Word: sourpuss
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...belly-shaking fun. But when this earnest little biopus turns from Keaton's silent comedies to his noisy domestic tragedies, the guffaws turn to unmitigated guff. Donald O'Connor, who plays the title role, does pretty well with the pratfalls, but when it comes to imitating Old Sourpuss, he ought to go soak his head in the pickle barrel...
Died. Ned Sparks (real name: Edward A. Sparkman), 73, sulphur-voiced, sourpuss cynicomedian (Lady for a Day, Imitation of Life), who once asked Lloyd's of London for $100,000 insurance against having a picture taken of him grinning ("I didn't get this wooden face by accident. It's been my trademark, and it's paid me well"); of an intestinal block; in Victorville, Calif...
...Casmurro is the narrator-hero's nickname, and it translates, roughly, as Lord Sourpuss. The story he has to tell is a kind of epitaph of a big loser, a man who, through his wife's infidelity, loses her, his best friend...
...Casmurro's real name is Bento, and he does not start out a sourpuss. At the age of 15, Bento's head is full of great but nebulous expectations: "After Napoleon, lieutenant and emperor, all destinies are possible in this century." His heart throbs for Capitu, a dark-haired Juliet with "eyes like the tide when the undertow is strong." Bento's mother had dedicated him to the church at birth, but the seminary is not for Bento. He wins his release along with a seminarist friend named Ezekiel, and goes off to law school. Then...
What can one say, however, in the face of the latest denunciation of Claus by a leadind church man? The Archbishop of Seville, though he is probably the world's champion ecclesiastical sourpuss, is a man of not inconsiderable influence in Spain. When he calls Claus "put of a Protestant maneuver to undermine the deepest Christian meaning, of our tradition" and says that he conceals" a sectarian aim hidden under the red grab of an Old Man who seems native but who has spent many hours of his life as a knave." (The New York Times, December...