Word: perelman
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LISTEN TO THE MOCKING BIRD (153 pp.) -S. J. Perelman-Simon & Schuster...
...Touch of Venus (Universal-International) is a free movie translation of the sprightly Broadway musical written by Ogden Nash and S. J. Perelman* (TIME, Oct. 18, 1943). When a pretty statue (Ava Gardner) is imported into a department store as a publicity stunt, a kiss from a shy window decorator (Robert Walker) melts the cold marble into ardent flesh. The living Venus has arms and some interesting ideas about using them. Her timid swain is mainly interested in 1) persuading her to go back to work as an objet d'art, and 2) placating his landlady, his girl...
...Aboard. Numbed by "the dull ache of parting with my creditors," Traveler Perelman took off from New York carrying a machete, cummerbunds, maps, and "an apparatus for distilling seawater." First stop was a world-famous shrine in Camden, N.J. named Joe's Coffee Pot, where the plane was grounded. Second stop was Hollywood, where Traveler Perelman had scrimped a living in the '30s. " 'I'd rather be embalmed here than any place I know,' [Hirschfeld] said slowly. He turned up the collar of his trench coat and lit a cigarette, and in the flare...
...Chinese port of Chinwangtao, where the Marine Flier paused to unload 2,500 tons of girdles ("the engine-room bell was clanging . . . he may have said girders"). "Every sort of object imaginable was being offered by street hawkers . . . noodles, poodles . . . leeches, breeches, peaches . . . roots, boots, flutes, coats, shoats, stoats." Perelman tossed the children "a few worn gold pieces which were of no further use to me," and then he and Hirschfeld took a brief ride in rickshas...
...Farewell. The travelers moved on via gay Shanghai (where, after celebrating, Perelman next day could swallow nothing but "a little clear broth made of Angostura, lemon peel, and bourbon"), the Malay States, and Ceylon. "The last we saw of India . . . was a wizened beggar signaling us frantically for baksheesh. When none was forthcoming, he threw aside his servile manner and, bounding beside our porthole, dynamically thumbed his nose at us until we outdistanced him. It was a touching, and somehow an apt, symbol of the amity between our two great nations...