I'll never look at a crooked vegetable the same way ever again...
My previous Depression Lesson salutes Sterling Holloway, whose name mixes the silver standard and the way of the hollow sounding ones—with whom, if we stop identifying, we must be damned. "Hail the Misshapen!" bawl Talkies, with character actors like Vince Barnett.
Each tooth getting into mischief, telling its own story.
Lesson 13 commences a belated celebration of Barnett's underbite and baked beans grin, without which our comprehension of the 1930s would wander. Minus a set of handy metaphors. His dental problems spell penury, guile, moral imbecility, and "no respect for human life." He'd cut your face off for a nickel.
Barnett went by endless sobriquets—"Windy,""Snitz," "Soupmeat," "Peppo"—in countless programmers that mimicked inglorious times with cheap bliss and penny-pinching delectation. While Sterling Holloway schlumps gentle into that good night, Vince Barnett's teeth refuse, somehow managing to abide.
His bridgework is a bouquet to ruin, our national thud.
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Part of our on-going series Depression Lessons.