Word: raconteur
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Grauer is a tired, pleasant, chainsmoking little (5 ft. 6 in.) man who looks something like George Jessel with hair. He is a bachelor, a bow-tie fancier, a tea-drinker and a raconteur...
...want to talk to anybody alive or dead," declared talkative Bernard Shaw. It was half of his answer to Gallup pollsters asking Britons which of their famed countrymen (dead or alive) they most wanted to talk to. "If I craved for entertaining conversation by a first-class raconteur," Shaw went on, "I would choose Oscar Wilde."* In the poll, Shaw himself ranked 27th. Most-sought-after...
...more friends than big Max Gardner. Ever since he moved from North Carolina to Washington in 1933, the capital's society matrons had welcomed him as a raconteur who added zest. to any party. He was widely admired-first as a roadbuilding, budget-balancing governor of North Carolina, most recently as an Under Secretary of the Treasury in whom businessmen had full confidence. Almost everybody could find something to like about this hearty "liberal conservative" with the homespun manner and the gilt-edged bank account. And almost everybody wanted to give him a farewell party before he left...
Henry L. Mencken appealed to a Baltimore court to restore to him his fireside social life, nocturnal rest, capacity to concentrate on his work, and general peace of mind-all gone now, said he. The thief of his serenity, deposed the editor-critic-raconteur-philologist's petition, was a dog next door who passed his life barking-a "large, powerful male dog of breed or breeds unknown to your orator." The barking, pursued Mencken, was "abnormally and extraordinarily loud, harsh, penetrating, violent, unpleasant, and distracting." He prayed that the court would compel his neighbor to take dog and bark...
Ascetic Sadist. Globular Alfred ("Hitch") Hitchcock has lately become an oblate spheroid by jettisoning some 90 Ib. of flesh. (His starting weight was 295 Ib., his favorite food, beefsteak.) But asceticism has not reduced Hitchcock's abilities as a humorist, raconteur, deadpan artist and the greatest director of cinema thrillers. At a large stag dinner party, when his turn came to enrich the traditional ambience of brandy & cigars with an off-color story, he murmured diffidently: "I have a story, but I'd best not tell it because it's rather long." The clamor...