Word: pompous
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Prime Minister Jawaharfal Nehru last week celebrated his 70th birthday with jaunty self-confidence. To newsmen who asked him for some words of wisdom for New Delhi's schoolchildren, he replied, "A birthday message? That sounds very pompous." Then, accepting a last garland of flowers from a little girl, Nehru got into his plane and was off to the hill resort of Dehra Dun to spend a relaxed weekend with his grandchildren...
...title. The Day Nothing Happened telegraphs the gentle punch that Humorist Corey Ford (Has Anybody Seen Me Lately? Never Say Diet) has aimed at the current publishing mania for Day books. He parodies the pompous epiphenomena that accompany such ventures, including the introductory note of martyred scholarship, the bow of punctilio to humble assistants ("My thanks to Mr. F. L. Peters at the Information Booth at Grand Central"). And there is the jacket blurb from a fellow authority in the field: "'The most exciting twenty-four hours since the day I shot Jim Bishop'-A. Lincoln...
Some of the lines sound merely pompous. (Sample: "What makes Sammy run? The answer to that is the answer to everything. Not just to you, to me, but to the country-maybe to the whole world.") But Director Delbert Mann keeps the pace as brisk as Sammy's own. As the heel-hero's idealistic mentor, Al Manheim, John (Bachelor Father) Forsythe looks and sounds like the soft-hearted friend to man he was meant to be. Barbara Rush is Schulberg's "Vassar smarty-pants" scriptwriter down to the last inflection; Dina Merrill plays the conniving heiress...
Donald Cerulli and Rennie Brown are properly pompous and gossipy as family hangers-on and Linda Avitabile, though less successful as Fanny Cavendish, has her moments. Alvin Cohen is evidence that a good actor will make something thorough even out of a non-speaking bit part...
That is bad enough business, but the Red Chinese further infuriated Western businessmen with high-handed, independent business practices. Businessmen ordering goods were forced to undergo long,, pompous lectures on Marxism. Prices and offers changed from day to day at Peking's whim, and officials often tried to play one trader off against another. A British businessman who went to Canton to buy 500 tons of vegetable oil was told it was not available. Then he was awakened at 4 a.m., told that Peking had decided to give him the oil. The next day Chinese authorities sold half...