Word: dronings
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Professor Abbott is perfectly comfortable, perfectly at home on the lecture platform. He seats himself in a swivel chair, places his notes and his elbows on the desk, gives vent to a sigh, perhaps even a puff, and begins. Fifteen minutes contain a dignified, non-irritating drone, dedicated to the fact that Gladstone had gained a reputation as a great minister of finance. Then there may be an interruption. The professor will rub his eyes. He will give assurances that the following story is amusing. The story will consume five minutes. There will be renewed assurances that the story...
This, tersely, is old stuff. And one might settle down for a comfortable evening with familiar things were it not for "Narratage." The feature which imparts novelty to this particular cut-back is, unfortunately, that which, at the same time, makes it insufferable. Mr. Ralph Morgan's mellifluous drone accompanies too, too many scenes. In the childhood shots, it is reminiscent of some unhappy travelogue; in the love sequences it garners those derisive chortles, which are the customary part of "Screen Memories;" in the rest, it flows on, and on and on, incessant, monotonous, wracking a helpless audience...
...said he would get there from Edmonton, Alberta, 2,000 mi. away, "about midnight," but the field manager had not yet snapped on the field floodlights when Harold Gatty, who flew the world with Post two years ago, heard a faint drone from the Northwest. Another minute and Post's manager, standing near pretty little Mrs. Post in her car. shouted: "It has no lights! It must be Wiley!" and the hazy white form of a ship roared about the field, turning to land...
...sharp staccato phrase she tells his countrymen of his accomplishments, of the growth of Italy, and, as he mentions each aspect of the Facist regime, the camera swings off to the drone of Lowell Thomas' voice, to show the actual scenes of these achievements. There are great liners plowing across the ocean, droves of airplanes in faultless formation, spotless dams thrown across huge canyons, and smoke-stacks that dwindle away into the sky. But it in not these sights which arouse wonder; it is the fact that this Mussolini, whose powerful voice keeps coming back, a little hoarser...
...only the subjects. Each professor seems suddenly to have only one very shabby suit of clothes. Each enters the classroom with the same irritating shamble and toils through the day's matter in much the same monotonous drone. There is roast beef in all the Houses for breakfast and for lunch and for dinner, and for a demitasse. There is a very poor movie in all the theatres in town; there is very poor rhum in every bottle in Cambridge; there is a most strident and complaining voice through every fire door in the college. There is the same bland...