Word: villainized
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Sacred Idol. Was business the villain? Despite manufacturers' pleas of higher production costs, of less-than-full production, many companies showed lush profits for 1946 and the first quarter of 1947 (although many were operating on dangerously thin profit margins). Business had answered the President's plea for voluntary price reductions with piddling action to date. The C.I.O.'s Phil Murray accused industrialists of "actual racketeering" and "organized robbery...
...play's average American hero is Smith, a newspaperman. The average American villain is his employer, a publisher named Charles MacPherson, who is a mixed incarnation of Hearst, McCormick and Rasputin. He sends little Harry Smith to Moscow with orders to write a book on ten reasons why the Russians want war. However, relates Hero Smith: "In Russia I became ashamed of myself-of all us people who dish up poison to Americans with their breakfast every morning." Result: Smith returns with a book on ten reasons why the Russians don't want war, and is promptly fired...
...customary in Boston, there is another picture on the evening's program, and, strangely enough, it isn't bad at all. Called "Blind Spot" and featuring Chester Morris, it is a psychological murder mystery of unusual quality, at least for the B-picture category. Although the villain's identity is hardly much of a secret after the first reel, dialogue, direction, and photography must place "Blind Spot" far, far above the great majority of its class--better, perhaps, than a good number that pass as first-run productions in these lean times...
...Columbia University's dental college, Dentist Daniel Ziskin has decided that concentrated lemon and grapefruit juice, both highly acid, do indeed soften tooth enamel. (Orange juice, less acid, seems to be safe.) But acid is not the only villain. The real damage is done by brushing acid-softened teeth with a stiff brush or gritty dentifrices. If not followed by too vigorous brushing, drinking diluted citrus juices once a day is perfectly all right, says Ziskin...
Robert Cummings and Michele Morgan are a wooden and rather uninteresting pair of principals, and as a minor villain Peter Lorre plays another in a long line of roles which, in retrospect, seem all about the same. As chief heavy, a newcomer named Steve Cochran does little but scowl menacingly, in a picture wherein action moves at the pace of a snail and suspense is kept down to a minimum...