Word: strident
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Theodore Roosevelt characterized his age when he preached the virtues of the strenuous life. To later students, that period looks more like a hyperthyroid era of American history-an era marked by strident praise of action for the sake of action, when Richard Harding Davis was reporting breathless adventures in South America, Roosevelt I was hunting in Africa, and an inclusive, optimistic belief in the value of a he-man-diet of sleeping under the stars, and spending hours in the saddle suffused popular literature...
Author Zugsmith's characters talk their share of balderdash. They pause in two dullish chapters to discuss martyrdom of left-wing professors and preachers. Nevertheless, their talk has the ring of an uncracked Liberty bell, rich with authentic undertones, strident with neurotic overtones. If Leane Zugsmith s novels have not been monuments, they have been milestones along the U. S. road. This novel, her sixth, indicates that she is still headed in the proper direction, uphill, going places...
...joined the innumerable faces on the cutting room floor. What remained was more fustian than fun, a pursuit through high & low worlds of a popular, penniless French marquis working his way, via the scullery, into a cinema star's boudoir. In spite of Actress Lombard's strident earthiness, the result is as unearthly as Actor Gravet's French-flavored, concave British inflection, as wooden as Charlie McCarthy-whom Actor Gravet, in claw-hammer coat & starchy shirt front, resembles more than he does Windsor...
...also directed toward C. I. O.-izing Ontario's rich mines. It was in defense of these, they think, that "Mitch" tried to "git his fist in fust" at Oshawa. Finally, since Canada's Prime Minister Mackenzie King, fearing to antagonize Labor, has frowned upon the strident demands of "Mitch" that C. I. O. agents be excluded from Canada as "foreign agitators," Ontario's Premier smells an opportunity to attract to himself nationwide support and contributions from the more prosperous class of Canadians, including the farmers of Ontario who in voting strength still outnumber (and distrust...
...concluded that all that is expected of him is to be irresistibly boyish, which he sets out to be ad nauseam. Jean Harlow, on the other hand, thinks her whore job done if she glowers her way through the show and charges around squalling away in the most strident voice she can muster. Occasionally she sees fit to force the wannest of smiles, which can scarcely compensate anybody for all the termagancy he has witnessed...