Word: gangsters
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...desire for possession, the ones who murder for money and kill for love, are the much-drooled-over "little people," the men and women who sell insurance and wait on tables. They are tough, and completely amoral, possessing an intentness and a capacity for brutality of which even the gangster is hardly capable. (In a Chandler or Cain story, the gangster is always sophisticated and generally weak.) Right now these men "constitute the ragged edge of literature," as Scott Fitzgerald said of Oscar Wilde, but at least they'll bear watching...
While the U.N. has been pondering the question whether Francisco Franco is or is not a gangster (see INTERNATIONAL), the Generalissimo has been trying in various ways to prove he is no such thing. In Madrid last week, with Franco's broad-minded consent, a book of memoirs by Carlton J. H. Hayes, U.S. Ambassador to Spain from 1942 to the end of 1944, was published in Spanish translation...
...pious Spain, and that Franco's regime was not as bad as friends of Russia made out. Much of his comment was distinctly unflattering to Franco, however, and he insisted that his text be strictly followed in the translation. It was, except for the circumlocution of one word, "gangster" (which Hayes used in referring to the Falange). The Spanish publishers said there was no Spanish equivalent of "gangster...
That was true. The good old Spanish word bandido, meaning bandit, is not quite the same thing. Mexicans have imported the word "gangster," unchanged, into their colloquial speech. The Spanish might do the same; but they are more conservative, linguistically, and anyway this hardly seemed a good time...
...picture involves: 1) a good deal of elaborate gangster talk, perhaps a trifle too redolent of dictionaries of cant; 2) a conscientious coverage of the key spots of the period (Chicago, Miami, Manhattan, Saratoga); 3) some appealing performances, notably those of Scott as the gambler, Newcomer Paige as his neatly pneumatic girl friend, and Harry Lewis as his rather clinically masochistic Man Friday...