Word: prurient
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...Roth v. United States, the Supreme Court held that obscenity is outside the protection of free speech and free press; and it had set a test for obscenity: "whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest...
Angel Baby (Madera; Allied Artists) is a Bible Belter that brings to the movies Salome Jens, whose performance as the range "whorse" in Jean Genet's Balcony captivated New York's off Broadway last season. Now there is reason to believe that her seductive hallelujahs as a prurient evangelist may well make her the toast of the movie tabernacles. For Salome (she pronounces it Sal-o-way) is that rare actress whose vernal essence comes from within, breathing innocence, poignancy and a strange soft beauty into an otherwise wooden face...
...Prostitute in Literature, edited by Harold Greenwald and Aaron Kirch (Ballantine; 50?). A paste-up of teasers about such shady ladies as Thais and Fanny Hill, which ends, to the sure stupefaction of all prurient teenagers, with the nighttown episode from Ulysses...
...disgust with sex not only inspires one of the finest sonnets ("The expense of spirit in a waste of shame is lust in action"), but it erupts with sour rancor in all the major tragedies but Macbeth. With almost prurient relish, Hamlet chides his mother not to let the "bloat king" with his "reechy kisses" tempt her again to bed. The eightyish Lear, who might be presumed past sex obsession, works himself up into a fury on the devil in woman's flesh...
Esquire, a lit'ry, prurient playboy in the '30s and a leering satyr in the '40s, is a mature and well-behaved 25-year-old this month. Circulation is a record 829,817, an increase of 43,661 over last year; ad revenues are up 12.4% this year. The $1 anniversary issue carries $1,040,000 worth of ads, and articles that are hardly for hairy-chested males or boudoir bounders: musings on his craft by Poet Robert Graves, blasts against conformity by Educator Robert Hutchins, and the early thoughts of Playwright Arthur Miller on his forthcoming...