Word: plebeians
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Came to Dinner, for example, seems raspingly lacking in style. Once More, With Feeling has none of the stealthy purr-and-scratch of music-world wit; rascals are roughnecks, megalomaniacs commit mayhem, bull fiddles see red. There is not a touch of urbane caricature, it is all plebeian cartooning; and even on its own would be broad popular terms, the play has no real Broadway bounce...
...Neill than like O'Casey's Paycock. The consequences are not the same: where at last the Paycock lies sodden among a ruined family, Con, among a rising one, is both broken and reborn-enough Americanized to raise a glass to the plebeian Andrew Jackson. In both plays the character is superior to the action: where in Juno and the Paycock there is too much contrived melodrama for inevitable tragedy, in Poet there is too much lurking farce for great drama. In its half-dozen best scenes, A Touch of the Poet has a tense, grandly flaring quality...
...influential Franjiehs, the ancient and patrician Karams, and the fertile Moawads, who outnumber each of the others. For centuries the three feuding clans have been fighting-now pairing off in expedient alliances, now breaking away to fight again. In recent years a fourth clan, the Dweihis. has risen from plebeian obscurity to join the fray. The newcomers entered the ring with considerable credentials. "About 70% of the criminal cases arising in the Zghorta district," said a court officer in Tripoli, some five miles away, "involve members of the Dweihi clan...
...snagged the services of Grace Kelly for her last screen appearance before embarking for Monaco, paid Cole Porter a reported $250,000 for his first original movie score in eight years, and hired Louis Armstrong to blow and gravel-growl his way through it. The result, unhappily, is strictly plebeian...
Though he is too honest to masquerade as a plebeian, Herter can be informal when he wants to be. Last spring, in Brockton for an official appearance, he heard that a local Korean veteran had just gotten home. He insisted on dropping in unannounced, overwhelming the veteran and his wife, who woke up the kids, opened a bottle of wine and had a thoroughly pleasant time with their amiable visitor. When word of the devastating Worcester tornado (TIME, June 22) reached him, Herter was in his Boston apartment, in the midst of a weekly dinner with his legislative leaders...