Word: maniac
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Died. Clifford Whittingham Beers, 67, onetime maniac, founder and longtime secretary of the National Committee for Mental Hygiene (1909-'38); of broncho-pneumonia following cerebral thrombosis; in Providence. Fearing a fancied approach of epilepsy, in 1900 he leaped out of a fourth floor window, lived to see the inside of both private and public insane asylums. Released in 1903, he later wrote A Mind That Found Itself. A best-selling personal history, it drew the nation's attention to the primitive brutality of its madhouses, led to reforms that helped many unbalanced minds...
...HEART IN HER THROAT - Ethel Lina White -Harper ($2). The dark secret of a long-vacant house in an English town terrorized by a homicidal maniac who plays hob with the nerves of a pretty young governess. She barely escapes death in leading police to the solution of a super-spooky yarn. The author of The Wheel Spins (filmed as The Lady Vanishes) turns in another master thriller...
...Even if you did see Bela Lugosi do it in the movies a few years back, the play won't be mere repetition, since each Dracula is sinister in his own chilly way. You can hear were-wolves and howling dogs off stage, while a bat and a maniac add to the actual scene. A full quota of green light, darkness, and feminine screams also serve to enliven the evening. The central character is the sinister, putty-faced Count Dracula, an evil combination of Superman and Batman...
...voices of the announcers are seldom natural, casual, human. Here is a solemn pulpit voice, preaching of clogged sinuses; here is a maniac with a congenital megaphone; here is baby talk, about as cute as a dwarf in diapers...
...experiences that almost maniac desire for activity that from now on will alternate continually with melancholia and depression." He tries to hang himself with his belt. The job is too unpleasant. He begins to feel the true weight of "utter, bleak silence. It is only in prisons that air is so deaf...