Word: vacuous
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Aware that somewhat vacuous Ambassador Harriman needed all the help he could get, the State Department reinforced him with its No. 1 expert on Poland, chubby Elbridge Durbrow, who left Washington for Moscow last fortnight. Young (41), capable Mr. Durbrow is no diplomatic giant, but he knows Poland and he understands the Russians...
Inspired Vacuity. The Phaidon Velazquez reproduces 13 of the painter's immortalizations of his royal master's vacuous stare, massy chin and handlebar mustachios which at night he kept in perfumed leather cases. There is also an inspired side show of infantas, royal dwarfs, idiots, buffoons and a little gallery of Velazquez' early, almost photographic genre pictures done in his precourt days when Velazquez used to brag: "I would rather be the first of the vulgar painters than the second of the refined ones." In strong contrast are a number of the passionless religious paintings of which...
...inmate of one of the largest penitentiaries in the world, San Quentin. A horrible prison, through which one sees a stream of faces; solemn, accusing faces, and vacuous, prying faces that twitch and slobber in thrill-sated ecstasy at sight of one who still professes his patriotism...
...director, Sturges converted this unpretentious plot into a happy, slightly noisy comedy with a Chaplinesque background of pathos. He ably remodeled Powell from the vacuous crooner of Warner Brothers musicals into a convincing prototype of a drudge with a dream of sudden wealth with which he can buy his mother a convertible settee and his girl a fancy wedding. Pale-faced, canyon-mouthed Ellen Drew, a onetime Hollywood soda clerk, was coached into a realistic likeness of a sugary, $18-a-week stenographer. A good dramatist, Sturges kept his characters credible by the simple but neglected technique of letting them...
...Wall, 77, began to write (entirely from memory) his memoirs. When he died last spring they were still unpublished. This week they were published under the title Neither Pest Nor Puritan. To read them was like reading a Proustian novel written not by Proust, but by one of his vacuous, arrogant characters...