Word: sexuality
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...voice. Many carry this to extremes, even denying themselves sex for 48 hours before a performance because it may coarsen their tone. (One contemporary tenor has refined this after learning by a process of trial and error that his voice is at its peak exactly three days after sexual intercourse.) Despite all his precautions, the tenor tends to feel himself hoarse as a wolf at curtain time, and often decides he has a cold. If he can be forced onto the stage, his natural ability will usually carry him through. If he cannot, a substitute must be found quickly...
...lifetime friends. But in her infrequent lucid moments, the countess teaches young Carmela that the full life requires the taste of a connoisseur and the instincts of a gambler. "Never economize with life," she warns. "It never gives anything back." Carmela suddenly acquires the confidence of her own sexual power and beauty. It shines through to a film director (clearly modeled on Vittorio De Sica) who screen-tests the young beauty at just about the time that the old countess looks up from her deathbed to ask, rather like a child at party's end:"What? Is life over...
...women in Summer and Smoke are on the whole competent, but the men are lame, and the result is a limping pace. The superiority of the women is partially because Williams' hysterical females are naturally rich roles. Alma Winemiller, the sexually-repressed daughter of a prurient minister, is certainly a ready-made vehicle for fine acting, and Georgia Boyko fills the part admirably. Simultaneously repulsing and desiring the advances of young Dr. John Buchanan, Miss Boyko portrays her hysteria with a certain delicacy and restraint which make her character both distinctive and convincing. When she is severe with her mother...
...Contraceptives. Aside from the temptation presented to Catholics to use forbidden methods of planning parenthood (a temptation reinforced by such factors as the high cost and close quarters of modern housing), contraception puts an extra strain on a union by disassociating sexual pleasure and responsibility in marriage, Father Thomas suggests. "We cannot simply assume that physical union restricted to mutual gratification produces the same stabilizing and unifying effects as normal intercourse...
Because of his single-minded concentration on the job, even his sexual activity is relegated to a secondary place...