Word: dumbing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Toby faces a difficult acting problem. He should be charming enough to be loved by Monica but disquieting enough to terrify Baba. The Toby in this performance (Joseph Lee) strikes a compromise somewhere between charm and dumb-foundedness, coming off somewhat like a sad hound. Toby is less of a presence than he could be, making Monica's love look more like pity and Baba's fear only the fear of silence itself...
...Bonn the Secretary had to mollify some outspoken critics of U.S. moves in the post-Afghanistan era. Certain West German officials had privately derided Carter's Olympic boycott as "downright dumb." Chancellor Helmut Schmidt resented not being consulted in advance about this decision. A bare two hours' notice on the day of its announcement, he observed unsmilingly, was "a little late." The West Germans also feared serious setbacks to their international trade if they followed Carter's proscriptions on commercial dealings with Moscow...
...sits there for at least four hours, whether ideas are flowing or not. "You need a door to shut," she says, "although it doesn't necessarily keep anything out." She spends much time reading: "The science-fiction writer had better keep up with current science and avoid dumb mistakes, or the other writers really let you know about it." She now attends fewer science-fiction conclaves and conventions than she once did, and has given up the pipe smoking that made her stand out in the crowds...
...successful and unsuccessful by turns, and although Comedian Carl Reiner is the director, the instinct here is to give most of both credit and blame to Martin. The basic idea is clever: Martin is cast as the loving, beloved adopted son of a family of black sharecroppers. He is dumb as cow-flop and hopeless at foot shufflin' and finger snappin', but he tries hard. When he is ready to go out into the big world and his black mother (Mabel King) tells him that he was adopted, he is horrified: "You mean I'm gonna stay...
Tynan is best when he unreservedly gives his heart away, and Louise Brooks is his ideal recipient. He visits the actress, now seventyish and living in a small Rochester apartment; he finds her arthritic and surrounded by volumes of literary classics. "Most beautiful-but-dumb girls think they are smart, and get away with it, because other people, on the whole, aren't much smarter," she tells him. Smitten with images of Louise's dark, gamy sexuality in such films as Pandora's Box and Prix de Beaute, Tynan is now thoroughly captivated by the frail star...