Word: riffs
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Grandpa Storr is the central figure of The Stranger's Return. A hard-fibred, eloquent curmudgeon of nearly 90, he entertains himself by abusing the pasty-faced riff-raff of his family-a nephew's widow, a stepdaughter, her husband-who are his pensioners at Storrhaven while they wait for him to die. When Louise (Miriam Hopkins), the daughter of Grandpa Storr's oldest son, arrives at Storrhaven, the old man gets a new interest in life-showing her that she belongs, not in New York where she has been married and divorced, but on the ancestral...
Jamestown, first Virginia settlement, was like a mosquito bite that is scratched and scratched until it becomes a permanent feature. First & foremost a gambling venture, it naturally attracted gamblers rather than serious colonists. In the medley of ex-pirates, Spanish spies, gold-seekers and riff-raff that came to Virginia hoping to find it a way-station to Eldorado, Soldier of Fortune John Smith was one of the biggest troublemakers. A farmer's son who had won his spurs fighting against the Turks, he was hot-tempered, stocky, boastful and brave. When Chief Powhatan's warriors captured...
Instead of being primarily a news gathering and disseminating organ, we have become first of all a depository for all sorts of riff--raff that knows no other harbor. Our desk drawers, our cubby-holes, our corners are cluttered up with eyeglasses, ladies, handbags, odd buttons and economic text-books. Our mail slots contain missives that no one else will claim...
...right, but I don't think we want any of her progeny in this community . . . not the kind of stuff that makes good citizens . . . shiftless . . . little moral stamina though she knows the difference between right and wrong." She said that the family is "low-brow," and "riff-raff. . . . Neighbors complain that the children are a nuisance with their marauding habits and the family is unspeakably dirty...
Maria Jeritza, buxom blonde Metropolitan Opera singer, instituted legal proceedings against Dr. Muller Guttenbrunn at Vienna because she thought that his book Riff Raff, which deals with a family continually embroiled in lawsuits, defamed her. When she first heard the book was being written she had the Viennese censor scrutinize it; when it was published she obtained legal authority for its confiscation. Her reason for believing the book was detrimental to her: the author is a brother-in-law of a maid whom she dismissed from her home in Vienna...