Word: fustianeer
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Following the death of President Kennedy, political humor all but ceased to be a genre of show business, and long after candidates were back on the stump and fustian had returned to the air, comedians were still relatively silent. Mort Sahl was practically the third nominee in 1960 (TIME Cover, Aug. 15, 1960), but last spring and summer neither he nor any other comic made a significant bid for new stature in the field. Yet now that the actual campaign has begun, the nation's comedians have felt the call to duty, and they seem to be ready...
...born of relief at the passing away of the splendor and pomp of Versailles and Louis XIV. Aristocrats yearned to lay aside their powdered wigs and play peasant. Marie-Antoinette's fake hamlet in the Trianon park was a doll's house for kings in fustian and queens in dirndls. Watteau and Boucher drew members of the nobility in shepherds' clothing. But aristocracy saw poverty as happy simplicity, not as a wretched problem. Came the French Revolution of 1789, and the wistful sound in the sea shell was no longer heard...
...sanguinary shudder-show that suffers from a split personality. It was written by Robert Bloch (Psycho), but screams for the sure hand of Hitchcock; it aspires to the Grand Guignol of Baby Jane, but falls short of being droll. Yet despite foolish dialogue, blunt direction, and a fustian plot, there are moments of breath-stopping terror as the heads roll, at times almost literally...
Researcher & Freedman. All this fustian unfortunately belies the actual writer inside-a hardworking, competent journeyman whose dedication to his profession is genuine. A Child Is Waiting is an original Abby Mann screenplay (actually based on an Abby Mann TV play) about retarded children. When Paramount Pictures insisted on using Hollywood kid actors instead of retarded children themselves, Mann emptied his bank account to buy back the option to the script. He wanted real retarded children to show how close to normal they are, or seem...
...Lord of Misrule has proclaimed the onset of midsummer madness at Eliot House, and a lovelier holiday feast-time never was. The great hall is filled with music, fustian, courtiers on carpet consideration, ladies with damask cheeks, and a fool in motley. This is a fine matter indeed for a May evening...