Word: book
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Fiorello! (book by Jerome Weidman and George Abbott; music and lyrics by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick). Despite an exclamation point that gives it the look of an Italian war cry, Fiorello! matches up with La Guardia, telling the story of New York City's Little Flower from the time he first ran for Congress until his second and successful bid for mayor. The irascibly humane fighting gamecock, whose career, as a matter of fact, has something of the air of a war cry, displays in the theater, as he did on the platform, a naturally theatrical personality...
...straight-shooting Weidman-Abbott book weaves deftly in and out of the song numbers, and the lower they descend for their theme, the higher they mount in effectiveness. The boys in the back room are amusingly kidded in a lilting Politics and Poker; graft is hilariously drubbed in a dittylike Little Tin Box. Even more zipful are a pair of production numbers, a rousing electioneering street dance, and a fine 1920s high-kicking chorus line...
...ticklish consequences are analyzed by the Rev. Neil G. McCluskey, education editor of America, in a quietly reasoned new book, Catholic Viewpoint on Education (Hanover House; $3.50). In the past 60 years, Catholic parochial schools have more than quintupled their enrollment, become the nation's fastest-growing educational system. Last year they enrolled 4,900,000 students, about 14% of all U.S. schoolchildren (and as many as 60% in strongly Catholic communities). The future is clear: roughly 30% of all U.S. babies are born to Roman Catholic families. But parochial schools get no direct tax support: the First Amendment...
...Infidel (20th Century-Fox) takes its title and its central situation from Gerold Frank's bestselling biography (TIME, Nov. 24, 1958) of Hollywood Gossipist Sheilah Graham, who was F. Scott Fitzgerald's girl friend during the last sad years of his life as a Hollywood hack. The book pretended, with some authority, to be the hard, straight stuff-novelist on the rocks. But Producer Jerry (The Best of Everything) Wald decided that the stuff was too strong for the customers he was after, and he attempted to water the old Fitzgerald down and sweeten it up. The result...
...little community of Indian Israelites knew nothing of their Scriptures until 1819, when U.S. Christian missionaries published a translation of the Book of Genesis into Marathi, the language of the Hindus among whom the Jews lived. And it was only in the 19th century that the British recognized them as a separate community...