Word: mordant
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Although M. G. M. added such embellishments as a misplaced fashion show to the Clare Boothe play that ran 19 months on Broadway in 1936-38,* The Women, like its original, is a mordant, mature description of the social decay of one corner of the U. S. middle classes. Prevented by the nature of the cast from publicizing the picture with a studio romance, M. G. M. pressagents did not discourage the assumption of fan writers that its trio of temperamental stars were engaged in a studio feud. This device worked well recently for Warners', when George Raft...
...accolade for your inspired, mordant solution of an odious yet historically necessary selection...
Since then the Sennep drawings, which serious artists frankly admire for their mordant economy and caricaturing impact, have made him second only to Britain's great David Low (TIME. July n ) in European popularity. He was once honored with formal suppression by the French police, who seized a special all-Sennep number of Le Rire in which it had amused the cartoonist to portray the various members of the Chamber of Deputies as the aged, bearded and hairy houris of a gigantic brothel...
...Greatest Show on Earth (by Vincent Duffey & Irene Alexander; produced by Bonfils & Somnes, Inc.). Playwrights Duffey and Alexander seem unable to decide whether they are satirizing mankind or writing seriously about the anguish of caged beasts. The result is occasionally funny, occasionally mordant, mostly an addled mixture. Partly atoning for the commonplace writing of The Greatest Show on Earth are its ingenious costumes, handsome production, and the acting of Edgar Stehli as Slimy, the serpent. As he slithers among the bears and elephants, hissing in Cockney, inciting Leo the Lion (Anthony Ross) to murder the Keeper, Actor Stehli commits only...
...true that the horrible epoch of the "process themes" (i.e. "write on something which you fear") seems to be disappearing, but the mordant vestiges still crop up occasionally. And the reading, soundly conservative though it be, usually bears little relation to actual composition...