Word: spined
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...feature in the current issue of Reader's Digest (circ. 17.5 million) is a condensation of The Man Who Wouldn't Talk, a spine-chilling tale about a "gentle spy" by Quentin Reynolds. In Reynolds' crackling, reportorial prose, the book describes "quiet, religious" George DuPre, a Canadian who entered British Intelligence early in World War II and prepared for a strange mission. For nine months he was trained to behave like "the village halfwit" so that he could play the part of a harmless, moronic French garage mechanic after he was dropped behind the German lines...
...unhappy side of the play is that it is the purest Broadway-laughs or nothing. It has a funnybone without a spine; it could almost be described as a satire without a viewpoint. It seem's put together with the very pins it sticks in others, though at its satiric best it can draw blood from cardboard. And since, at her best, Actress Hull can squeeze laughs out of a turnip, The Solid Gold Cadillac provides a nice, enjoyable evening...
...whose small-boy enthusiasms (Winchell reads comic books to keep in style) and good-natured sauciness (but none of Charlie McCarthy's lethal impudence) surmount the reality that he is actually 25 Ibs. of whitewood, metal and rubber, with rods, latches, levers, springs, glass eyes and a broomstick spine...
...hemisphere as Rembrandt had been to his. To portraitists of such quality, models are not only flesh and bones in a chair but also thoughts and feelings in the air. Madame Lebrun's sad, narrow gaze-as much as her elegant blouse and the stiffness of her spine-is forever Victorian...
...succession of British and U.S. ambassadors tried to encourage the Shah to be firm. Though they could reach his heart, they could not stiffen his spine. And at each stage of Mossadegh's usurpation of power, loyal army commanders pleaded: "Say the word, O Shahinshah, say the word." The Shah increasingly resorted to barbiturates to sleep; his temples greyed, his hands trembled. One night last week, in his 34th year, his twelfth as Shah, his third in the era of Mossadegh, the Shah gave the long-awaited word. It was much too late...