Word: gresham
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Communist practice with an idea of the rule of law, half rediscovered"). But more and more his promises have given way to renewed repression, not only because Moscow and its Polish followers want it that way, but because Gomulka has discovered that a little liberty is a dangerous thing: "Gresham's Law is not true of political coinage - for the customs of a free society, wherever the Poles introduced them, began forthwith to drive Communist methods out . . . Where democratization inside the party was permitted, the organizations speedily fell apart...
...variety shows-animal acts, jugglers, monologu-ists-are dogged reminders that vaudeville is as dead as the day before yesterday. The old troupers are legend now, larger than life in sentimental memories. But the best of them never needed such exaggeration. Carnival Buff William (Nightmare Alley) Gresham's biography, Houdini, The Man Who Walked Through Walls (Holt; $4.50), serves its subject well, simply by telling the story straight. "As the archetype of the hero who could not be fettered or confined," writes Biographer Gresham, "he became the idol of a million boys, a friend of presidents and the entertainer...
...achieving'"this," the dark, sturdy escapist made more than a living. He made himself into an expert swimmer, a master lockpicker, a pioneer aviator, a psychic investigator, and an unfailing expert in the arrogant art of obtaining personal publicity. His greatest illusions and escapes, explains Author Gresham as he gives away the master's secrets, were constructed with the simplicity that is the essence of true genius. They were part fraud and part finely honed athletic skill. Example: When he dived manacled and chained into an icy river, he swam free tense moments later, because the chains were...
...still at it in the fall of 1926, when he let a college boxer test his vaunted toughness by punching him in the belly. Less than ten days later, Harry Houdini, 52, was dead of a ruptured appendix. His grave, in Brooklyn's Machpelah cemetery, writes Gresham, is marked by a marble bust of the great escapist. "It is an elaborate tribute. He designed it himself...
...give him a beating. At the trial of the police chief (on a charge of soliciting a person to commit a felony), Brother Richard Kellam handled the defense. The Kellam-backed commonwealth's attorney did not allow Dunn to take the stand, and Kellam-supported Police Justice Eugene Gresham did not permit Dunn's lawyer to address the court. The chief was acquitted...