Word: schlemieled
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Play it Again Sam. The Woody Allen play about the sexual hangups of poor Alan Felix, a schlemiel who spends most of his time day-dreaming about Humphrey Bogart, his idol, and all the women he'd like to conquer. In the Winthrop House Junior Common Room, December 4-7 and 11-13, at 8 p.m. Tickets...
...very silly, but Grodin, doing a total switch on his role in The Heartbreak Kid, is as funny as a schlemiel as he was as a Lothario; Bergen has never been more loose and natural; Mason is touching as a defeated man given a miraculous opportunity to close out life with a big win; and no less a figure than Sir John Gielgud is humorously on hand as the fussy manager of No. 11. This poised, stylish cast shines quite as impressively as the quarry in the vault. ∙Richard Schickel
...Hollywood detective movies, The Long Goodbye tosses the tradition's cliches out the window. Altman waves goodbye to the genre's habit of emphasizing plot instead of characterization. And Elliott Gould, as a Marlowe for the seventies, is like no detective we've ever seen before: a schlemiel forced to live up to his fantasies about justice and derring-do. He is a contemporary Rip Van Winkle, walking around modern-day Los Angeles with ideals and morals from a different...
ALTMAN'S MARLOWE is a big-hearted schlemiel who would never have thought of being a cop, or of holding any faith in old-time concepts of personal honor (or America, for that matter). The people he works for are a generation further advanced in their amoralities than Chandler's, and Marlowe's new goal is just to keep alive in their company and enjoy himself. He protects his friends as a side-issue (we have no idea of how his friendships are fashioned) but if his friends double-cross him he shoots. He is so inarticulate that even...
...gems. For those who need definitions of Yiddishisms that have crept into everyday use, Rosten provides examples, many with a fond patina of age: chutzpa is a case of "a man who, having killed his mother and father, asks the court for mercy because he is an orphan, poor schlemiel is a man who "falls on his back and breaks his nose." Some lines are cosmic as well as comic: "The rich have heirs, not children." "Good men need no recommendation and bad men it wouldn't help...