Word: laughter
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Polite Applause. As he read, many of the 50,000 gathered in front of the monument seemed hardly to be listening. Firecrackers popped from the edges of the Fourth of July crowd. Sudden bursts of laughter and applause, inspired by crowd antics that had nothing to do with the President's words, rose up. Harry Truman ignored the noise and plodded on, making no-attempt at oratory, never gesturing, rarely raising his eyes from his brown leather notebook. He sought to establish a historical precedent for his limited-war policy: "Our aims in Korea are just as clear...
...Laughter and games, with art occasional murder, continued until a Dade County grand jury and the Kefauver Committee turned over a few logs and gave the public a quick view of the denizens that scurried for other cover. Governor Warren, looking and sounding outraged, took quick action: he fired a handful of sheriffs and constables (including Dade County's wealthy Sheriff Jimmy Sullivan). The quizzing went on and the governor saw another log overturned, right on the Statehouse lawn. Out scurried one of the governor's old friends, William Johnston, big-shot Miami and Chicago race-track operator...
...James Grover Thurber, Doctor of Humane Letters," intoned the president of Williams College, "cartoonist, playwright, foremost humorist of our day and nation, he has brought to a troubled America the priceless gift of laughter...
...seem to be in it. Then one day he told his fans the story of a legendary outlaw who had killed a tiger by slamming it against a rock. "That mountain cat was tough," grinned Kan, "but no match for that rock." His audience rocked and rolled with laughter, for in Chinese the word for cat sounds very much like Mao (as in Mao Tse-tung) and the word for rock is shek, as in Chiang Kaishek. The old storyteller was plainly back in form again. But the tiger of Peking was not amused...
Midwest Hayride (Sat. 9 p.m., NBCTV) originates in Cincinnati and is billed as "an hour of songs, fun and laughter." The songs are full of hillbilly yips and cowboy yodels; the fun is provided by a backwoods M.C. with a burlesque approach; the laughter comes from mock titles like If I Can Get Through the Mattress I'll Meet You in the Spring. On the credit side: some spirited square dancing...