Word: genteelism
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...audience . . . though few" to which the poet Milton addressed his work. It will very likely hit the mark. If Playwrights Ryerson & Clements haven't invented a single thing, neither have they missed a single trick: they even remember to wedge the madam of a bordello into a frightfully genteel tea party. And though the authors are never witty, they have an uncanny sense of what will get a laugh; the secret being that it has always gotten one before...
...John Quincy Adams, who died at 80 as a Congressman, had an eye for the female form. (Excerpts from his diary: Miss Frazier "has what is called a genteel shape"; Miss Cazneau "has nothing in her person to recommend her but a very good shape. . . . Mrs. Jones . . . exhibited an arm . . . which might fire the imagination of a sensual voluptuary...
...movies richest in spirit and vitality came from Italy. By comparison, even the best British films were academic and genteel (Britain's best was, significantly, an adaptation of a literary classic). French films in general were ultra-civilized but low in vigor. Russia had all but ceased to exist as a source of movie interest, except to Russophiles; Germany was just beginning to stir...
...Streetcar Named Desire* shows a Southern neurotic on the last lap of a downhill journey. Massed behind Blanche Du Bois are the genteel decay of her small-town forebears, the sudden suicide of her homosexual husband, the soiled annals of her nymphomaniac whoring, the loss of her reputation, her job and her home. Unable to face the truth, she has fashioned a dream world in which she is highbred, sought after and straitlaced. Her dream is her main luggage when she arrives destitute in New Orleans to "visit" her sister Stella and Stella's roughneck Polish-American husband Stanley...
...classic about rival Scottish shepherds and their dogs. Those who remember the glorious old rip of a character actor (Music Hall Veteran Will Fyffe) and the glorious black villain of a dog in the first version (the British To the Victor, 1938) will find the new picture comparatively genteel. But its very best audience, after all, has a short memory...