Word: mel
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...even then the Crusaders seemed about to move. Captain Mel Massucco breaking loose for 25 yards to his own 42. Brian Reynolds' hard tackle jarred the ball-loose, and Art French recovered for the Crimson...
West Point did a bang-up job on Melville Goodwin. It took a small-town druggist's son from Hallowell, N.H. and turned out an officer who seemed to be all guts and resourcefulness. Mel Goodwin proved that in two world wars, first as an infantryman and then as a tanker. Now he was fiftyish, a major general and still going up. But neither West Point nor combat had taught him how to cope with a civilian hazard like Dottie Peale. At 40, Dottie was a rich publisher's widow, beautifully preserved. She was out to land Mel...
...Mel was restless. As Novelist John Marquand puts it in Melville Goodwin, USA: "He was one of those Samsons ready and waiting for some Delilah to give him a haircut, and Dottie Peale was just the one to do it. Melville A. Goodwin was going to get his hair cut, and medals and stars and clusters would not help...
...general see things through together-with Sid anticipating the outcome the first time General Mel turns up in civvies: "He looked like a plump and middle-aged nonentity, whom you might meet at a golf club and immediately forget, and whose face you could not place." The general's Pentagon pals try to break up the affair with Dottie, but they needn't have worked so hard at it. It was never Dottie's idea to live in a cottage with a general turned nonentity. She decides to ditch him, but has the good grace...
...Melville Goodwin, Novelist Marquand's stock does not plummet, but it passes a dividend. His effort to show that Army folk are somehow different from civilians, and stronger on the simpler virtues, falls flat because his examination of Mel never gets beyond his surface manner. The old Marquand narrative skill is still there, with its painless transitions and smooth flashbacks. The talk is easy and natural, whether the talkers are Pentagon brass or radio tinhorns. But they all seem to be saying the things that better Marquand characters have said before...