Word: monsters
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...late Alexander Woollcott was asked at a party to name his ambition in life. He wrote: "I would rather be a Fabbulous Monster." Fifty years later, the letters from Woollcott's acquaintances which Samuel Hopkins Adams received as he prepared to write this biography indicated that this boyhood ideal had been realized in full. The letters ranged in tone from rage to pleading...
...ideal of the Fabbulous Monster was attained early. Large, floppy, green hats became Woollcott's favorite headgear. On Fifth Avenue he wore a red waistcoat embroidered with headless bodies and bodiless heads. He built himself a magnificent bathroom, decorated it with a tile which showed Woollcott on the toilet seat. His language matched his man ners. He would say to a guest: "You faun's rear end, I hoped we'd seen the last of you," or "Here's our withered harpy back again." "Thank you, you mildewed sheeny," was his way of acknowledging help from...
...friends were often disgusted by Woollcott's grossness, sickened by his gush, ashamed when, for example, he hurled himself on his knees before Novelist Somerset Maugham in a crowded elevator, crying "Maitre!" But many of them loved and respected the man inside the Fabbulous Monster. They knew that Woollcott was boundlessly kind and generous without ever admitting it, that out of his swollen income he gave away huge sums-to friends, charities, young men trying to get a start in life. But sometimes the very combination of Christian and Monster seemed intolerable. "Your brother has a heart of gold...
Nazi Germany was finished. Nevertheless, despite peace feelers put out by Heinrich Himmler, despite the death throes of Berlin, despite revolution in Munich, cradle city of Naziism, despite the U.S.-Russian linkup, which cut the mortally wounded monster in two, some thousands of German fanatics stared blindly ahead and still had the will to fire another useless shot...
After listening to the President last week, one Washington radioman said admiringly: "Thank God, he doesn't have sibilants-he handles his s's like a master." With more Reinsching, a somewhat less poky delivery and his present fine clarity, Harry Truman might well master the monster...