Word: priggishness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...even affectionate readers will have a hard time remembering what it is that often makes Auchincloss worth bothering about. The story, written at the level of what used to be called women's magazine fiction, concerns the downfall and upfall of Tony Lowder, a decent, attractive and rather priggish young lawyer with political ambitions. To help a feckless law partner who is in financial trouble, and because there seems no reason not to, Lowder accepts a bribe from a Mafia-connected moneyman whose activities are under investigation. The novel follows the muscular workings of the hero's conscience...
...both persuade the audience that things'll turn out all right with a little assertion of personal rights and a lot of hope. (Both also portray beggars and criminals and lumpenproletariat as lovable urchins, but the political implications of this are so ludicrous that to point them out seems priggish). There is a blight on musical comedy, there has been one for Rodgers knows how long. so why not just admit it and return to the revue...
...usually not annoying to find that a new Heinlein is wrong-headed and somewhat priggish. One simply reads around the didactic parts and soaks in the action and gets caught up in the suspense...
...sand that becomes a major irritation in the viewer's eye. She and circumstance are enough to drive Robert to the family home on an island in Puget Sound. There he views the wreckage of three lives. His autocratic father is paralyzed by strokes; his brother is a priggish martinet; his rabbity sister Tita (Lois Smith), an accomplished recital pianist, still looks as if someone is about to rap her knuckles for improper fingering...
...time is the '20s and the maiden is Yvette (Joanna Shimkus), who steps backward from French finishing school to her father's claustrophobic vicarage in northern England. The old authorities are reasserted, and Yvette is briefly cowed by her hectoring, rectoring father (Maurice Denham) and his priggish relatives. But there is a new spirit in the air. symbolized by soul-quickening jazz, bobbed hair and notions of the emancipated woman. Yvette soon tastes the salt in her blood and begins to seek the fast company of Mrs. Fawcett (Honor Blackman) and her lover, Major Eastwood (Mark Burns). Even...