepressibility to irreverence, Brady gets into trouble. Once, aboard the campaign plane as it flew over a Louisiana forest fire, he gleefully shouted: "Killer trees! Killer trees!" The reference to Reagan's campaign gaffe about the contribution of trees to air pollution grounded...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Affable Bear: White House Press Secretary James Brady | 1/19/1981 | See Source »

...comedy. The viewer is to find the battle of a snake and a mongoose reprehensible, but applaud the climactic spectacle of two brawling men making hamburger out of each other's bodies. It says something about the American body aesthetic that Eastwood's previous picture, the innocently droll Bronco Billy, failed at the box office while Philo and Clyde, the Ape Man and the Ape, have moviegoers queuing and cheering...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Cinema: Comedy: Big Bucks, Few Yuks | 1/12/1981 | See Source »

Jean Kerr's comic touch is slightly anesthetized this time out, but she has not lost it. She couldn't. That would be out of character for the author of Mary, Mary and the droll chronicler of suburban domesticity who regaled us with Please Don't Eat the Daisies and The Snake Has All the Lines. Trust her to keep a civilized, witty tongue in her head whatever her characters' antics. Lunch Hour is a tale of extramarital hanky-panky without the id. Oliver (Sam Waterston) and Nora (Susan Kellermann) have rented the upper half...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Theater: Sin and Smog | 11/24/1980 | See Source »

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