Word: smalltowner
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Inspector General. The smalltown bureaucrats of Russia 94 years ago were infuriated and alarmed when a play called Kevizor was produced in their country to expose "all that was bad in Russia." Playwright Nicolai Vasilievich Gogol died in Moscow 16 years later after further distinguishing himself with the great novel Mertvuiya Dushi (Dead Souls), and after exhausting himself on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Producer Jed Harris revived Revizor under its English title last week because its theme, Graft, is still notoriously alive in the U. S., whatever may have become of it among the enlightened Soviets. The play soon closed...
...Ralph Greenleaf, impassive, shiny-haired defending champion. In Dwyer's Billiard Academy in Manhattan last week Greenleaf and Rudolph, with the crowd banked around them, bent over a green baize table in the finals of the national pocket billiards championship. They played the kind of pocket billiards that smalltown sports play in their dreams. Greenleaf won the bank with a perfect shot. His ball was flat against the rail. Then Rudolph broke cleanly, without leaving Greenleaf a shot, but as they kept on it looked more and more like Greenleaf's evening. By the seventeenth inning...
...grows up the orphan turns out to be Miss Miller who is universally loved and cherished. She avoids marrying a rich young man (Fred Astaire), weds the tenor (Paul Gregory). Most risible part of the program is supplied by the Astaires when they cavort in front of a smalltown band. And at one point Eddie Foy Jr., tipsy in Paris, can be heard singing a few bars of a song with lyrics by Ring Lardner...
Badges worn by a smalltown delegation of realtors on their way to their state convention were lettered: WE ZOOM FOR ZENITH. And a banner proclaimed: ZENITH THE ZIP CITY-ZEAL, ZEST AND ZOWIE! Heading the delegation was one George Follansbee Babbitt ". . . 46 years old now, in April, 1920, and he made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay. His face was babyish . . . despite his wrinkles and the red spectacle-dents on the slopes of his nose...
...Democrats gathered at St. Anthony first thought they would not put up a candidate to oppose Senator Borah, largely because nobody wanted such an empty nomination. Then they changed their mind, named John Tyler of Emmett for the Senate. Nominee Tyler, 55, a grade school teacher turned farmer and smalltown politician, declared: "If elected, I will not be found voting with the Republicans as Borah has been with the Democrats." Democrats nominated for Governor G. Ben Ross, Mayor of Pocatello...