Word: octogenarian
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What will remain, for a while, is the memory of a crusty, highhanded octogenarian who clung pathetically to power well beyond the moment when he should have relinquished it. Ultimately, however, Konrad Adenauer can only be remembered as the German whose idealism and hardheaded grasp of reality in one decade transformed the nature and condition of 20th century Germany. Winston Churchill accurately called him "the greatest German statesman since Bismarck," but even Bismarck's Germany did not rise from the rubble and bitterness of defeat to the position of respect and responsibility that West Germany enjoys today...
...said to be "the world's youngest octogenarian." With his wigwagging ginger eyebrows, gaitered waddle and "rah-ther"-studded speech, Ramsey is a ripe continuation of England's tradition of clerical eccentrics. He is the type of man who finds mud puddles appearing mysteriously in his path; his bulky purple cassock always seems ever so slightly askew. No one laughs. For warmhearted, avuncular Archbishop Ramsey also exudes the wisdom of a scholar and a deep-rooted faith, and seems every inch what he is in fact if not in name: patriarch of his arm of Christendom...
...most titanic figure in all drama. When Carnovsky first enters, dressed in a purple tunic, a silver-trimmed orange cloak, and a heavy gray embossed baldric, he mounts an improvised black bear-skin throne, stands with right hand alott, and all those present instinctively kneel. Though an octogenarian, this Lear is no weakling. He is not just a great man; he is not even just a king; he seems to be almost a god implanted on Olympus. (In an inspired touch, this same bit of business is pathetically echoed towards the end of the play...
...mood of liberalism is eddying through the Roman Catholic Church-as the first session of the Second Vatican Council so amply proved. Last week, in the person of a frail, balding octogenarian cardinal and a slim, blond young Swiss priest, the U.S. had the opportunity to hear from two leading proponents of the progressive spirit in Catholicism...
...three-generation nutshell, West follows the Prescott family West. They set out as sodbusters in 1839, marry, multiply, get killed off along the way in drownings, fights, and wars, until at the end the only Prescott left is an octogenarian Debbie Reynolds. Many of the juiciest roles are just a drop in the Cinerama bucket. Thelma Ritter is a snappish delight as a man-hungry wagon woman. Walter Brennan is deliciously vile as a river pirate who uses his vamp-eyed daughter (Starlet Brigid Bazlen) as bait to lure fur-laden Trapper Jimmy Stewart to a temporary downfall...