Word: shiftless
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Margery Sharp is a bright-eyed, diminutive, facetious English girl whose The Nutmeg Tree was a surprise best-seller two years ago. As a followup, Harlequin House is less surprising; it tells a bouncing, bubbling, frankly inconsequential story about giddy Lisbeth and her shiftless brother Ronny, with Lisbeth managing four men at once in a campaign to reform Ronny who had spent six months in jail for somebody else's racket...
...medieval age," said he, "had its wandering scholar. We have our itinerant or fleeting scholar. Hundreds of thousands of these itinerant students move from college to college, each armed with his letter of credit." Dr. Jessup found that collegiate hoboism, once thought of as a shiftless, spendthrift, boomtime phenomenon, had in the past few years reached appalling proportions. Although it is commonly supposed that the typical college student enters as a freshman and emerges from the same college with a diploma four years later, actually today most students transfer or drop out before commencement day. Only one-third receive degrees...
...Beachcomber (Paramount) contains the most unusual cinema hero of the year. Shiftless, insolent, concupiscent Ginger Ted (Charles Laughton) makes himself a nuisance to the kindhearted controleur of the tropical Dutch island where he lives in a disreputable beach shack. He also takes pleasure in insulting a hard-working British female missionary (Elsa Lanchester*) who tries to save his soul...
...professional life", he is likely to put forth his branches early, and to show his promise by a reasonable measure of success in the competitive academic struggle. And "progressive" education in modern schools and colleges falls when it fails to supply the incentive of competition by weeding out the shiftless and incompetent...
...jail, absorbed his grandfather's hatred of England and its ways, but his heart was not in politics. On a trip to London, Elsie got away from her brothers, who were all priests, and became his mistress. But her father refused to let her marry one of the shiftless Crones. When she became pregnant she almost went crazy while Corney made plans that came to nothing. At desolate, run-down Youghal Corney decided to confess to her father. Thereupon she tried to drown herself, brought on a miscarriage that killed her. Corney became one of the eccentric characters...