Word: oscarization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Chief speaker at the service was moose-tall Rev. Charles Oscar Johnson of St. Louis, new president of the Alliance and onetime president (1932-33) of the Northern Baptists. Johnson, a genial, 260-lb. ex-farm boy from east Tennessee, runs one of the livest and most prosperous churches in St. Louis, where he has a reputation for knowing how to take care of himself in a fight without losing his enormous personal popularity. A humble man. he likes to be called Oscar. "I don't like anything," he once said, "that is going to separate me from...
...ninth row orchestra, way over on the right side of the house (permitting a dash backstage in case of a crisis), sat the man responsible for this unconventional musicomedy opening scene. Oscar Hammerstein II, a bulky man with a friendly, roughcast face, kept his bright blue eyes fixed on the stage. Could it be that Oscar Hammerstein was worried...
...Songs. He had already survived many such moments. No living American has fashioned so many rhymes that are familiar to so many people. Oscar Hammerstein (rhymes with fine) is one of the highest-paid men in show business (one estimate places his yearly income at $500,000).* He has written book and lyrics for 30-odd musicals, including Rose Marie, Sunny, Desert Song, Show Boat, New Moon, Carmen Jones, Oklahoma!, Carousel. He has written the lyrics for nearly 1,000 songs (which has earned him a coveted AA rating by ASCAP), including such imperishables as Indian Love Call...
...Allegro, with all its faults, is an impressive effort in a good cause: it is the latest sortie in that well-nigh-won revolution against cloak-and-daguerreotype operetta and June-moon musicomedy. In that revolution, Oscar Hammerstein is certainly one of the heroes. He put something like real people into Oklahoma! and Carousel; but Allegro is by far the most realistic of his librettos, by far the most deliberate manifestation of the New Look he gave to musical plays...
Stature for Solemnity. The New Look does not imply sophistication. Says Oscar: "The sophisticates have let us down." The theme of Allegro is a simple, minor-key faith shared by many Americans: a kind of puzzled sympathy for the puzzled ("Poor Joe! The older you grow, the harder it is to know . . ."). Oscar is a sentimentalist who is repelled by the materialistic din of big city living. One lyric in Allegro says bitterly...