Word: gagged
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
What the boys at 20th Century Fox have done is the old familiar gag of buying the screen rights to a famous novel paying the author enough so he'll keep his hands off and then making a movie, ignoring the book as far as possible...
...saves the policy, captures the villain, gets the girl (Rhonda Fleming). Conclusion: as the grateful townsfolk gather around and promise to erect a statue of the hero in the public square, Hope strikes a statuesque attitude, suddenly finds himself occupied by a passing flock of pigeons. Best spot gag: Hope saunters over to a small boy who is playing the piano at a Missouri wingding, pats his head, gently inquires, "What's your name, son?" The boy looks up, peering uncertainly through thick glasses. "Harry Truman," he says...
...would take an inspired director and a truly brilliant production to make something satisfactory out of The Adventures of King Pausole. Albert Willemetz's libretto, based on a novel by Pierre Louys, is an incoherent and frequently boring farce, moving from one extended gag to the next within a ridiculous plot. The pre-occupation with sex makes even the usual Hasty Pudding obsession seem mild, while the amours of various hermaphroditic characters is embarrassingly unfunny. The play's tasteless broadness clashes incongruously with Arthur Honegger's witty and sophisticated score which is its only saving grace...
Thanks for printing the article [Feb. 23] on the man who is probably America's greatest living artist-Thomas Hart Benton. Let others relegate him to the cellars; time will vindicate him. Eventually the world will gag on the "hysterical subjectivism" of the abstract expressionist paintslingers...
Half fact and half fancy, the old gag is not really funny-not to wrestlers, at any rate. Out on the grunt-and-groan circuit the oldtimers are still working because the old act is still packing them in. Flabby characters who once had the lean, handsome muscle of the stock-company hero now fill in nicely as villains. And week after week, in more than 300 arenas across the country, the good guys tangle with the bad guys in the stylized, make-believe mayhem that has made professional wrestling one of the most prosperous trades in show business. Says...