Word: duds
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Mother was a coldly sadistic disciplinarian. Father was a well-intentioned fuddy-dud. Except for the fact that Father was also a judge, the story sounds like the childhood of thousands of people who end up in psychiatrists' offices. But Bill Sands ended up not on a couch but on "the Shelf"-jailbird slang for the solitary-confinement cells at San Quentin prison. Before he was 21, Sands was serving time on three convictions for armed robbery, with sentences in each of from one year to life, and had won a reputation as a con so "solid" that...
Last week "Frau Professor" Wallmann's 127th production, a three-act spectacular, Clitennestra, by Italian Composer Ildebrando Pizzetti, had its world premiere at Milan's La Scala. Musically, the work was something of a dud-somber, repetitive, unnecessarily difficult to sing. But as exciting theater, the bloodthirsty Agamemnon legend is hard to beat, and Wallmann did not try: instead she moved her chorus in a plastic combination of Greek tragedy and modern ballet, guided Star Soprano Clara Petrella in a performance of icy majesty, and won unanimous critical acclaim for what Milan's Corriere d'Informazione...
...convention itself was a dud. The hall, with a seating capacity of some 7,500, was less than half filled. Elijah Muhammad could hardly be seen behind the ranks of his bodyguards as he delivered a wheezy, two-hour harangue highlighted by a warning to would-be assassins that "to seek to snuff out the life of Elijah Muhammad is to invite doom." On the convention's second day, Elijah failed to appear. The explanation: his asthma had kicked up again...
Since plot is nought, Ball relies on Buddy Hackett for a nightlong transfusion of comic relief. He can fire a salvo of laughter with the whites of his eyes, and step on a dud line so that it explodes, but he has to work so hard to be playful that it kills the fun. Apart from Hackett, only Luba Lisa comes out of this Coney Island carnage with talent and personality arrestingly intact. Moving like a sexy-hexy wind-up doll, with the voice of a Jewish Chatty Cathy and the body of Salome, she gives the impression of being...
...dawn broke, a tardy Vietnamese search group set off in chase, but the rebels were nowhere to be found. It remained only to clear the debris from Bienhoa's strip-blackened hulks of the wrecked planes, the bodies of the dead from the barracks, and the few dud mortar shells that had fallen without exploding. Ironically, they bore the marking "Made in USA, 1944" and were apparently part of the booty captured by the Communists when the French surrendered...