Word: racketeer
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Story of Esther Costello (Romulus; Columbia) examines the phony charity racket. Following the lead of Nicholas Monsarrat's novel, on which it is based, the picture not only condemns the conscious criminals but also takes a number of lusty sideswipes at their unconscious accomplices: public sentimentality and crassness, official indifference, and the self-righteous complaisance of religious groups...
...dock area twice a year for the past two years, the morality plays have become an East End institution. By their charities, austere life and hard work, the Anglican Franciscans have impressed East Enders, who at first were apt to dismiss them as so many practitioners of the "soul racket." But the East End is still overwhelmingly unchurched. To Father Oswald the plays' purpose is the same one that sent 15th century Christians into England's streets to perform the classic morality play Everyman (in which God dispatches Death to demand an immediate "rekenynge" from the happy...
...dusk sifted last week around the bleak brick flats that have replaced the even bleaker dockside slums of London's East End, tired factory workers settling down for another evening in front of the telly were roused by a clangorous racket. Peering into the almost-deserted, cement-paved play area of Boyce Way, they made out a brown-robed, sturdily striding figure swinging a schoolbell and shouting: "Come to the play on a cart...
...Hoffa, who continually associated with and employed a gang of ex-convicts, masterminded the chartering of seven phony New York City locals, "knowing these locals to be racket-controlled and devoid of membership." He secretly joined with Johnny Dio, the notorious racketeer, in conspiring to get derogatory information to be used against New York Teamster Vice President Tom Hickey, tried to get Dio a Teamster charter for his taxicab local, even though the legitimate Teamster organization under Hickey was trying to organize the cab drivers...
...That Bob Kennedy is a doll," wrote a Washington housewife last week as the Du Mont-televised labor rackets hearings came to a close (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). Since the Senate's modern 18-day morality play began, Du Mont Broadcasting Corp. has been bombarded with 10,000 such letters and thousands of phone calls. Three people twitted Du Mont because Liberace had been shoved aside by Johnny Dio and Jimmy Hoffa; but in most bars across the Eastern Seaboard, tipplers clamored for the racket-busters over baseball. Even though she was seated a few yards behind the witness chair...