Word: rataplan
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Last week, with no rataplan of drums, The Admiral and The Biscuit met at Pimlico. The purse was $15,000-mere horse feed. Both had been beaten by mediocre horses since last spring. But 40,000 devotees, nonetheless interested, jampacked the old Civil War race course outside Baltimore. In hushed silence they watched the two thoroughbreds walk up to the starting line,* watched Seabiscuit, with Georgie Woolf up, zoom in front in the first few strides. At the first quarter Seabiscuit was two full lengths ahead. Then a roar swept over the ancient stands: pretty little War Admiral, the favorite...
...manner of change-ringers, each one hooting his single note in turn. The Babira Negroes of the Ituri Forest punctuate the high-pitched gargling of their soloist with aggressive whoops. The Watusi Drummers hammer an intense counterpoint of rhythms more complicated than Gene Krupa's randiest rataplan...
With a whinnying of trumpets and a rolling rataplan of drums, the curtains at Manhattan's Shubert Theatre parted this week to disclose two apparently naked gods reclining on a cloud, their bare bottoms perked toward the heavens, their amorous gaze fixed on the somewhat startled audience. The bare bottoms were moulded of impersonal papier-mache, but the silver-bearded Jovian head on the left was unmistakably that of Alfred Lunt. Theatre Guild subscribers, present for the Manhattan opening of Amphitryon 38, settled back expectantly in their seats. They realized that Jupiter Lunt's eyes were not feasting...