Word: playfulness
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Shortly after World War II began, it was decided to revive the play. There were some fears that it might have ad-libbed its usefulness, that jesting at patriotism might not go down in wartime. The fears were groundless. With tension in the air, people have been gladder than ever to relax, and with soldiers in the audience, the wisecracks are even rawer than they used...
...actors (who otherwise play their roles straight) have made a game of altering their lines if the crowd beats them to the draw. Thus the villain, when led away by the police, pauses to say "Foiled!" He was almost licked one night when the crowd shouted not only "Foiled!" but "Baffled!" "Beaten!" "Frustrated!" "Outwitted!" "Trapped!" "Flummoxed!" He waited until the wits were through, then hissed: "Stymied...
Walter Reynolds, Young England's 88-year-old author, still takes his dead-serious play seriously. He went to the opening of the revival, a sad, reedy figure in a great black cape, doddered up the stairs to his box holding on to both handrails, sat tense through the uproar, at the end bowed to the audience, thanked them. Asked in a BBC interview whether he wasn't angry at the way audiences treated Young England, he answered: "No. They're a little noisy . . . but they pay as much as 10 and 6 for seats, so they...
...late owner of the Yankees, offered to sponsor the baseball career of a "second Lou Gehrig," to be chosen from the sidewalks of New York (Gehrig's nursery). Last week the Baseball Writers Association of America, waiving the rule that a candidate must be out of play for at least a year, unanimously voted Lou Gehrig into Baseball's Hall of Fame* at Cooperstown...
...squash, Eleonora Sears is some punkins. Reputedly the first woman to play squash racquets in the U. S. (in 1918, she demanded that Boston's men's clubs let her play on their courts, house rules or no house rules), the rich Boston Brahmin, great-great-granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson and heiress to a big New England shipping fortune, has been going great guns ever since...