Word: showmanly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Like William Fox, Adolph Zukor, Jesse Lasky, Lewis J. Selznick and the rest of his picturesque competitors, Uncle Carl Laemmle was a brilliant showman. What other qualifications he had to run a major cinema company sometimes seemed mysterious. But for a long time none was necessary. Nepotism, always prevalent in Hollywood, was a fixed tradition at Universal City. On frequent trips to his birth place, Carl Laemmle usually returned with relatives who were promptly placed on Universal's payroll. Many were incompetents. None was discharged. The peak of Universal nepotism came in 1929. Carl Laemmle made his son, Carl...
Died. Jean ("Young Cupid") Patou 47, onetime No. 1 French couturier and style dictator; of an apoplectic stroke; in Paris. A gambler and master showman, who died in poverty, he was the first Paris designer to use U. S. mannequins, in 1923 first re-introduced the long skirt...
From the point of view of vitality, Ben Hecht's stories are only mildly, Kay Boyle's bitterly, alive. A theatrical, rococo writer, Showman Hecht spreads hokum and verbiage with a lavish hand. Most effective in this swollen vein when he writes about the greasepaint dramatics of Broadway or the alcoholic hilarities of fabulous newshawks, at his middling worst he seems a dim shadow of O. Henry or Edgar Allan Poe. Best story in the book (Snowfall in Childhood) stands out like Shirley Temple on the stage of the Grand Guignol: a simply written reminiscence of first love...
Died. Samuel Lionel ("Roxy") Rotha-felf 53, Manhattan showman who, starting as a nickelodeon operator 28 years ago, introduced superspectacle stage shows to U. S. cinema theatres, carried cinemansion magnificence to fabulous Byzantine heights in his own theatre, The Roxy; of a heart attack; in Manhattan. In 1934 he lost his job as manager of Rockefeller Center's theatres...
...loudspeakers blaring, the horns honking, the henchmen cheering, and the political boss who organizes the loudest noise brigade wins the election. For America loves a big noise, and the bigger and noisier, the better they love it. The political boss must be colorful, for America loves a showman. The political boss must be clever, for America loves a juggler. Dazzle the common man, for Honest John Public loves to be dazzled, either with gilded promises or gilded coins, and the brightest dazzler wins...