Word: claptrap
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...mechanistic] theory is . . . bankrupt. It has, in fact, ceased to interest physiologists in recent times. . . . One often meets the statement . . . that scientific physiology is progressively revealing the mechanism of life. In the light of actual progress this is quite untrue, and can only be described as claptrap. . . . Science brings us to a point at which we require more than Science." Biologist Haldane takes philosophy seriously. To him, philosophy is only another word for religion. But orthodox religion will not find much in common with such statements as this: "Belief of any kind in what is supernatural seems...
...stored negatives were burned up, but that was all. Assured that burning cinema film breeds no such dreadful gases as X-ray negatives did in the Cleveland Clinic last spring (TIME, May 27), searchers opened the hot door, entered the vaults, found the vintages of romance, adventure and claptrap, safe on their racks...
...between children and their stepmothers is apt to be complicated. The word "stepmother" itself implies so familiar and important a dramatic situation that it is hard to understand how even the most garbled reproduction of it could be wholly untrue. Only by ignoring his real material in favor of claptrap borrowed from other pictures has Director Erie Kenton been able to remove all traces of reality from this story which is told in gasps of silence and badly recorded, preposterously written dialog...
...Salzburg. Mozart wrote it in less than a fortnight, when he was 26. Toscanini himself lost 35 of his 61 years when he led it, gave it exceeding grace and innocence. Second was a manuscript performance of Respighi's Roman Festivals, music that would be perilously close to claptrap if done by any other. But Toscanini found something real and savage in all the din of the Circus Maximus episode. Lions roared. Christians sang their martyr songs. Part of it would make excellent accompaniment for a Griffith cinema with its bells and serenades and saltarellos, but Toscanini made...
...Ibscentennial, comparisons and contrasts were inevitable. For example: Eva Le Galliénne's figure is lissom; it permits her to play Peter Pan. It is im portant and eloquent in the theatre; she and her Civic Repertory Theatre en able the penurious to see good plays, no claptrap. Of more importance in the specific case of Hedda Gabler, her figure has no voluptuousness to soften the cruelty of the character. She can wear with grace the smock-like robe pre scribed by Ibsen, Never without a cigaret, the Le Galliénne Hedda is bored but thinly vital...