Word: braddock
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Died. Morris ("Whitey") Bimstein, 72, one of prizefighting's great trainers and "cutmen," who in his 50 years in the corner attended the lacerations and bruises of such champions as Gene Tunney, James J. Braddock and Ingemar Johansson; in New York City. There were few who could match Whitey's wizardry with swabs, antiseptics and astringent lotions in the 60 seconds between rounds, as in 1947 when he saved Rocky Graziano from almost certain defeat at the hands of Tony Zale by patching a third-round eye cut that threatened to end the fight...
Consider Benjamin Braddock. Raised in the comfort of an upper-middle class California suburb, sent off to a good school, given all the appurtenances necessary for existence at such a place. (A picture of his college room leaps into mind so readily: KLH, chianti bottle with candle drippings, and all.) He comes home, realizes just what sort of a disgusting life his parents and their friends lead, and is in a quasi-cynical sort or existential agony about it all for several reels of film...
Meanwhile, of course, he continues to live in a manner that would be impossible if it weren't for his parents' sellout, hypocritical, establishment, plastic lives. At the risk of sounding like the Midwestern Methodist I am, every single action of Benjamin Braddock's is that of a spoiled rotten (albeit sensitive, self-deprecating, gentle, all the things you learn to value in a place like Harvard) brat. Not a brat in the old sense of the word, of course, not the overtly selfish sort who demands things and his own way, but the breed that seems to flourish particularly...
...really does growl at him -- on the phone, yet. Twelve years he's been married; twelve years of his live shot to hell. That's why Jack Lemmon is able to make Brubaker so much worthier an object of sympathy (or empathy, depending on your age group) than Benjamin. Braddock stumbles through situations picking up the emotional cost with a sort or moral charge plate...
...Benjamin Braddock, I have only one word...