Word: wits
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Stephen V.N. Powelson '38, former CRIMSON editor and noted Leverett House wit, last night drove to Cambridge from New York to eat his seventh annual free meal at the Freshman reception in the Union...
...since the Battle of Oran (see p. 22). "What has been done with almost boyish spontaneity this week is . . . one of the most far-reaching commitments in world history," wrote the sober New Statesman and Nation after the deal was announced. "It wants no abnormal quickness of wit to see the implications in this week's arrangement, and we must assume that both the Foreign Office and the State Department have seen them. For our part, we are content that it should be so. We are then brothers in arms, in war, as in peace, for a century...
Ever since the regime of Madero, comedians below the Rio Grande have savagely sniped at pompous Mexican politicos. Famed is Comic Roberto Soto for his feat of kidding Calles' Labor Boss Luis Morones out of office. An oldster now, Soto's wit is not so sharp as it used to be, and he has been supplanted in favor by a thin, big-eyed, loose-jointed youngster of 28, who was christened Mario Moreno, is known throughout Mexico today as Cantinflas...
Peculiar to this century is a form of wit inadequately known as screwball. Its method is free association; its state of mind is somewhere between a power dive and a tail spin. It has close affinity with hot jazz, surrealist painting and the deranged poetry of Rimbaud. It calls for an exquisite sense of cliche and mimicry, and a nihilism which delights in knocking over-crystallized words, objects and gestures into glassy pieces that cut each other. Most advanced living practitioner of this form of wit is James Joyce. Perhaps quite as richly gifted in it, if far more inhibited...
...Darcy, the wit and spirit of Elizabeth Bennet (Greer Garson) eclipse the distressing machinations of Mrs. Bennet (Mary Boland) in her search for rich husbands for her five marriageable daughters. He breaks up an unsuitable affair between Elizabeth's sister and his friend Mr. Bingley, then with an air of misfortune announces that he is willing to make an unsuitable match himself. At which point, Austenites recall, Elizabeth gives him his comeuppance. Before Darcy's pride and Elizabeth's prejudice give way, some ob servers may find the going a little lacy...