Word: successful
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...himself. He also became a dedicated sportsman (football, baseball, fishing), a good singer in a house full of singing, and a conspicuous truant. He nevertheless went to Gonzaga University in Spokane as a law student. The only useful part of the course, which ended with his first amateur musical success, was public speaking. Said he: "I owe all to elocution...
Wide recognition came after a few years of modest success as one of the Rhythm Boys featured by Paul Whiteman-this before the King of Jazz fired him for not taking his work seriously enough. Nor was Whiteman the only early employer that Crosby disenchanted by drinking and carousing too much. He became a national name only after a medical fluke-the sudden occurrence of nodules on his vocal cords-caused him to lose his voice just before his first scheduled radio network show in 1931. When the voice came back, it had, thanks to the nodules, what Crosby called...
Crosby's biggest critical success was Country Girl, but his personal favorite among his movies was High Society (1956). It found him singing and dancing with Frank Sinatra at an "elegant swellegant" party and playing a concertina and crooning True Love, as only the first crooner could croon, to not-yet-royal Grace Kelly. Unlike many stars, Crosby surrounded himself with other big talents. He worked with Fred Astaire in Holiday Inn (in which he sang White Christmas), with Ethel Barrymore in Just for You and with Ingrid Bergman in Bells of St. Mary...
...manage. I held this club together. That man," he said, referring to Steinbrenner, "almost cost us the pennant." Steinbrenner saw it more coldly. "We put this team together without Billy; we got him the best players money could buy. He's crazy to take the credit for our success...
Judith Rossner, the author of Looking for Mr. Goodbar, clearly understood the appeal of this kind of masochistic allegory, as the best-seller success that greeted her pulp novel demonstrated. That Richard (In Cold Blood) Brooks-should decide to bring this trash-posing-as-fiction to the screen also shows at once a keen eye for the commercial and a readiness to pursue his art within the constraining framework of a depressing narrative. In taking on a character like Theresa Dunn as the focal point of his film, Brooks has confirmed an affinity for the dark underside of the individual...