Word: guffawing
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When Alexander Legge was Federal Farm Board chairman, he used to stage what he called "Legge shows" throughout the wheat-growing midWest. If at these performances any farmers expected to see chorus girls, hear jazz tunes, guffaw at wisecracks, they were disappointed. It was not that kind of show. Instead Chairman Legge would mount a bare platform and make a speech. His constant theme: Cut wheat acreage by 20%. But when the farmers got home at night, they were more likely to remember Mr. Legge's clenched fists, his red, sweating face, his "hells," and "damns" than his plain...
...crack a joke at their expense. Fog had delayed their ship seven hours. In his official speech of welcome Mayor James John ("Jimmy") Walker, notorious for being late on all occasions, wisecracked: "I concede to you. Sir, the championship which heretofore has been bestowed on me." Hearing the Tammanyites guffaw, President-elect Prestes laughed politely, though he does not speak English. In Brazil, where public greetings are taken seriously and must embody the flower of courtesy, such a "joke" would have been an insult and President-elect Prestes, understanding, might not have laughed...
...Reichstag burst into one vast German guffaw; but Dr. Hugenberg, strong in his basic potency, stood his ground like a magnat, and when silence came again read his speech to the end. He announced that overnight the Nationalist Party had reversed itself, would stand with the Cabinet...
...accomplishment, the imitation of a just-successful hen; Roland gets into terrible trouble because a snake has been put in somebody else's bed-and so on. When Mr. Mulliner is speaking, no one else can open his mouth-or even wants to, except for the occasional, irrepressible guffaw...
...winner, baldish, bespectacled Robert Littell of the Evening Post (.809).* Prognosticating a play's financial luck has but little to do with that synthesis of taste, dogma and analysis which is dramatic criticism. It is a question of audience psychology, of knowing what will make the playgoing mass guffaw, snivel, clap its hands. Thus Critic Littell's victory may have surprised friends who knew that the 1928-29 season had been his first as a daily critic (with the public duty to pronounce on a play's likelihood of "success''). Hitherto he has concerned himself...