Word: patina
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...those who shine fair Harvard's patina...
...millionaire, world-renowned and, at the peak of his profession, a confident and gracious man. He is pale, despite the Sahara sun, but seemingly healthy. His life with Pierre Berge, his business partner and intimate of 15 years, has probably been as harmonious as most marriages. Yet beneath the patina of assurance, Yves Saint Laurent is a tortured soul, a self-avowed neurotic who is still recovering from an unhappy childhood and the trauma of his brief service in the French army (he spent two months in a solitary psychiatric cell). "Yves," says Berge, "was born with a nervous breakdown...
...Cent Solution happily accounted for Holmes' whereabouts after he was supposedly drowned in the Reichenbach Falls. He was, of course, breaking his cocaine habit under the tutelage of Sigmund Freud. The pairing of these two clue masters on one case lent Meyer's pastiche a glittering patina of ought-to-have-been. Alas, Meyer has "found" yet another of Watson's tales, and it should not have happened to anyone...
Considering the thudding banalities they are forced to utter, the actors man age a lively display of cocktail-party intelligence. Deborah Kerr is very pukka memsahib, and Barry Nelson displays his boyish charm, though the patina of age has begun to dull it. Frank Langella turns out to be the drollest character onstage with his stubborn macho pride in the size of his tail...
Harry sings old songs to Tonto and reminisces lovingly about his courting and the wonders of his marriage. Reality chips the sentimental patina, though. His children, the products of this blissful union, are the walking wounded. Harry's New York son has resigned himself to a bleak wife and two ungovernable kids. His California counterpart, played with ironic self-pity by Larry Hagman, blubbers like a brat for a loan from Dad and for the benefit of his reassuring presence (he can split the rent that way). The daughter in Chicago (Ellen Burstyn) has just...