Word: gammon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...that it has repeatedly made attempts to shoot the planes down over Eastern Europe, North Korea and the Middle East with surface-to-air missiles. They have never made a single kill, but that could change. Entering the Soviet arms inventory is a new SAM called Gammon that the U.S. Air Force estimates has the capability of catching up with an SR-71. A major concern of U.S. defense authorities: if the Gammon is shipped to Havana, it could be bye-bye, Blackbird, over Cuba...
Behind her husband's back, the wife (Olympia Dukakis) wants to unload the house and property to a smarmy, carnally inclined real estate operator and then flee with the land shark to the cultural dreamland of Europe. The husband (James Gammon), a complicated victim of drink, anger and despondency, wants to shed the property and escape to Mexico alone...
...throw of dice-white going one way, black the other. When a player has collected all of his counters on his "home" points, he can begin to "bear off" (remove his pieces); the first to remove all his pieces wins. He is awarded a single game, a double game ("gammon") or a triple game ("backgammon"), depending upon the position of his opponent's counters at the end of the game...
...years he has won over $40,000 in tournament prizes-and far more in private games. The intrusion of these professional players into what before Obolensky's promotion was strictly a genteel, upper-crust diversion has proven upsetting to some members of the old-school backgammon establishment. "Gammon is supposed to be fun," says Lewis Deyong, a London businessman who is one of the world's top-ranked players. "But with all these bridge types in the game it has become kind of a war of nerves." One common complaint is that the bridge players take too long...
Becky Tippens as Nell, and especially Paul Kleinman as Nagg do fine caricatures of senile old people. The only weak member of the cast is Montague Gammon as Clov. In general his Clov expresses only a whining weariness with everything about his life. However (and here again is the difficulty with acting Beckett) whining weariness can grate on an audience unless it manages to be expressive of meaning beyond sheer weariness. Gammon is not quite able to convey this, and as a result his characterization occasionally becomes tiresome...