Word: lordly
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Follett has assembled quite a quirky cast of characters to inhabit his story. The Clipper list includes: Lord Oxenford, a British fascist fleeing arrest with his family; Carl Hartmann, a distinguished Jewish physicist escaping from the Nazis; Harry Marks, a bold and debonair jewel thief one step ahead of the authorities; Diana Lovesy, a bored and buxom housewife seeking adventure in America; and Tom Luther, a dangerous man with a dark mission (or is it vice versa...
...even replicates the tremor in her voice with dashes and sentence fragments. An odd bird Hepburn be, but then so is Rose Sayer pouring gin over the side of the African Queen. And Jo March sliding down a banister. And Susan Vance singing to a leopard. And incredible Tracy Lord -- lighted from above, in a George Cukor close-up, dressed by Adrian, and kissed by Jimmy Stewart in the moonlight. For lovers of film, it's very hard for the artist who made these women...
Still, Memoirs is not all misanthropy and -ogyny. Amis gives a generous portrait of his shy, witty fellow Oxonian, the poet Philip Larkin, who like the author had to endure that most mannered of academic dons, Lord David Cecil. One sprightly chapter contains a mercilessly comic imitation of a lisping Cecil pointlessly beginning a lecture. ("When we say a man looks like a poet . . . dough mean . . . looks like Chauthah?") Cecil had the ill grace to flunk Amis for his B. Litt. thesis, but the author uncharacteristically lets bygones be. Perhaps it's too hard to stay angry with someone...
...behold, the angel of the Lord came upon him, and a light shined in the prison . . . And his chains fell off from his hands...
World War II made Loesser a complete songwriter. Eager to contribute an anthem to the infantry, he wrote Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition, and this time the dummy tune became the published song -- and a big hit. When he returned to movies, writing pile-driving boogie-woogie (Rumble Rumble Rumble) and patter songs (Can't Stop Talking) for hyperactive Betty Hutton, he had the credit he wanted: songs by Frank Loesser...