Word: drum
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Business Machines. Among the new office gadgets displayed in Manhattan's Coliseum: Philco's Transac 52000, the first commercial all-transistor computer (rental fee: $28,000 to $40,000); Thomas Collators Inc.'s completely automatic rotary drum collating machine, which sorts and staples, detects misses or doubles, piles and packs up to 25,000 sheets of paper an hour (price: $9,000); Perk-ette's coffee machine, which spurts a fresh brew at pre-set intervals, thus always has coffee fresh at coffee-break time (installed free on $5-a-day guarantee); Coffee Vending Service...
Financially speaking, of course, Mr. Hammerstein and his friends can't do it again: Flower Drum Song is already sold out solid for its four and a half weeks in Boston, and promises to do correspondingly well in New York. But from the aesthetic stand-point, Oliver Smith's pretty sets, some of Carol Haney's choreography, and a few nice songs and pleasant performances are the only silky spots on a lavishly gilded...
...Flower Drum Song's main trouble does not lie with its Oriental performers; like most Yellow Perils, this one is a put-up job by a group of all-too scrutable Caucasians. --JULIUS NOVICK
...Deei, a part-Egyptian, part-Zulu agent, who specialized in Negroes, Orientals and American Indians). Agent Rivers is finding the white man's burden heavy. Biggest problem: Asians tend to act with rigidity and gliding formalism. To fill the part of Sammy Fong, unofficial mayor of Chinatown, Flower Drum's Casting Director Ed Blum finally had to cross the color line and hire Manhattan Comedian Larry Storch. "The part calls for a sharpie," says Blum, "and the Orientals can't play it. Smoothie, yes; sharpie, no." Otherwise, Blum's cast is out of character only...
Both Suzie and Flower Drum hired the same speech expert, Professor Simon Mitchneck of Columbia, to turn Oriental inflections into speech that is understandable to American audiences. He is currently working with Japan's Miyoshi Umeki and the rest of the cast of Flower Drum, shaving vowels, changing consonants, even breaking Comedian Storch of his New Yorkese. Just about the only time Agent Rivers got off the Oriental beat this season was when Producers Feuer and Martin insisted that they would cast their new musical Whoop-Up only with full-blooded Indians. "I scoured the area," says Rivers...