Word: hack
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Penny-a-Liner. Dirty, ragged, hideously misprinted, sometimes illustrated with pictures that had nothing to do with the text, the penny-dreadfuls had many of the virtues of naked imagination, all the vices of standardized hack work. Their authors, paid by the line (less than a penny), took care that each scream, each gush of blood, even each sentence, received a line all to itself-and thereby laid the foundation of the clipped, brusque speech of the contemporary thriller. Their immediate fascination and influence were enormous. Charles Dickens' low-life reflected their high-spots, Wilkie Collins refined their eeriness...
...please, but to educate the public; thus, the reader was expected to find a sort of Sermon on the Mount in a discussion of the murder of prostitutes "by mutilation, dismemberment, garrotting, throat-slitting and clubbing." ("I have a small collection of moral remarks," confessed one hack merrily, "all nicely cut & dried, and when I am at a loss to fill my chapter, I stick...
...story originally appeared in the Satevepost and, in many respects, is just an average piece of hack fiction. But it is worked out with sincerity and vigor, and is amenable to movie treatment. Director Hawks gives even the relatively silly episodes with the girl a kind of roughness and candor which make them believable and entertaining. And when Hawks concentrates on men working, or contesting leadership, or merely showing what they are made of, the picture practically blows up with vitality and conviction...
...bite, slap, kick, dance, sing (in Spanish), pull a knife and, of course, exercise her deadlier blandishments. The film's limitations are largely those of its star, though it manages some tension in such rough & tumble scenes as the one where Don José and Garcia (Victor Jory) hack at each other with trowel-sized knives. The story is based on the Prosper Mérimée novel and does not make use of the music from Bizet's opera. It is prettier and more exciting than the opera could ever be without the score-but nothing...
...creative writer; you have a journalistic flair; he is a prosperous hack. ¶ I am beautiful; you have quite good features; she isn't bad-looking, if you like that type...