Word: wits
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Dates: during 1950-1950
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...publication of Red Smith's collected columns, Out of the Red (Knopf; $3), readers who skip the sport pages can see the reasons for all this praise. Like almost any collection of newspaper columns, Out of the Red sounds slightly dated. But Smith's easy style, dry wit, fresh imagery, and casual approach to big & little figures of sport make even year-old columns pretty good reading...
...first sentence, Mr. Kemler sees Mencken as a "Rabelais, Swift, or Shaw--who has somehow abused his gifts." Mr. Kemler fails to make his case for this comparison. His book is a humdrum piece of writing, devoid of wit and the dramatic flair necessary for a biography...
...London's zooming Christopher Fry to reach Broadway made news twice last week: first because it opened, then because it closed. A Phoenix Too Frequent was a poor choice for a debut: from the briefest of short stories, Fry had made a very long one-act play. The wit and poetry that glow brightly in his The Lady's Not For Burning (TIME, April 24) merely glint and flicker in Phoenix. But on Broadway Phoenix was as much victim as culprit: it was badly produced, and had to share the billing with something very bad indeed...
...propulsion was supplied by Groucho's trademarked wit, which tends to ricochet off the commonplace and explode in star shells of mutual misunderstanding. Beginning with a casual question about the contestant's background, Groucho is soon off in a blaze of barbed and ribald non sequiturs. "And do you have any little thieves at home?" he once asked a baseball umpire. Introducing a dealer in war surplus, he inquired solicitously: "How many times have you been indicted?" Learning from a dress designer that women dress for themselves, he observed with a happy leer: "If they dressed...
...Truth. Sol Levitas, who has been executive editor of the New Leader since 1930, is a slight, mustached man with a melancholy air and beseeching eyes, enough patience to sit for hours over a chessboard or fishing line, and enough ready wit to cajole or browbeat articles out of reluctant writers. Whenever they are so bold as to bring up the subject of money, Levitas tartly replies: "Don't expect to profit from the truth." To help pay for printing what he considers the truth, Levitas periodically wangles sizable cash contributions from sympathetic conservatives and such labor leaders...