Word: gargantuanism
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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They had used the medical services so enthusiastically (the state paid $258 for the removal of 43 embarrassing warts from one elderly woman's face) that last week the state medical board was introducing a rigid screening of patients in an attempt to reduce the state's gargantuan hospital and drug bill. Meanwhile, the Washington Pension Union, an organization with limitless gall, was calling for even higher pensions for the future...
Lust for Gold (Columbia) is a feeble way to describe this movie's gargantuan appetite for adventure. In 90 minutes it wolfs down an Indian massacre, two murders, a barroom brawl, an earthquake, a fistfight on a cliff top and a mess of hocus-pocus dealing with the whereabouts of a fabulous treasure trove. Leading the sepia-colored scramble for gold are Ida Lupino and Glenn Ford. Kids under twelve may believe in their adventures...
...nights after their television premiere, Olsen & Johnson unveiled their new revue Funzapoppin before 8,700 people in Madison Square Garden. Next morning the gun-shy critics produced mixed notices. "A gargantuan honky-tonk," sniffed the Time's Brooks Atkinson. "Olsen & Johnson would be practically scriptless if the Chinese hadn't invented gunpowder," grumped the Herald Tribune. "A cheerful nightmare," said the World-Telegram. Actually, Olsen and Johnson seem to be criticproof. Funzapoppin's predecessor, Hellzapoppin, was disdained by almost every critic, yet it ran for more than three years on Broadway...
...suggested the repeal of the corporate income tax as the initial step toward this end. "The only fair deal," he went on, "is a fair deal that allows the business man to do his job and reap his reward. I am not half as afraid of the gargantuan business as I am of the gargantuan state. You can quit General Motors but you can't quit a public health plan or compulsory education...
There was more to the argument over high profits than that. To step up production to meet the gargantuan demand, industry had expanded its plants to the tune of $18.7 billion during the year. Much of the expansion had been bought with profits and reserves, because there was a grave shortage of risk capital to finance it. As Jersey Standard's Gene Holman said: "Without our high profits we couldn't have expanded the way we did." The oil industry, which had rolled up the "biggest profits of any industry ($2 billion), was a classic example...