Word: rater
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Dillon himself is an artist, an actor-playwright to be specific--and a thorough second-rater. Like Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger, he is suffering from "the pain of being alive," and it stings him into delivering tirades, presumably on the authors' behalf, concerning such matters as religion, the middle-class mind, and the relationship of life to art. These tirades are neither so long, so frequent, nor so good as Jimmy Porter's similar tirades, but they are well...
...pretty girl. Jazz bomb (Jazz Bombe) is a good dancer. The coals are right (Die Kohlen stimmen) means there is enough money. Heap (Haufen) is a band. Served (bedient) stands for tops. Cloud (Wolke) means roughly a gasser. Sinatra is any singer, and keg (Fass) is a first-rater. Oblique (schräg) is real gone...
Even with its too-glib identification of mental maturity with success and conformity, the movie is as good as the novel. Gene Kelly sings and dances too well to be a convincing second-rater, but he gives an agile performance as the camp entertainment director. As schmalzy Uncle Samson, Ed Wynn gets a few laughs, and Claire Trevor is sharp and clear as the irritating but well-meaning mother. Natalie Wood, a great beauty, is something less than a great actress. Her most believable moment comes when Marjorie, despairing of Broadway acting fame, says mechanically: "Sometimes I think...
...seductive pleas for a Popular Front (see box); his truculent assertion of Russian nuclear capacity spoiled his peace-loving professions, and stole the play from his skillful offer of profitable East-West trade. The British consensus is that Georgy Malenkov is an able fellow and Bulganin an amiable second-rater, but that Khrushchev is a crude, crafty and headlong ruler who must be watched and cannot be trusted...
...months ago a customer walked into Horace Mendelsohn's auto-accessories shop in Stockport, near Manchester, England and bought two motorcycle tires, paying seven shillings, sixpence ($1.05) below the list price. Three days later, Cut-rater Mendelsohn learned that his "customer" was a private investigator for the British Motor Trade Association. He got a summons to appear before the association's Price Protection Committee on a charge of price cutting. The committee, a private court staffed with lawyers paid by the association, weighed Mendelsohn's case carefully, penalized him by putting his shop on the "Stop List...