Word: smarted
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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When he was arrested in September 1950, Brooklyn's swart, smart Big Bookie Harry Gross lost a gambling empire but gained a fearsome and ironic political power. He used it for all it was worth. By talking his head off before a grand jury about cop-bribing during Mayor Bill O'Dwyer's regime, he exploded the biggest New York corruption scandal since the days of Jimmie Walker. Then, after a total of 77 blue-coats had been named as defendants or coconspirators, Gross managed, with consummate gall, to spring them...
...quite a reputation." For one thing, he has smoked cigarettes since the age of seven without any apparent damage to his wind or-even more amazing-to his manners: he always says "please" and "thank you" to his mother. He is a fair hand at training dogs, and is smart in the woods. But he is best known for his talent at scaling trees and cliffs...
...years that followed, the magazines they co-edited (Smart Set and the American Mercury) introduced or helped to foster such notables as James Joyce, Aldous Huxley. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Theodore Dreiser and Eugene O'Neill. They also became trademarks of the "lost generation" along with hot jazz, bobbed hair and the hip flask. Mencken lashed out at the "booboisie" with a bull whip; the debonair Nathan was content to use a swizzle stick. In the eyes of the proper-minded, the two iconoclasts were unholy terrors. A couplet of those days went...
Under the smart handling of Old Mahatma Branch Rickey, who had spotted Stanky when he was a minor leaguer, and under the constant needling of Manager Leo Durocher (a player of small talents himself), Stanky blossomed in Brooklyn. He set his bases-on-balls record in 1945. He sparked Brooklyn to its first pennant in six years in 1947.** The Brooklyn fans made Eddie an idol (along with Dixie Walker), tabbed him with such affectionate nicknames as "The Brat," "Gromyko" (because he walked so much), "Stinky," and "Muggsy...
...audience," Goldstein says, "has to feel superior. Like in a quiz show, if the audience knows the answer and the guy misses it, they feel good. So your comic has to be somebody not as smart as the guy watching it. You can't laugh at somebody who's smarter than you. Hollywood wouldn't believe it, but every so often you see a Ma & Pa Kettle coming out of a theater, laughing at themselves...