Word: overwrought
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...Hollywood, she was (by her own account) a mousy, 22-year-old virgin with knobby knees, a pelvic slouch, and cold blue bugeyes that radiated intelligence. "She has as much sex appeal," lamented her first studio boss, "as Slim Summerville." But in three overworked decades and some 70 overwrought roles, Bette earned two Oscars, $3,000,000. and a reputation as the first U.S.-born actress to make the movie moguls respect talent and independence in a star. In an age of vamps, she became the Compleat Vixen. But in this autobiography, Bette can (and does) brag: "I brought more...
...unvarnished nervousness. The Hollywood correspondent of Rome's Il Messaggero had written a convincing argument that the "xenophobes" of Hollywood were not about to ''dig their graves with their own hands" by honoring furriners. Sophia canceled her plane reservations at the last moment, feeling too overwrought to fly halfway round the world to play the gracious loser...
Lane, bored, listens just closely enough to be able to dismiss the whole thing: "I mean I think all those religious experiences have a very obvious psychological background." He is supposedly talking as a realist, but he obviously knows nothing about reality. Franny, on the contrary?weak, overwrought, muttering mysticism ?has about her the luminous common sense and the clear eye for life that mark all the memorable Salinger girls of whatever age, from Phoebe Caulfield on. Eventually Franny faints. When the story first appeared, coed readers, earthy creatures all, ignored Salinger's mysticism and decided that...
...young girl brought to him to become his 25th and last wife falls in love instead with a non-Mormon Union Army officer; in a sacrificial gesture Young renounces his claim on her and sends her forth from Deseret to marry the man she loves. In a somewhat overwrought revelation, Young sees the lovers' departure as an omen of the day when "Deseret too will go out into the great world . . ." Composer Kastle provided a surgingly lyrical score admirably suited to the moods of the text. One of its high points was a rhapsodic duet between the heroine, expertly...
Amid the melodrama, Golden Child occasionally achieves a sort of folksy universality. While much of the time the score becomes overwrought and the lyrics contrastingly simpleminded, the two collaborators-both members of the State University of Iowa faculty-complement each other remarkably well. Poet-Professor Engle, who heads Iowa's top-rated writing workshop, had joined with Associate Professor of Music Bezanson before on-among other works-a set of tenor songs based on the poet's collection, The Word of Love. Although they would like to try another opera, they would not want to start next time...