Word: gangsterisms
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Untiring, acid-tongued Rudolph Halley, the committee's chief counsel and inquisitor, began digging into the ex-mayor's past. There was O'Dwyer's story that his only business with Gangster Frank Costello had been a visit to Costello's apartment in 1942 in the course of an investigation O'Dwyer was conducting as an Army officer. Why did the leader of Tammany Hall and other important New York political figures happen to be there at the same time? O'Dwyer had no idea-it was just coincidence...
Last week Juan Peron showed the world that the totalitarianism in Argentina, however popular with his voters, can take the same form as totalitarianism anywhere, from Mussolini's Italy to Stalin's Russia. With gangster violence and drumhead judgment, his government struck another blow at a great newspaper, La Prensa, that dared to print news unfavorable to his regime. His police hounded and arrested two U.S. correspondents. If there had been any hope of a free press in Argentina, it lay shattered by the work of a night...
Last week a wave of shock ads ("No one under 16 will be admitted") ushered the claptrap into Manhattan. New York critics brushed the picture off with amused disdain. Whether taken as an inept counterfeit of Hollywood gangster movies or a witless parody, No Orchids is so ludicrous that its thugs' thinly disguised British accents seem minor imperfections...
...that manages to keep suspense high through the full two hours. New twists like the undertaker who is kept busy full time interring ice-pick murder victims, and the disinterment of these same good people by the steamshovelful, help to replace the sirens-and-shooting histrionics of grade B gangster pictures. There is only one fisticuffs brawl, and Bogart as D.A. properly lets one of his assistants go through the motions...
Safety in the Storeroom. The amateur psychologists were far from reliable at first. When they ran I.Q. tests on their fellow cons, they deliberately held the scores down to make their own I.Q.s look better by comparison. Soon they were showing the objectivity of professionals. When Punch, the gangster, gave a test to Al Capone,† he told the sulking big shot: "You didn't do so good last time, Al, so we gotta run it again. I swear to hell I don't see how you get nowhere with a I.Q. like that...