Word: tosspot
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...constable one night last week heard a cheerio voice propose: "Come on, let's have one for the road." His duty was clear. He routed out the publican, haled him before a magistrate. But the laugh was on the constable. The voice from within was no after-closing tosspot's, it was Lord Haw-Haw of Zeesen, No. 1 Nazi propagandist to Britons, tossing off a Briticism over short-wave radio...
...viola that was around the house. His father, who was himself a disappointed viola player, strongly objected, set little William to practicing the violin instead. But William never forgot the charms of the forbidden viola. Years later, in Brussels, when his teacher, the late great violinist and tosspot Eugene YsaŸe, told William he had special aptitude for the viola, he switched to it for life. In 1937, when NBC officials were recruiting their new NBC Symphony, they heard a phonograph record of Violist Primrose playing a Paganini caprice. Never had they heard or heard tell of such fast...
Carl Bellman was an amiable, unpractical tosspot who spent most of his life in government sinecures, under the patronage of art-loving, fun-loving King Gustavus III. When the King was murdered. Bellman lost his last job, was put in debtors' prison, got out just in time for a last party before he died. Bellman played the lute, consciously or unconsciously drew upon Bach, Mozart, Scarlatti for melodies. He seldom wrote a song down, let his friends transcribe, collect and publish part of his output. The "Last of the Troubadours" sang of tavern life, of trips to the country...
...much for the tempers of hardworking Paris artists, tired of tales of their amorality, was publication in Paris-Soir of a lurid Life & Love of Maurice Utrillo. Sad-eyed, lanky Artist Utrillo got a tosspot reputation in his youth, produced, nevertheless, many serious and hauntingly gifted paintings, and for at least ten years has been sober as a church. The Life & Love was accordingly branded "A tissue of lies, calumnies and erroneous or tendentious information" in a manifesto issued by 54 furious artists and critics, including such noted names as Derain, Picasso, Kisling...
...Gilbert Miller and Herman Shumlin, producers). When the recorder of Torozko, Rumania, looks up the birth credentials of the village belle, he finds that she is not, as she thinks, the daughter of Catholic peasants but a Jewish foundling. Klari (Jean Arthur) promptly breaks her engagement to the village tosspot, goes to live with a kindly old Hebrew publican (Sam Jaffe), learns to like the Talmud. The town recorder looks into the matter further and discovers that Klari is neither Jew nor Catholic but a Protestant foundling. She shuts the Talmud and reopens her engagement...