Word: tynan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...year after he came down to London from Oxford's Magdalen College, Kenneth Tynan wrote: "I work on the assumption that I'll be dead at 30. That gives me eight years to do all the things I want to do." Tynan was determined "to become Britain's first postwar myth...
...road to mythology in Tynan's case was paved, perhaps improbably, with theater reviews. But he succeeded magnificently. Now 27, and with a full three years of life left, he has already written three books (on the theater and its personalities), moved from Lord Beaverbrook's Evening Standard (which called him "the greatest theater critic since Shaw") to the tabloid Daily Sketch (which billed him as "the liveliest writer of the day"). In August, Tynan becomes drama critic for the Sunday Observer (circ. 475,609), roughly the equivalent of the New York Times job now held by Brooks...
Nakedly Plain. Tynan's rule for drama criticism: "Rouse tempers, goad, lacerate, raise whirlwinds." He carries out the rules with a vengeance, writing in a rich, sometimes overripe style ("My stylistic father is Horizon, my mother Vogue"). "With men who know rococo best," says one of his more cynical American admirers, "it's Tynan two to one." He has an unerring eye for the sorest point, whether it be an actress' weight or her unpleasing hands. After seeing Britain's venerated Dame Edith Evans play Shakespeare's Cleopatra, he wrote: "Bereft of fan, lace...
...Tynan's enthusiasms are as strong as his dislikes. Recently, after he met Greta Garbo for the first time, he wrote: "What, when drunk, one sees in other women, one sees in Garbo sober." Tynan sees little to respect in fellow reviewers. Drama critics, he wrote, can be divided into two groups: "The boozed eulogists at one extreme, at the other the starved, fasting mockers. They are drawn from the long and once respectable ranks of the nearly brilliant and they address themselves . . . to the suburban fortresses of semi-culture...
Small Cafe. In London, as in Hollywood, no one can quite figure the girl out. One friend, Critic Ken Tynan, says that every time Claire has worked in a play, "all the women have mothered her and all the leading men have tried to make her." But anyone who tries to get too close finds Claire elusive. Her chief social activity is going home to mother. The Blooms live in a tiny three-room flat. The largest bedroom is Claire's, and a smaller one is reserved for her 18-year-old brother John when he is on vacation...