Word: underworld
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...relief levy" met with a chilly response from such men as Tu Yueh-sheng, Shanghai's richest and most powerful citizen, who sits on the boards of 44 business enterprises and eight benevolent associations. Tu, who got his start as the Al Capone of the city's underworld, didn't want to give anything at first. After Shanghai's Mayor K. C. Wu threatened to publish the names of wealthy nongivers, Tu pledged $2,000. Most other "givers" were even more niggardly. Last week, after 5½ months of wheedling and pressure, less than half...
This nostalgia for life below the level of the brain explains why so sensitive, religious a man as Graham Greene is preoccupied almost exclusively with the physical and spiritual underworld. Born in 1904 (his father was headmaster of Berkhampstead School, Robert Louis Stevenson was a distant relation), bookish, retiring young Greene finished his education at Oxford's scholarly Balliol College. After that he ran through a succession of newspaper jobs, plugged away at his novels in his spare time. The Man Within, the first book he thought good enough to submit, so delighted the publishing house of Heinemann that...
Playing a blackmailer south of the border, Montgomery clips his words and blanks his stares whenever possible. Funny business is the theme, and six grand is the pay-off. A carnival and merry-go-round provide a unique backdrop for the routine slug-fest that Hollywood associates with the underworld; and despite some stereotyped aspects, the story has few lapses. Montgomery dead-pans adequately and playing opposite is Wanda Hendrix who does her best to appear Mexican and inscrutable, providing good contrast for the know-it-all Montgomery...
Kiss of Death is the story of a burglar named Nick Bianco (Victor Mature), and of the difficulties he encounters first as a criminal, then in trying to extricate himself from the underworld. Nick is paroled from Sing Sing when his wife's suicide, his love for his small daughters, and a partner's treachery cause him to turn state's evidence. Thereafter he belongs, body & soul, to Assistant District Attorney D'Angelo (Brian Donlevy). His liberty depends on his cooperativeness as a stool pigeon. His life, and the safety of his children and his second...
Footpads, pickpockets and housebreakers, with all the riffraff who lived by their wits, filled the underworld of London's alleys and gin shops with an argot of which traces still survive. "Frisking" meant searching, then as now. A watch was a "tick," a handkerchief was a "wipe," and "wipe priggers" (pickpockets) flourished among theater standees. A glass of gin was a "flash of lightning',, and too many flashes often lit the way to "Tuck 'em Fair" (the place of execution...