Word: yenta
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...affability, Lies is not a very effective work. The courtyard's population, for example, is a very predictable one. David's mother is long-suffering, the neighbors familiar stereotypes from a hundred warm-spirited recollections of ghetto life−a scholarly revolutionist, a troublemaking yenta, a feisty and good-spirited whore. The minute we meet them, we can call the turns they will eventually do, just as we know, almost from the film's first minute, that Grandfather will die before it ends...
...that small Minneapolis apartment house. Valerie Harper's character is now taking up a life of her own in a show of her own in her native New York City. Naturally, since her last name is Morgenstern, Rhoda has a Jewish mother (Nancy Walker) who is a classic yenta. "So how come you're not wearing a bra?" she says to her returning daughter. "Ma, I'm 33 years old." "All the more reason," comes the topper. As a character, Rhoda's ma may be predictable, but good, realistic, almost earthy comedy writing on television...
...partisans know her as a raucously passionate crusader for minority rights, Women's Lib and the antiwar movement, a truculent and courageous woman. To the less friendly, she comes on as a sumo liberal, a lady wrestler, Joan of Arc resurrected as an elemental yenta. No one, friend or enemy, denies that Bella Abzug has a certain presence...
Darcy Pulliam as Mrs. Brice and Kevin Cotter as Fanny's toe-tapping friend Eddie Ryan are delightful in two minor numbers, "Who Taught Her Everything," and "Find Yourself a Man," Cotter has the best voice in the cast. My favorite character has always been the neighborhood yenta Mrs. Strakosh, Eva Piques, who inherited this gem, has read either not enough or too much Philip Roth. She swallowed some of her best lines (especially "When a girl's incidentals are no bigger than two lentils, then to me that doesn't spell success."). For this I waited...