Word: tritely
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...living. Nash does most of his writing, however, in the guise of a sensitive prune. He speaks for the cartoon 20th-century American male-the subway-ridden goofus whose personality is deeply engraved on his cigaret lighter, and whose most ambitious ethical concept is "if it's trite, it's right." Nash knows his American civilization, and he can write about it like an efficiency expert in baggy pants. His light verse is a remarkable rhetorical invention. Where McCord, a traditionalist, makes his words walk a tightrope of perfect succinctness, Nash makes his walk a slack rope...
...spring show Idler made the poor choice of Ferenc Molnar's "The Swan." The play was trite and had all the essences of a dull evening. Yet it made a very amusing three hours for a small audience, perhaps unintentionally. The sets, acting, and make-up were all so bad that the play turned into a side-splitting farce. Obviously the actors were unfamiliar with their parts and the stage furniture. They were even more unknown to themselves, especially in the love scenes. At every possible moment something went wrong. Shoulder-straps slipped, chairs threatened to break, and men stood...
...Bobby himself would be worth listening to if he were fronting the bagpipe contingent of the Cameron Highlanders. Besides this, when the band plays a "jump" tune, you can be sure it's nothing like the inneouous riff numbers which have been giving too many orchestras a trite style, and which have hampered any attempts at musical individually...
...commissioned him to do their portraits, he painted them, not as they would like to look, but as they really were: droopy, anemic cuckolds, smug gangsters, smirking strumpets. He etched bloated priests abusing women and embracing money bags, barely escaped the ire of the Inquisition by labeling them with trite moral maxims. On the walls of churches he gave angels the faces of well-known prostitutes, growling as he did so: "I will cause the faithful to worship vice." He painted bag-bellied Queen Maria Luisa as a superannuated barmaid, made her portraits glow with the oily iridescence of decay...
Amorous waywardness is always trite enough in outline, but life usually fills in the outlines with subtle erotic shadings. So does Molnar. Edna Best is so plumply and seductively feminine as the wife that her unwanted virtue seems a shame. Jay Fassett, the heavy and harassed husband, is a fine figure of a man. But the show is nearly stolen by Harry Gribbon, a former Keystone cop, carrying on as a police officer. In the end Molnar the craftsman almost triumphs over Molnar the trifler's failings...