Word: spading
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...course. Tom himself had yet to achieve hero status. One could imagine even the young inventor going home to read Tarzan, or, as the times changed, sitting in a theater to watch Sam Spade or Philip Marlow or Humphrey Bogart. Or watching newsreels of Lindbergh. Even Tom would respond to that hierarchy. It may have been an unprecedented spree of hyperbole, but the newspapers called Lindbergh's landing "The biggest news story since the crucifixion of Christ." Well, obviously, it wasn't the biggest story since Roman times--but it might have been the biggest news story. News, after...
Capote makes this quotation his centerpiece and turns Jake Pepper into a tragic hero of sorts, a Sam Spade in dungarees and pointy boots. Clues refuse to fall into place for him. Pepper's eminent reason cannot fathom the dementia of Quinn's "nasty mind...
With Purcell's music lending a touch of formal majesty, the performers move from discord to concord in a progress that sinks deep into the layers of Shakespeare's meanings, to emerge restored and invigorated. Stage movement as much as language becomes a spade they use to unearth poetic ambiguities, in several mimes enacted to bits of Purcell's score: while a soprano sings a mournful aria, Stephen Rowe's Demetrius and Lisa Sloan's Helena wander about in a ghostly love-dance, with Helena reaching for and grasping Demetrius just as he turns away; after the night of illusion...
...Washington. Once there, he is constantly reminded of his background. Take this exchange with a Connally-type Texan: " 'Now, Gold. Everybody here is a somebody, and I don't know why you're being so captious about who it is you are. He is the Spade, she is the Widow, I am the Governor and you're the - ' 'Doctor!' yelled Gold in time to ward off a crushing repetition of that denunciatory term...
Like a Hollywood morning, Somebody 's Darling gets off to a slow start, but picks up velocity and life (and more than a few deaths) as it moves along. McMurtry tosses off a few good Sam Spade-ish one-liners (an aging producer toasting in the poolside sun is a "ninety-year-old french fry"), and a pair of good-ole-boy screenwriters from Texas provide boisterous comic relief. McMurtry, who knows the Hollywood milieu firsthand, reveals a nice sense of place and trade. The celluloid scene has been done before; what McMurtry gives it-as he gave that...