Word: razzmatazz
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...entire company. The most problematic is Robert + La Fosse, a New York City Ballet star who moves gloriously but whose facial expression seems limited to a scowl and a simpering grin. Jason Alexander, who serves as narrator and plays seven characters, has wit, charm and the requisite razzmatazz -- his parts in Forum and Fiddler were played by Zero Mostel -- but lacks the star attribute of effortless ease. Yet if Robbins has not unearthed the treasure trove that many hoped for, he still offers a richly illuminated manuscript from the book of Broadway's beloved past...
...idea of the city carried to its frenetic extreme: a few blocks dense with too many lights and too much action, a happy chaos of honky-tonk night life (the Florodora girls, Legs Diamond's Hotsy Totsy Club), theatrical bliss (Barrymore's Hamlet, the Marx Brothers) and the spontaneous razzmatazz of the rialto. There was a civic side as well: Times Square became the natural New York place for jubilation en masse, every New Year's Eve and every time America...
...knack for concocting and consuming entertainments that are quick, vivid, exuberant. Razzmatazz is a plentiful U.S. natural resource, like oil but with no OPEC competitors. Americans are pop-culture vultures, profligate in the money and time they devote to making themselves giggle and choke up on cue, ooh and aah en masse. Why is it that Americans make slick movies and snappy songs and every kind of TV show so relentlessly, so effectively, so -- well, well...
That he gets carried away is part of his appeal, yet his razzmatazz does not charm or convince all listeners. Harvard Sociologist David Riesman finds Iacocca's "showmanship" distasteful. "Somewhere between the excessive caution of most businessmen and the excessive bravado of Iacocca," Riesman says, "there is a position of responsible corporate leadership." A recent article in the New Republic suggests that Iacocca's mythic managerial skills may be seriously overrated. The Wall Street Journal, Iacocca's longtime antagonist, recently called him the "Motor City's most famous motor mouth." On the subject of trade conflicts with the Japanese...
...washes up the Mississippi to St. Louis, maybe. The soul, spirit and stomach of the World's Fair that started its six-month run in New Orleans a week ago is the city itself: brooding and flamboyant, raucous and urbane, devout and dissolute. The fair stirs together the razzmatazz of Mardi Gras, the harmony of New Orleans' elegant old buildings and the French-Spanish-African-Italian-Irish-German-Creole-Cajun gumbo gusto of its everyday, every-night street life. With a generous infusion of pavilions and exhibitions from the rest of the U.S. and 24 other nations...