Word: pawnshop
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
HOCKSHOP, by William R. Simpson and Florence K. Simpson with Charles Samuels (311 pp.; Random House; $3.75), is the entertaining tale of that commercial paradox, a respectable pawnshop. The original Simpson's of New York City's Park Row was established in 1822. For more than a century after that, five generations of Simpsons made good money by lending it against even better security. William, the fifth of the Simpsons, dealt with clients ranging from clever thieves to obsessive society belles, from broken-down prizefighters to muscular gigolos. Among their collateral were 18th century manuscripts, a Stradivarius...
When he became a full-fledged parish priest at Salzano he gave away so much to the poor that his clerical ring was often in the pawnshop. At the end of his nine years there his devoted parishioners wrote a poem for him that went: "He came in garments that were torn, he left without a shirt...
Though time & place are deliberately not specified in Camino Real, they seem modern and Mexican. The scene is a fortresslike, claustrophobic public square featuring such darkly symbolic places as a luxury hotel, a flophouse, a brothel, a pawnshop, and such darkly symbolic figures as a callous worldling who spits on common humanity, Storm-Trooperish policemen who cudgel it, street cleaners who cart its bodies off to the city dump. Around an arriving young American prizefighter with a bad heart flow loan sharks, plutocrats, cooch dancers, madams, homosexuals, a Casanova on his uppers, a Camille who herself must buy love...
Director John Boulting handles what could be merely a dull, biographical movie with subtle symbolism. Instead of windy dialogue, he uses shots of the children's birth mugs, as they shuttle from the Friese-Greene mantlepiece to the pawnshop, to show the family fortunes. When Friese-Greene finally drops dead, clasped in his hand is a container of movie film. Only a phase in the opening minutes of the film suggests that this contains the first successful color film...
...Between (J. Arthur Rank; Universal-International), called Hunted in England, is a suspense-filled movie about a six-year-old orphan boy who falls in with a murderer fleeing from the police. The chase, leading across England and Scotland and through a series of such colorful settings as a pawnshop, a boarding house, an amusement gallery and a small fishing village, has been staged with cinematic vigor by Director Charles (The Lavender Hill Mob) Crichton...