Word: luridness
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...subject. Here, as nowhere else, could the whole breadth and depth of Prohibition be revealed. Nothing would be more effective than a chorus of Rotarians in derbies, rolling forth grandiose melodies reeking with noble sentiments; or the orchestral blare as Prohibition, garbed in black, rushes full tilt at the lurid figure of the Demon Rum; or the carrying off of the latter's corpse to the tune of "Blue Heaven". But if such treatment is a possibility from the more violent native sons, M. Pillionel, with a calmer, foreign point of view, will doubtless leave it for them...
Following Representative Casey's speech, Representative La Guardia obtained lurid effects in an oration on "Hootch and Harlots," illustrated in the tabloid sheetlet manner with a gigantic photo of a hard-boiled Coal & Iron Policeman which was passed from hand to hand over the House desks...
...history of English legal polity is replete with prosecutions, in all of which the picture of a tyrannical and brutal trial judge occupies the most lurid position in the public mind. Especially the prosecutions in Ireland toward the close of the eighteenth century at the crucial stage of the American legal system threw its dark cloud upon the young nation looking for guidance. Consequently, in view of the abominations perpetrated under the name of the common law judges of Great Britain and the popular prejudice of the times against them, it is small wonder that the American attitude of regarding...
...Come into this death house with me," began Mr. Grey. Lurid details followed. Among them: "Elliott, the official killer, stood to the right of him with a fiendish grin on his face. ... He leaped, literally leaped, to the switchboard. . . . The switch went in. ... Sacco's hands . . . doubled into a knot. The veins in his long, thin, white hands began to rise and kept on rising until I thought they would burst and drench all of us with blood. . . . Sacco's neck was swelling to a huge inhuman size. . . . The saliva was literally pouring out of his mouth. . . . Try to compare...
...World War broke them up, the Hudson Dusters were a well-knit gang of gunmen and thieves who infested the west front of Manhattan, near Tenth Avenue. Such devilry was constantly sizzling and boiling up here, that the neighborhood became known as "Hell's Kitchen." In this lurid milieu, Playwrights John McGowan and Lloyd Griscom elected to set their play, although, as subsequently developed, they might as logically have fixed upon the Bronx...