Eugene David ...The One-Minute Pundit |
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Monday, March 24, 2003
I can think of a lot of past sensations that are unreadable, unwatchable, and unlistenable today. (It goes without saying that Frank Rich will always be unreadable.)
Does anyone here remember the number-two best seller of 1924 -- The Plastic Age? A raging satire of collegiate life, "critically-acclaimed." Scarcely years after it was published its author, Percy Marks (who was forced to quit from Brown University because of it) wrote to a fan saying his book was unreadable. I read it. It's unreadable. P. S. The film version the following year starred the adorable It Girl, Clara Bow -- the most popular female film star of her age. Just thirty-three years later Oscar Hammerstein 2nd wrote this lyric for Flower Drum Song: Tonight on TV's Late Late Show, You can look at Clara Bow! to which the chorus yells, "WHO?!?!?" One other note: in Clara Bow's heyday he wrote a lyric for one of Sigmund Romberg's operettas, The Desert Song, called "It."
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