Word: hoax
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Turbulent, Turgid. As an elaborate gag, Shepherd began booming last month a purely imaginary historical novel-a "turbulent, turgid, tempestuous" composite of "Frank Yerby, Kathleen Windsor and Norman Vincent Peale." The book was first conceived as a hoax to shatter the faith of day people in their own "book lists." Shepherd urged fans to canvass shops for the nonexistent title I, Libertine, ascribed to "nonauthor than" Frederick R. Ewing, "well-remembered for his BBC talks" on 18th century erotica. By noon next day, one Manhattan store had received some 30 orders. The title mysteriously appeared on Boston's list...
...contain his laughter at and contempt for Stalin's military genius. Of the historical and military films of Stalin he says that 'they make us sick.' The snag is that on those films, on those books, on those poems there was organized the most vast propaganda hoax in the memory of the world...
...against a table; she retaliates by belting him with a vase and breaking a chair over his head. While the salesman, cowering over his vacuum-cleaner attachments, quavers: "You shouldn't do that!" husband and wife batter each other around the room. Jovial M.C. Jack Bailey explains the hoax: the husband and wife are Hollywood stunt players; the smashed furniture consists of harmless "break away" props-and, while the audience howls, the vacuum salesman is congratulated on being a good sport...
...best measure of last week's tele vision is that Truth or Consequences' brutal hoax was about the most enter taining item shown. Jack Benny contented himself with a repeat film first shown a year ago; Producer Max Liebman tossed off a lackadaisical show starring Maurice Chevalier, Polly Bergen and Dancer Chita Rivera; Wide, Wide World contributed a go-minute thinly disguised commercial for General Motors with a visit to the automakers' new Technical Center in Detroit...
They would and did, and British intelligence pulled off what was probably the major espionage coup of World War II. Based on the 1954 book by Ewen Montagu (TIME, Feb. 1, 1954), who masterminded the actual hoax, the film is largely faithful to its engrossing true story. Its chief flaw is some romantic embroidery concerning Gloria Grahame, who is done a bad turn both by the scriptwriter and the makeup man (she often looks as if she had been doused in oil for a Channel swim). An extra helping of thrills was also tacked on to make the Nazis seem...