Word: vernacular
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...clever script, which he adapted from his own television play. Many of his coins go down the drain and others are too bright and shiny for belief; but at his best this writer, who was born and raised in a Jewish-Italian part of The Bronx, can find the vernacular truth and beauty in ordinary lives and feelings. And he can say things about his people that he could never get away with if he were not a member of the family...
...diffident and withdrawn. "He was one of the quiet ones," a college servant recalls. Eden collected modern paintings, walked off with first class honors in Persian and Arabic. On one occasion during World War II, he startled a regiment of Turkish regulars by addressing them in their own vernacular...
...told that some Sicilian words in the lyrics, particularly the word for "cucumber" (spelled phonetically in the lyrics as "jadrool"), had a dirty meaning. Mitch Miller at Columbia Records promptly produced letters from an Italian-American priest and a professor of languages at New York University denying that the vernacular words used in the song "could possibly be construed as offensive to anyone." At week's end Block, still sticking by his ban, explained: "The lyrics are only wrong to people who know dirty, low-down slang. In high-class society, 'jadrool' might just mean knuckle-head...
...that leaves skin burns. He does not keep his story moving, his chapters are episodic, and sometimes he forgets his important people while he enjoys an aside with a minor character. But when his characters talk, it is hard not to listen; all the more because their Australian vernacular is lively and unfamiliar. And the chief characters are something more than made-ups whom Author Gladwin pushes about at will. Gladwin is, in fact, that most hopeful and doubtful kind of writer: a promising first novelist...
...Rose-Todd was in Robin Hood too-and they play the man and maid with a pleasant innocence and archaic grace. Actors Gough and Justice, also in the previous pictures, are admirable swashbucklers both. The local types are nicely interpolated-a red-cheeked Gaelic extra makes such a vivid vernacular dither with a Highland air that she steals a big scene from the lovers...