Word: strenuous
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...Strenuous Life...
...wordy book about the era when the movies were learning to talk is a rather strenuous satire, without much warmth or wit. Kelly is a silent-film favorite who makes the transition to talkies with the help and kibitzing of sidekick Donald O'Connor. Jean Hagen is Kelly's beautiful-but-not-so-bright leading lady whose squeaky voice is not O.K. for sound. Debbie Reynolds, the girl hired to do Jean's behind-the-camera talking and singing, finally wins both public acclaim and Kelly...
...strenuous and difficult times" in the past, he writes, the emphasis was upon the necessity for the individual to adjust to his environment and meet his difficulties. Many laggards were brought to a higher level of accomplishment by "mass suggestion," while the few who did not rise in this way were despised or even executed. This, of course, was unfair. But since Freud, so much emphasis is put upon the hazards surrounding the individual that he may lose the stimulus to make a fight. He is encouraged in this by the widely held idea that "the conditions of life today...
Love Is Better Than Ever (MGM) works at a strenuous little plot about a dewy-eyed New Haven dancing teacher (Elizabeth Taylor), who is out to hook a blase Broadway agent (Larry Parks). In the course of her campaign, she 1) annoys him by publicly announcing their nonexistent engagement, 2) gets him tangled up in a troupe of twirling moppets at a dance recital, 3) taunts him with being a "flesh peddler." Elizabeth Taylor, ineptly striving for comic form, reveals a photogenic figure, but Parks falls flat on his farce. Completed early in 1951, Love Is Better Than Ever...
London was cold and wet, Kenya's jungles were hot and steaming, and New York was cool and clear. In all three places, TIME correspondents and editors were preparing to relax after a strenuous week...