Word: svengali
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Dietrich was astounding, that which took place in von Sternberg, though less evident, is no less interesting. The girl whom he had turned in record time into a world celebrity had paradoxically trebled his own fame. She was a perfect Trilby for his staccato, 14-hour-a-day Svengali. Impatient of routine, abrupt with strangers and remote with studio officials, Dietrich would tolerate the most brutal type of public correction from von Sternberg. It was common enough for her to go through a scene 15 or 16 times before he was satisfied with it. None of this seemed to make...
...nervous at the mistakes they make, and says to me 'Oh, daddy, what would you say to me if I played like that?' ' Father Slenczynski. who was shell-shocked during the War. has done much to make his talented young daughter seem horridly precocious. Like a Svengali he dictates her routine, eyes her sharply from the wings whenever she plays in concerts...
...Republican candidate's elocutionary efforts? He may 'condemn' in conventional fashion, he may 'view with alarm,' but this seems to be the limit beyond which he is not permitted to go. If he is a Trilby, who, except William Randolph Hearst, can be the Svengali...
...Both have well-to-do Negro managers, a rarity for Negro boxers. Lewis' is Gus Greenlee, whose other interests include the Pittsburgh Crawfords, a Negro professional baseball team. Both are trained by bald Jack Blackburn, famed 30 years ago as a lightweight fighter and currently as a Svengali of Negro pugilists...
...fingers traveled over the keys with such speed and accuracy that the audience rushed forward for the encores to see just how she did it. Few people noticed a bald, dark-skinned little man who sat half-hidden behind the Town Hall organ watching her play her encores with Svengali-like intentness. He was her father who might have been a concert violinist if the War had not intervened. When Ruth was 2 he bought her a $10 toy piano. She wanted a "big one." He sold a diamond ring...