Word: shabbier
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...attempts to be both a novel of character and a novel of suspense, is above average in both categories. The plot: a second-rate novelist begins a mild investigation into the disappearance of an old school chum and gradually finds himself being followed, spied on, threatened with death. The shabbier fringes of London's literary life are convincingly drawn, and the ending is a real shocker...
Only the day before, in an oldfashioned, gaudily wallpapered room in one of Madrid's shabbier neighborhoods, a soberly attentive Lepe had attended a reunion of 16 members of the Altoguirre and Jaudenes families (his real name is Alvarez Jaudenes). They had come from all over Spain, to claim title not to a castle in Spain, but to a castle in America. All were armed with "proof" that they were descendants of an 18th Century Spanish diplomat and his English wife who left a U.S. fortune estimated at $300 million-part of which included the land on which...
...quickly made to feel the serfdom of its employees. Ordered by the big boss to recant, Soren is egged on by his best girl (Marsha Hunt) to rebel. About 15 minutes before the final curtain, he finds himself both jobless and blacklisted. But Hollywood itself could not find shabbier ways, in those 15 minutes, of arranging a happy ending...
...scenes around Chicago. In greens, reds, blues that are raw but seldom harsh, he paints sleazy streets of ramshackle houses, old women haggling at a fruit stand, batting practice in the Cubs' ball park (where he once sold score-cards), knobby bathers by Lake Michigan. Says he: "The shabbier parts of Chicago are what intrigue me." Less intrigued is Mrs. Frank Granger Logan ("Sanity in Art"), who stormed "It isn't worth a nickel," when a Bohrod picture of a filling station won top honors and her $500 prize at the 1937 Chicago Art Institute exhibition...
Quiet, reserved Assistant Editor Draper acted as a sort of brake on his paper's news organization. He abhors sensationalism almost as much as he hated the 18th Amendment and the shabbier aspects of professional sport. Another Draper taboo was profusion of "features" in the news columns. But it was he who negotiated with Calvin Coolidge to write a daily editorial for the Herald Tribune's front page...