Word: oddness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...clothes. There they sit, in what is supposed to be a fashionable London living room, giggling over silly society stories with tag lines like "Up in a tree: you and the Maharajah," and "Lady Klootz and the wedding cake." This is not exactly American-style froth, and it sounds odd enough in American voices, with their somewhat ponderous, unmusical delivery. And when one of the voices belongs to Comedienne Nancy Walker-solid and scrappy as ever, with her hair dyed firehouse red-the incongruity is almost painful. The play's central character, a mysterious psychiatrist called Sir Henry Harcourt...
Charly is an odd little movie about mental retardation and the dangers of all-conquering science, done with a dash of whimsy. It sounds like an impossible combination, and in fact it is. Cliff Robertson plays the hero, a mugging, clowning, saintly fool so retarded mentally that he cannot write his own name correctly. He agrees to a brain operation that will spark his intelligence. Almost overnight, Charly is transformed into a debonair, Shakespeare-quoting sage who knocks off philosophy, calculus and microbiology with dazzling ease. Yet the experiment has a hitch: Charly has fallen in love with his teacher...
There are other odd-and rather chilling-possibilities. A sample fantasy: The Wallace-LeMay ticket runs second in electoral votes behind Nixon-Agnew. On New Year's Day, the Communist Chinese strike the U.S. in Asia, perhaps in Viet Nam; a tide of reaction floods the nation. The House remains deadlocked on a presidential choice after days of belligerent debate. Wallace supporters scent victory and refuse to bolt to Nixon. The Senate, meantime, bows to the nation's angry mood and by two votes names Curtis LeMay to be Vice President. With the House still deadlocked...
Safe from Quakes. An odd combination of economic forces lies behind the downtown rebirth. Transit-shy Angelenos rely almost entirely on autos to move around their 464-sq.-mi. city, whose boundaries could encompass the combined areas of St. Louis, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Boston, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Manhattan. While the auto made it easy for Los Angeles to sprawl, earthquake fears made it difficult for the city to grow vertically. Until 1959, a local ordinance limited buildings to a height of 150 feet or 13 stories, whichever was lower. The results of improved structural-testing techniques finally persuaded...
...upon little more than society's fragile agreement to pursue and uphold such imperfect payments and restraints as the law allows. In the process of tracing out the perplexities of just one claim, British Suspense Novelist Lionel Davidson (The Rose of Tibet, The Menorah Men) has created an odd, quiet novel that contemplates the limits of private responsibility and public guilt...