Word: momism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Died. Philip Wylie, 69, the polemicist-novelist who coined the term "momism" in Generation of Vipers, his 1942 best-selling harangue against American mores; of heart disease; in Miami. "I didn't expect to become known for the rest of my life as a woman hater," said Wylie, but Vipers, he figured, had made the epithet inevitable. "That's the first thing they'll put in my obituary-a woman hater. I certainly was a damned odd one." In fact, Wylie was an early supporter of women's rights. But his description...
Died. Spring Byington, 84, the durable character actress whose sympathetic screen portrayals contradicted Philip Wylie's image of pernicious momism; of cancer; in Hollywood. "Why should I object to playing mothers all the time on the screen?'' Miss Byington once asked. "Mothers scheme and plan and love with all the versatility of a three-ring circus." Though her maternal roles included Marmee in the 1933 screen classic Little Women and Mickey Rooney's all-knowing mom in the first Andy Hardy film, she reached the zenith of her career in the mid-1950s as the fluttery...
...father of "momism" in Generation of Vipers, Polemicist-Novelist Philip Wylie has a certain reputation to live up to. In his own way, he turned the crank letter into a literary form. In that eruption 29 years ago, he added to the sum of human choler by announcing, among other things: "Gentlemen, mom is a jerk...
Promise at Dawn, based on Romain Gary's dutiful autobiography, takes little Romain from his boyhood in Russia to his early manhood in Paris. Beside him at every step is Mama (Melina Mercouri), who could give Sophie Portnoy lessons in classic and popular momism. Denied recognition as an actress, she seeks vicarious glory through her child. Mama forces her son to take violin lessons that he might be another Heifetz, ballet lessons that he might be Nijinsky reincarnate, French lessons that he might be a future ambassador. The woman's compulsion is infinite; when her son enlists...