Word: garish
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...rushes in scented, scintillating Cousin Cedric, the new heir from Canada, to charm Lady Montdore off the shelf. A face lifting, some rigorous massage and the trick of pronouncing the word "brush" before entering the drawing room (it fixes her smile) convert her Edwardian pomp into a garish girlishness. Cedric completes his round of conquests by capturing Polly's husband, who has lost his interest in women anyway, and whisking him and Lady Montdore off to a gay Paris holiday. "So here we are, my darling," chortles Cedric to an old friend, "having lovely cake and eating...
...unsuspecting Jack Campbell walked into the city room in the garish green Moorish castle that houses the Her-Ex, Red Nichols' band struck up Happy Birthday, and the staff presented the boss with a ten-foot bull whip and a wristwatch. As he took them, tears rolled down the grizzled cheeks of hard-boiled Jack Campbell. Before long, more than tears was flowing: friends had sent over a supply of liquor. By the time the gang got through a fancy buffet lunch (courtesy of the Southern Pacific), a woman sword swallower had dropped in from a circus to swallow...
Warming Up. By 7 p.m. the sidewalk in front of Broadway's garish old Harem club, redecorated and renamed "Bop City," was jammed. Inside, the 40 musicians of Artie's new symphony orchestra were warming up, and so was the tight-packed, sweltering crowd. When the musicians were all tuned up, the master of ceremonies solemnly announced "Mr. Artie Shaw." Artie threaded his way through the orchestra with the nervous pace of a Toscanini...
...into Webster Lake, Minn., because she thought he had tipped off the cops to one of their hideouts. She had George ("Shotgun George") Zeigler murdered in Cicero, Ill., Al Capone's old stamping ground, because he was losing his mind and getting talkative. From the Barkers' overstuffed, garish headquarters in Tulsa, she engineered her boys' forays right down to the detail maps for the getaway, and she made the Barker-Karpis mob the terror of the Midwest...
...Michael & the Zoot-Suits. Ash Wednesday Eve I drove through the most devastated streets of Munich, through rubble lanes barely wide enough for a car to pass, to a factory standing in darkness. We climbed a rickety outside stairs to a second-floor door that opened into a garish six-room apartment, slyly constructed by the factory owner in violation of housing laws. Our monocled host greeted us with tipsy cheeriness as his guests oohed and aahed over his gay shirt pasted with cutouts of Esquire girls. Inside the rooms were assembled, in monstrous taste, old tapestries, carved Italian statues...