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Word: expressions (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
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Usage:

Renato Grassi was not the kind of traveler who heeds the advice of the American Express Co. to carry no more than $50 in cash. A slim, 36-year-old Italian with a weakness for tall brunettes, fast Lancias, and all-night stands at the roulette tables, Grassi liked to have as much as $250,000 worth of francs in his little black briefcase when he took off for weekends at French casinos. The trouble was, Grassi invariably lost-and the cash belonged to the American Express...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: FRANCE: The Cashier & the Con Man | 8/24/1959 | See Source »

Convicted on a forgery charge in his native Italy, Grassi started commuting to Paris in 1955, lived in style and passed himself off as a "director of Fiat." His connections seemed to impress George Allen, the modestly salaried chief cashier of American Express in Paris. Allen, who comes from Philadelphia, was a model of American-in-Paris respectability, living in a plainly furnished apartment, his biggest extravagance a Sunday picnic in Fontainebleau forest with his wife and two little girls, after passing the plate at Sunday morning services at the American Church...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: FRANCE: The Cashier & the Con Man | 8/24/1959 | See Source »

...flashy Grassi asked Allen for a loan of $30,000 for a month, saying it would save him the trouble of bank charges. Allen obliged with a check drawn on the American Express bank in Rome. Punctually at month's end, Grassi repaid it. After a second $30,000 loan, which he also repaid promptly, Grassi had Allen completely gulled. Grassi rapidly obtained three successive "loans" of American Express funds totaling an incredible $670,000, and Allen concealed the transactions...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: FRANCE: The Cashier & the Con Man | 8/24/1959 | See Source »

...money, he was even better at losing it. Last month, in one three-day spree in Monte Carlo, he dropped $490,000. A few days later, at Le Touquet, he lost heavily again, this time ironically playing beside an American businessman on vacation-Ralph Thomas Reed, president of American Express Co. Reed was not the only one who wondered at the recklessness of the mysteriously affluent Italian. A Parisian gossip columnist wrote an item about "a young Italian, Mr. Grassi, who never bets less than one million francs at a time at roulette," and makes the casino manager "shudder...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: FRANCE: The Cashier & the Con Man | 8/24/1959 | See Source »

Another who shuddered, at reading the item, was Cashier Allen. In alarm, he phoned Grassi and asked him to return the money. When Grassi could fork up only $50,000 of it, Allen worried for three weeks, finally confessed to American Express officials, and then to the police. Had Allen given Grassi the money to speculate on promise of a share of the profit? The hapless Allen would only say, "I had no idea he was a gambler . . . He lived at the Georges V Hotel. How could I have any suspicion that he wasn't honest...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: FRANCE: The Cashier & the Con Man | 8/24/1959 | See Source »

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