Word: squalidity
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Blonde & Boat. Raised in London's squalid East End, John Bloom quit school at 16, stumbled from one get-rich scheme to another. In 1958 he finally hit the right chord: he splurged $1,187 on an ad in the tabloid Daily Mirror (circ. 5,000,000) offering home washing-machine demonstrations. The ad drew 7,000 replies from prospering Britons-and Bloom soon had a firm set up to sell them. His unorthodox selling and barebone prices quickly cornered 10% of the washer market. Bloom then bought out lifeless Rolls, an old razor maker...
...proposing to pit your crude animal instincts against intelligence, culture and breeding?" Unfortunately Brando answers yes, then lumbers on to demonstrate how a potentially great talent can petrify through miscasting and misuse. In one scene he attempts to seduce the mayor's daughter by performing a squalid striptease. Later, posing as a mentally defective prince, he gibbers like a traumatized gorilla and has to be spoon-fed. Then, pretending to be a crippled, self-pitying veteran, he exploits the comic possibilities of a wheelchair. Funny as a crutch. A few more stiffs like this one and Brando fan clubs...
...reproach to most novelists. The Children of Sanchez, published in 1961, was ostensibly a recording of the lives as-told-by-themselves of a poor family living in a poor section of Mexico City. It proved to be richer in incident than many a historical romance, and more vividly squalid than many a sociological novel of the Chicago school...
These bleak puppets seek shelter in squalid, motionless routine. Instead of moving toward a comforting resolution, Pinter's plays develop by shedding obscurities until emotions and paradoxes in a situation are uncovered...
...Grand Canal. The palace's ultimate glory was a set of 18th century frescoes by Tiepolo, which depicted the story of Antony and Cleopatra with almost as much flair as the 20th Century-Fox film. With the extinction of the Labia clan, the palace turned into a squalid dump; illiterate boarders spent unknowing nights under the Tiepolos. In 1948, another Spaniard, the wealthy Don Carlos de Beistegui, now 78, rediscovered the palace, as he said, "with a violence of love and passion that no woman has inspired...