Word: familiar
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...seem, as a nation, to have lost the capacity to generalize and the instinct to imagine. Our newspapers are not sensations, in that they do not deal in the unexpected. All is anteriorly familiar to the alert for our managing editors never print really important news until someone has shown them that it is important and our minds are already prepared for the impact. The American breed of journalism is the tamest in the world, for it never carries on the exciting warfare of principle, it is never inflamed by the ardor of a great cause. Mr. G. K. Chesterton...
...fact that Sidney Howard, the author, made no serious attempt to sweep his audience off its feet. The violent emotions of fear, hate, and rage, that Harvard's eminent Dr. Cannon has so well described are permitted to lie dormant. Effects are obtained by the presentation of agreeable and familiar types, involved in situations which bring out character and comedy...
...since he had just been ordered to watch every ship closely, he hailed her. "We're bound for Albany," the skipper replied. "We can't stop in this tide." The inspector noted the name on her bow, Texas Ranger. He recognized her cut and markings as familiar, let her go through...
...Jules Fabian (Clark Gable), whose plane is blown to sea by a cyclone, forced down by lack of fuel, but Riviere (John Barrymore), the general manager of the air lines, who has to order Mme Fabian (Helen Hayes) to leave his office, rebuke his subordinate Robineau for being too familiar with pilots, send the European mail out into a storm, accuse his bravest pilot of cowardice to steel...
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...