Word: swindlers
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...grouched about Joseph Dinneen's biography and Edwin O'Connor's novel, he seemed immensely to enjoy the renewed attention they brought him. He gave the books away with such genial inscriptions as may be found in Lamont's copy of The Purple Shamrock: "To Jack: From one swindler to another. Jim Curley...
...reward. The preposterous little fable is funniest when played in deadly earnest. Playhouse 90 pitched it in a mood of self-conscious farce with blackouts to end each act, played it with an ill-starred cast. Comedian Ernie Kovacs as Topaze and Carl Reiner as the swindler heightened the effect of a rambling revue skit, did not so much dominate as swamp their roles with their familiar TV personalities. Still, in a medium that mines so much of its comedy from mothers and fathers who know best, even this production of Topaze had the rare virtue of a refreshingly cynical...
...financiers and softheaded speculators alike had subscribed some $250 million. Prices plummeted; one issue of Kreuger stock opened at 5, off 37½ points from the previous close. In little over a month after his death, it was clear that Kreuger had been the world's greatest swindler, having "misappropriated" some $1,168,000,000 in nine years. In another month Sweden's Prime Minister had toppled, bank clerks were committing suicide, and King Gustaf's brother, a heavy Kreuger investor, had to move to humbler lodgings. In May, Pope Pius XI gave the Kreuger legend...
...life as the earth does in death." Tommy Wilhelm, the fortyish hero of the title story, has a mind as empty as his pocket. Unemployed, dunned by his estranged wife, rebuffed by his wealthy father, he has hypnotically turned over his last $700 to Dr. Tamkin, a swindler so transparent that even Tommy sees through him. When the money vanishes Tommy reverts to childhood, finds release by sobbing hysterically at a stranger's funeral...
...Krull, Thomas Mann tried to avoid that tension by laughing-ironically, a little pedantically, but joyously, too-at human folly. For he really liked his confidence man; he saw in him the world's need for illusion, exemplified by a swindler's tricks as much as by a monarch's pomp and an artist's fictions. The last lines he committed to publication are a rollicking apostrophe to life that few other men of 80-or 40-could have written: "A whirlwind of primordial forces seized and bore me into the realm of ecstasy. And high...