Word: shrewdest
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...They have a keen artistic sense, will not agree to finance a movie and distribute it unless the "package'' is right; i.e., the script, stars, producer and director all fit together. They read 50 to 60 scripts a week, back their artistic judgment with two of the shrewdest business brains in moviemaking...
Nervy Foe. The well-heeled rebel leaders who are financing the bomb throwing like to draw a distinction between themselves and Cuba's political gangsters of the past 25 years. In Batista they have taken on the shrewdest and nerviest veteran of the gun-slinging school. A dirt-poor lad from Oriente province, he painfully acquired the rudiments of an education, carefully plotted and led the "sergeant's revolt" that won out in 1933. He voluntarily relinquished power, a rich man, eleven years later...
Mikoyan, the Kremlin's agile Armenian, has made a career out of guessing right. Among the men who inherited Stalin's tyranny, his is the quickest and sharpest intelligence, and he is the slickest and shrewdest operator. He is the supreme Soviet trader, the one big Bolshevik to show both the talent and the will for business enterprise. As such, he not only organized a $120 billion-a-year retail trade (200 million customers) and a $6.2 billion-a-year overseas business, but in the process achieved an understanding of the wider world of trade and global politics...
Bernice Cozzens is a slight, trim woman with azure blue eyes, brown hair drawn taut in a bun, and a little-girl air of gravity. A passionately liberal Democrat, she is known as one of the shrewdest, scrappiest literary agents (annual income: about $30,000) in Manhattan, handling a stable of topflight authors, including rock-solid Republican James Gould Cozzens. Their childless marriage has been a remarkable success. While he stuck to his writing and made little money from it, she was the real breadwinner. Says Cozzens: "It could have been a humiliating situation, but I guess...
...neighboring kingdom of Cambodia and to a lesser extent even in Diem's own homeland of South Viet Nam, neutralism and anti-Americanism have shown a marked and steady increase during the past 18 months. Bangkok diplomats just smiled when Thai Premier Pibulsonggram, one of the shrewdest politicians in Southeast Asia, observed blandly of Diem's visit: "Politics won't be discussed. This is a state visit." The fact is that, though Pibulsonggram's public statements are often almost embarrassingly pro-American, he and two of his closest political cronies either own or control...