Word: sicilianism
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Where did Squillante's power lie? Perched on the witness chair, the tiny, bespectacled racketeer politely pulled the Fifth Amendment to more than 100 questions, but the committee's evidence appeared to be solid enough. As a member of the so-called Mafia (the ancient Sicilian vendetta society that some authorities claim is running U.S. racketeering), Squillante always managed to avoid deep trouble, although his address book produced the names of such crooks as Joey Surprise, Nanny the Geep and Joe Stutz. He got caught only once, on an income-tax rap. He solved that, the committee charged...
...production that opened yesterday at the American Shakespeare Festival is controversial with a vengeance, for co-directors John Houseman and Jack Landau have changed Shakespeare's old Sicilian locale to 19th-century Spanish-American Texas. (This is not a wholly new idea, for the Brattle Theatre production here two summers ago was laid in 19th-century Spain.) Rouben Ter-Arutunian has designed a handsome and versatile two-level residencia as well as a dazzling batch of costumes liberally provided with holsters and pistols. And Virgil Thomson has written some colorful incidental music, partly original and partly borrowed (e.g. "The Mexican...
...Minister Piccioni's son Piero, a 35-year-old jazz pianist, had abandoned Wilma Montesi to the waves while she was stupefied by drugs. The fact that the police had at first declared her death accidental was attributed to pressure brought to bear by Ugo Montagna, a bogus Sicilian marquis of inexplicable wealth and impressive contacts among the upper reaches of the Christian Democratic Party...
...last week's Cavalleria, from the moment Tucker's fervent and sensuous voice sounded offstage in Turiddu's precurtain love song, the audience was his. Dressed in a tinhorn gambler's dark shirt and the cheap Sunday suit of a Sicilian villager, Tucker swaggered about the stage in response to broken pleas from Santuzza (well sung by Veteran Zinka Milanov). He powerfully thundered forth his challenge to Alfio, husband of his mistress, and in the final great aria movingly sang his farewell to his mother, the sure delicacy of his voice topped off by his rough...
...broken-down cotton gin. Goaded beyond endurance by his wife's refusal to consumate the marriage, Mieghan takes his revenge on the world by burning down the Syndicate-owned gin which has put him out of business. At that point, the competition, in the form of Silva Vacarro, the Sicilian manager of the Syndicate, moves in. Vacarro gets his revenge by seducing Baby Doll. While this story is not particularly attractive, it contains no pornography, either in the situation itself or in the way it is photographed. The playwright's declared purpose is to show corruption, and his story does...