Word: pun
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Pun-prone Habaneros, accustomed to doing business in local branches of New York banks, promptly dubbed the institution "Che's National Bank." *Who a fortnight ago joined Che's and Raúl's wives as stars at a Communist-sponsored Women's Congress in Santiago, Chile...
...life. He barbered his way through the (U.S.) depression, marrying the boss's daughter. Aften ten years as a railroad brakeman, he surrendered to hay fever (dust in the baggage car) and founded a chain of pizza parlors around Boston and the Cape. "Leaning Tower of Pizza," that inspired pun, brought him national interest and the attentions of a large noodle concern. The Prince Spaghetti Company settled on Tower like a great leaking blimp, and Lou Catania sold out. The resulting cash paid for a fabulously ritzy kitchen on Mass...
...mayoralty campaign between John E. Powers, president of the Massachusetts Senate, and John F. Collins, Suffolk County's Register of Probate, the issue of a dying city has nearly been forgotten. The campaign's chief feature, aside from a daily round of recriminations, is a simple pun, which Collins works to exhaustion...
Golden Fleecing (by Lorenzo Semple Jr.) bears one of those pun-propelled titles that proclaim a farcical text. And farcical Golden Fleecing is, without being farcical enough. Concerned with three U.S. Navy men in Venice who plot to win fortunes at roulette by using their ship's "top-secret" mechanical computer, it involves signals between harbor and hotel suite, their own admiral in the suite below, the admiral's inevitably winsome daughter, signalmen who pass out, couples who dive into canals, Venetian glass, Venetian gangsters, and phones that stop ringing only when doorbells start...
...political figures or popular songs, Flanders and Swann are gaily whimsical the next about animals (their specialty) or plants in love. Their tone is sophisticated; they never spell words out, and use many that are foreign. Their joking is educated, with here a lurking bit of Wordsworth, there a pun on Kyd. They can be most lively when most deadpan, and most deadly when most daft. But their triumph rests on their total effect. Delightful as their songs can be (one is about an Oxford-bred cannibal who no longer likes eating people), the evening would grow a bit becalmed...