Word: mertonism
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Several insurance companies are refusing to grant compulsory auto liability policies to Harvard students, because, owing to numerous accidents, they are poor risks. State Insurance Commissioner Merton L. Brown, however, when he heard of this situation, made it known that any student so rejected can appeal to a special board created for the purpose. If the board finds that he is acceptable, some company will be forced to grant him a policy...
...During the Harding Administration Thomas Woodnut Miller, Alien Property Custodian, was on the fringe of the "Ohio Gang." As the liquidated assets of American Metals Co., seized during the War, he paid $6,453,979 to a German capitalist named Richard Merton representing a Swiss concern. As his "fee" Merton turned $441,000 in Liberty Bonds over to G. O. Politicians. Of this sum $50,000 was traced to Miller who claimed he received it as payment of a debt the party owed him. Other amounts went to Jesse Smith. Attorney General Harry Daugherty's henchman, and to Connecticut...
Make Me a Star (Paramount). In the current deluge of pictures about Hollywood, someone had the good sense to dig up Harry Leon Wilson's old story, Merton of the Movies. As a play by Marc Connelly & George Kaufman it was the classic of its genre. Now as a talking cinema, under a new title to deceive cinemaddicts who saw it as a silent picture and might not want to see it again, it is still superb entertainment...
...Merton Gill (Stuart Erwin) is a grocery clerk who longs to be a cinema celebrity. Equipped with stupidity to equal his ambition, he goes to Hollywood, informs a casting director that he has a diploma from a correspondence school of acting. His bemused enthusiasm makes his predicament sad as well as funny. Once admitted to a studio lot, he remains for two days, sleeping in property beds, eating property pork & beans. A generous extra girl (Joan Blondell) tries to befriend him but in so doing adds the last straw to Merton's misery. She gets him a job with...
...innumerable pictures before his ability got him, in Make Me a Star, his first starring part. There are times when Erwin reads the pathos between his lines a little too vociferously but there are other times when his confident naiveté suggests a Chaplin who can talk. He makes Merton's grand gesture of presenting the extra girl with a wrist watch hilarious by the way he says: "It's a little token of my esteem and . . . it's guaranteed." Director William Beaudine had fine dialog to work with and he put in a few sharp touches...