Evelyn Toynton

Evelyn Toynton’s most recent book is Jackson Pollock, published by Yale.

Letter

If-sniff-terrif

1 April 2021

Cole Porter’s rhymes in ‘I get a kick out of you’ were not originally if-whiff-terrif, as Michael Wood has it (LRB, 1 April), but if-sniff-terrif: ‘perfume from Spain’ had to be substituted for ‘cocaine’ in the film version of Anything Goes in order to avoid trouble with the censors. As first written by Porter, and as sung on Broadway, the lines in question went: ‘Some get a kick from...

Diary: Weekly Drills

Evelyn Toynton, 13 September 2018

In the​ 1950s, at the height of the Cold War, my New York City primary school, like every other school in the city, held weekly practice drills to prepare us for being bombed by the Russians. The drill, which immediately followed the pledge of allegiance to the flag, consisted of us all crouching under our desks for ten minutes, though it was understood that if an atomic bomb were dropped...

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