The Press: Such Language

To the editors of Lord Beaverbrook's London Daily Express, the six-month trial run of Steve Canyon had been quite a trial. Steve had been a problem to the 3,870,000 readers of the Express, too. Milton Caniff's comic-strip airline operator was a likable enough chap, but how was one to understand him without a pony? Even to inveterate followers of the U.S. cinema, such terms as "leg it," "front boy," "Hood" and "gee" were hard to translate. Express editors, who have had to doctor much of the Canyon dialogue for British readers, were nonplussed by "Delta and I will go out and...

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