Word: shows
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Bunting curled around Pennsylvania Avenue lampposts from the White House to Capitol Hill. From nearly every store window beamed the twin pictures of Alben Barkley and Harry Truman. Expecting nearly a million elbowing visitors this week, a 1,300-member committee toiled feverishly to make the four-day show the biggest, most expensive Presidential Inauguration in history. After all, it was the nearest thing the U.S. had to a coronation, a rare chance for the republic's leaders to turn out in top hats...
Only the privileged would see the formal ceremonies on the Capitol steps, conducted before an $80,000 grandstand erected by the 80th Congress, in anticipation of a Republican President. But there were some 80 other special events, from a Hollywood variety show to the formal Inaugural Ball in the National Guard Armory. There would be a 7-mile-long parade, with 40 floats, 30 bands, a steam calliope, thousands of marching troops and civilians, an air umbrella of 650 military aircraft...
...first big show of the 81st Congress and Texas' florid old Tom Connally promptly fumbled his lines. He had moved his Foreign Relations Committee into the marble-pillared Senate caucus room. The hearing, Tom Connally announced, was "on the question of the nomination of Dean Acheson as Under Secretary of State." A murmur of correction ("Secretary!") rose from the press tables. Connally, beaming under the klieg lights, brushed off the advice: "He's still Under Secretary until he's confirmed." Then, after recalling that Acheson was still a citizen without public office, he added...
...vaguely for something to paint. The other day I found a dog's head at a taxidermist's. It was a fox terrier mounted on the wall like a moose." He generally finds what he is looking for in shop windows: "For instance that fish in the show. I'd been wanting to do a fish for years but there were practical difficulties, you might say. This one was smoked. It lasted over a week and a half and hardly sagged at all-no more than an eighth of an inch. Draperies will move faster than that...
Here & there the show has a nice rowdy zip, but oftener it is just brassy and unkempt. Its purple-lighted torch songs and arty anatomical dances have a bygone, almost burlesque air about them; its way of joking is as familiar as its jokes. As a result, several talented people have a lot of trouble proving that they are. Handsome Crooner Carol Bruce can only be huskily banal; Nancy Walker is amusingly tough at times, but in general the going is tougher. Amid so much theatrical wet wash, only Hank Ladd's slow easy patter seems properly laundered...