Word: ragtag
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...break into song. And for some strange, wrong reason -perhaps to give the show an elevated, operatic tone-the actors speak in precise, cultivated accents that are miles away from the Negro slums of South Carolina. For that matter, Sidney Poitier's Porgy is not the dirty, ragtag beggar of the Heyward script, but a well-scrubbed young romantic hero who is never seen taking a penny from anybody. And Dorothy Dandridge, who emphasizes the elegance of her bones more than the sins of the flesh, makes something of a nice Nellie out of bad Bess...
Smitty's generosity is as big as his 6-ft.-5-in., 240-Lb. frame. By promoting boxing bouts in Detroit (1958 loss: $60,000), he finds work for a ragtag stable of fighters, gives them handouts and a chance to show what they can do. His payroll bulges with ex-pugs. One of his engineers is a former light heavyweight. A once promising middleweight serves as an office manager. A prelim fighter is carried as a janitor...
Inept Ambassador Sears is followed by a ragtag succession of diplomatic incompetents. Many of these types undoubtedly have their counterparts in real life, but the authors weaken their case by often carrying ridicule beyond reason. A single minor Navy officer, for instance, is shown as preventing the Indian government from accepting U.S. atom bombs. Captain Boning supposedly is the only American technical expert at an Asian arms conference, and he ruins the whole show by giving a hesitant answer to a question about A-bombs that a bright high school student could furnish (the reason he is hesitant is that...
...Politics. That crisis is not only Virginia's or even the South's: it is the nation's. Far more than anything that jackanapes (by Virginia standards) Governor Orval Faubus can do in ragtag (by Virginia standards) Arkansas, Virginia will set the lasting pattern of Southern integration-or defiance. Virginia's Senator Byrd has bitterly recognized that fact: the forces of integration, he said last month, are "working on the theory that if Virginia can be brought to her knees, they can march through the rest of the South singing Hallelujah...
Such heart-stopping heroics have won the Giants 16 last-inning victories this season (six of them since July 4), and made last year's ragtag New Yorkers the darlings of San Francisco. Some 800,000 San Franciscans had crowded into tiny (capacity: 23,144) Seals Stadium to watch their heroes (more than the team drew all season in New York). At week's end they cheered frenziedly as the Giants whipped the Pittsburgh Pirates and barged boldly past the Milwaukee Braves into first place...