Word: roguish
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Victoria's Heir, a life of Edward VII, is almost worthy to be a sequel to Lytton Strachey's Queen Victoria, for the stuffy, portentous Victorian age seems peculiarly able to inspire some of the best writing of the 20th Century. The late Lytton Strachey's roguish mandarinism seemed gently but fatally borne along on the undertow of a dying civilization. George Dangerfield writes with the desperate blandness of a man who has heard even in the U.S. (where he has resided since 1931) the thud of London's falling walls and the stridency of gutting...
...Eddy, with much flashing of strong, white teeth, much glancing of roguish eyes, sang his audience into rapture. Few cared whether his velvety, beautifully controlled voice molded a phrase with real musicianship-as it often did-or turned a cheap song into a Hollywood production -as it more often did. When the pounding of feminine palm on palm had at last subsided, Mr. Eddy slipped away through a secret exit. At his hotel he had no more than made the elevator, on the run, when two panting women in evening dress rushed in, demanded his room number...
...last two acts the careless laughter begins to sound more like an old maid's skittish giggle. The characters become a little giddy, the author turns a little cute, the plot turns a little silly, and Director Max Reinhardt's German sense of gaiety turns alarmingly roguish. But the wonder is not that Wilder's old horse finally breaks down. The wonder is that it trots so gaily, canters so jauntily, for as long as it does...
...there is everything else. Two or three of the acts are very good: Walter Nilsson cavorting madly on a monocycle, Hal Sherman pantomimes dancing adroitly while looking as awkward as Charlie Chaplin. But most of the acts are very bad: all the skits, a Turkish harem number, a roguish sister act performed by two girls each of whom looks like the other's mother...
...Roguish Girl, Ah, she's a pearl With feet as swift and true- As the legs of any ewe; I'll tell you boys she's here to win, And from now on it looks as if You will be drinking the better grade...