Word: witlessness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
LAUREL AND HARDY'S LAUGHING 20'S. Witless innocence runs amuck in excerpts from the silent classics of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, assembled with hilarious results by Cinema Anthologist Robert Youngson...
...genius of Chaplin's tramp or of Keaton's mote in the eye of an incomprehensible universe lay beyond the range of Laurel and Hardy. But they were lovable caricatures of the dolt in Everyman, a bow and fiddle striking delightfully dissonant chords in a mad world. Witless innocence was their hallmark. It purifies even a 20's sequence in which they are pursued, clad in underdrawers, by a pair of gorgon wives toting a shotgun to avenge some fancied infidelity-as they round the corner of an apartment house, a shotgun blast brings dozens...
...good word for the shark. On any coastline, the cry "Shark!" is guaranteed to produce 1) instant panic in the local chamber of commerce, and 2) a sudden boom in swimming-pool sales. Sailors blaze away at passing sharks with rifles and shotguns, ichthyologists denounce them as witless garbage disposals, and many a fisherman disgustedly reels in his bait at the first glimpse of a triangular dorsal fin slicing the surface...
...December a seven-man emergency committee was elected by the faculty to serve as spokesman before the California Board of Regents. In an evident spirit of compromise, the committee's chairman, Arthur M. Ross said he saw nothing against student rallies, but referred to sit-ina and boycotts as "witless activity...
...words he had been saying since 1927 were. 'Evil, be thou my good.' But he would not open his eyes or unstop his ears, and he stood fast and chose damnation." This makes HawHaw sound like Faust, when he was actually a miserable, shabby, bewildered, compulsive, witless and pathetic little fellow...