Word: genteelism
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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This total exposure of genteel lust is an invitation from Mr. Noel Coward to step into his parlor. Once enmeshed in that strategically appointed web, the spectator is enticed by sheer wit to rest his repressions as the master's charming child-adults parade their riotously adulterous lives. The Blithe Spirit Private Lives formula is only slightly varied, but the cracks are fresh and strictly bon ton. Here are no new ideas, no thought, no stimulation--unless concurrent mistresses is your idea of a good time. Dear Noel's world, artfully constructed of gold cloth and pastel pasteboard, contains...
...their eyes never shifted from the main chance. Long before U.S. merchants went in for advertising stunts, Mitsui stores gave away paper umbrellas bearing the three-barred family crest and news of bargains. Their Tokyo store had a fuddy-duddy spaciousness, a time-ignoring air and an aura of genteel prosperity not unlike John Wanamaker's in Philadelphia...
...Glass Menagerie. Touching, tragicomic picture of a shabby-genteel family, with Laurette Taylor superb as the mother (TIME, April...
...Explosive Teens. A certain violence in the matter of defining Uncle Alfred became usual among the young during the years just before and during World War I. Uncle Alfred's Edwardian coziness aroused derision, his comfortable income insulted equity, his genteel tradition excited rage. In June 1914 a little magazine called BLAST appeared (long ahead of ¥2) in London, saying: "BLAST years 1837 to 1900; curse abysmal inexcusable middle class . . . BLAST their weeping whiskers. . . ." This tone continued for 30-odd years to reverberate at one extreme of the little magazine gamut. But the violence was also disciplined...
Like the loyal Westchester and Long Island commuters who would not think of boarding their homebound trains without it, the old (112 years) New York Sun dresses conservatively, does its huffing & puffing in genteel tones, and ordinarily abhors the idea of making a scene. It seldom surprises its small (circ. 294,000) clientele, many of whom consider the independent Democratic New York Times unforgivably radical (the Times supported Roosevelt...