Word: shiftlessly
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...Crochets are a peculiar bunch. They live in a decrepit shack in the bayous, breed children at will, and dream about building a house to go with the beautiful doorstep their oldest son found floating down the river one day. Papa is lazy, shiftless, and--inevitably--lovable. Mother is patient. The children are characters. And that's the play, with bliss in the form of a bunch of lilies inevitably hoisting the Crochets a step nearer heaven...
Steinbeck's paisanos were shiftless, harmless, simple, brawling, wine-bibbing Mexican mixed-breeds; M.G.M.'s are purebreds Spencer Tracy, Frank Morgan, John Garfield, et al. It is hard for them to be paisanos, but Victor Fleming's eloquent direction produces many a memorable sequence from the formless, wandering story. His characters never become quaint, and their activities are generally human and appealing...
...Coffee Cup (George Murphy) is a whacky extrovert of the Step-Right-Up-and-Call-Me-Speedy school with a TNT punch, an irrepressible line of chatter, a knack-for betting on the wrong side, an unfailingly empty purse. Dot Duncan (Lucille Ball) is the girl. Belabored by a shiftless family of zanies and a vague inclination towards matrimony, she seems completely satisfied just tagging along with Coffee Cup as he churns up street brawls, whirls around the dance halls or lounges in a hamburger joint with his sailor pals. Dot's boss is the guy. Played by newcomer...
Ever since the Pilgrim Fathers fell first on their knees and then on the aborigines, the American Indian has been pictured not only as a shiftless ne'er-do-well but as a decadent, dying race. Many a generation of U. S. schoolboys has been taught a stern pride in the taking off of such die-hards as Rhode Island's King Philip...
Danny's father Jim, a good-hearted teamster with a fondness for Shakespeare, had little money, many children. Danny therefore lived with Grandmother O'Flaherty, shiftless Uncle Ned, passionate, self-pitying Aunt Margaret, Uncle Al who sold shoes on the road, read Chesterfield and Boswell. Father and Son traces Jim's decline through heart disease to his consecrated grave, Danny's rise through high school and adolescence to a job like his father's at an express agency...