Word: pretenders
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Nice: "The suggestion that I might become an Ambassador is flattering, but running an embassy is an expensive business. Only the wealthy can pretend to such a post." The onetime Mayor declared that after a long rest he would probably represent Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cinema interests in France. Said MGM's President Nicholas M. Schenck in New York: "This is absolutely news to me." Meanwhile a Brooklyn judge appointed a receiver to sequester all Jimmy Walker's property in behalf of his creditors...
...several unexpected things to me during that afternoon and evening. One thing he said at dinner interested me considerably. He had just taken a second helping of asparagus when I asked him to explain where common sense ended and guidance began. 'I don't pretend that every detail of my life is guided,' said Frank. 'For instance, I did not have guidance to take that asparagus. I was hungry, and like asparagus...
Thus has Mr. Lowell fixed the imprint of his creative thought on the rising edifice of American education. He has antagonized a good many people on a good many subjects, and it would be unpardonably disingenuous to pretend that there is but one opinion about his achievement; but leaving eulogies to the professional encomiasts, it is with pride and satisfaction that the greatness of yet another Harvard, Massachusetts and American career is here acknowledged. --The Boston Globe
Autobiographies almost invariably contain an apology; some have little else. In Earth Horizon Mary Austin's apology, never explicit, is to be found in her generally defiant tone. "I don't see why it should be so much the literary mode just now to pretend that ideas are not intrinsically exciting and that one's own life isn't interesting to one's self." Hiding her personal pronoun behind her name, she writes of herself sometimes as 'T." some-times as ''Mary." The rising generation may find little to attract them...
...small room off the mezzanine floor of Chicago's Drake Hotel one evening last week sat a nude young woman of considerable charm, safe behind a barrier of chicken wire. For $1 anyone could go in, sit behind a drawing board for ten minutes and try or pretend to sketch her. Elsewhere in the Drake that evening were peep shows, slot machines, bars, roulette tables, smart shops, fortune telling booths, a gangplank and reproduction of one side of the lie de France. Milling around in costumes that tried earnestly to look bohemian were 2,500 Chicago socialites and celebrities. Fresh...