Word: spinsterly
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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They listened with mild interest. Finally the speaker mentioned the U.S. policy of atomic secrecy. The audience stirred to nervous attention. Then 62-year-old Annie Yates, a spinster charwoman, rose to say: "We want all those atom-bomb places opened for us all to know what's going on in them." The citizens of Darwen broke into applause...
...Status Quo, Prudishness and Decay. On Life's side, along with a young flyer, is the young heroine's father (Edmund Gwenn), a rum-soaked old sea captain full of Elizabethan gusto; on Stagnation's side is the heroine's aunt (Catherine Willard), a snooping spinster full of Victorian gentility. The trouble with such highly contrasted symbols is that they themselves are virtually burlesques: almost everything the old maid does smacks of melodrama, almost everything the old soak does smacks of farce...
...much like the real thing. But as a piece of melodramatic, patriotic entertainment it has its points. The producer's feminine touch can be seen in some intricately propped interiors and a very pretty sequence of a rain-drenched funeral procession. Gracie Fields' performance as the English spinster is near perfect. And Connie Bennett herself, who has lost nothing of her tough, wiry glamor with the years, gives fine style and energy to the international-smart-set aspects of her role. But she is unable to show deep emotion, physical suffering, or simple embarrassment...
Readers of his autobiographical Plough man of the Moon may be surprised to learn that Rhymester Service was once a Scottish bank clerk. Born in Lancashire, England, he was brought up in Scotland by his grandfather and three Bible-addicted spinster aunts...
Miss Phillips is in dead earnest about her "personal crusade." Neither her sponsor (General Mills) nor NBC has gone out of its way to encourage her. The U.S. Treasury was once politely cool to her offer of Guiding Light as a free medium for selling war bonds. But shrewd Spinster Phillips, certain that she is on the right track, has hired a special "sociological and psychological adviser" to help her carry...