Word: laugh
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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About the year 1560, the people living near Jogjakarta in Java found a strange creature on the beach. It looked like a man, except that it was white. They chained it to a big square stone outside of town where all could watch and laugh at its antics. They called it "the white sea monkey...
...white monkey" chipped away at the stone, glowered at the people, and finally died, still chained. Years later, other white sea monkeys came to Jogjakarta and read what the first one had carved on the rock. In Latin he had written : "Laugh at your own stupidity, but do not laugh at the misfortunes of a poor man." In French, Italian and Dutch he had repeated (soon after Copernicus and before Galileo) a sentence so as to form a circle: "So moves the world...
Newcomer Betsy Drake seems to have studied, but not learned, the tricks and inflections of the early Hepburn. Her exaggerated grimaces supply only one solid laugh-when Hero Grant mimics them cruelly and accurately. In the past, Gary Grant has shown a talent for quietly underplaying comedy. In this picture, he has trouble finding comedy to play...
...couple of Moss Hart's cast of caricatures bore a striking resemblance to Billy and wife Eleanor Holm; Billy simmered for a few days, then went back for a second look. This time, he reported with satisfaction, the capacity audience wasn't finding nearly so much to laugh at. "Opening night yaks were being greeted by yawns." Billy's diagnosis: "On opening night, the wise-guy audience laughed fit to bust, either because it was hep to Hart's lilliputian libels, or because it wanted the fellow in the next seat to think...
...enraptured to its answer, mutter something about "seeing to it", ask the attendant mother if the little dear has been a good child during the year, and finally give it a funny book. Unfortunately the funny books ran out long ago, so all Heath can offer is a cheery laugh and a pat on the back...