In real life, a sad sack was a miserable person.

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She does this now rather than ferry her doddering mother (a feisty Frances Sternhagen) to the grocery story or chitchat with her husband (a sad sack John Ellison Conlee) or hover over her daughter (a solid Phoebe Strole).

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For Robert Kraft it all started in 1971 on the cold, hard metal benches of a sad-sack football stadium in Foxboro, Mass.

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The Cardinals also let Whisenhunt go on Black Monday, Dec. 31, cutting ties with the winningest coach in franchise history and the one who helped resurrected a sad-sack franchise.

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The story, set in Lisbon, concerns Eloi (Henrique Canto e Castro), a paunchy middle-aged man, who finds Samuel (Dinis Neto Jorge), a young sad sack, about to kill himself by plunging into the sea.

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So how exactly does a bank make a buck with such a host of sad sack offerings?

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The sad-sack Harold becomes a bit of a lush, but he joins AA and gets a handle on it.

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Man is an existential sad sack who instinctively sets up a game of hide-and-seek with the audience.

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In the popular World War II cartoon strip The Sad Sack, the character was a naive, confused, lazy, bumbling private, but happy enough and almost lovable.

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So we then experienced a parade of heroic would-be whistleblowers and sad sack employees whose 401(k)s were now so much confetti.

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As Yelena, the seductive young wife of a pompous older professor, Ms Blanchett bewitches both the sad-sack Vanya (Richard Roxburgh) and the rakish doctor Astrov (Hugo Weaving).

ECONOMIST: Two excellent productions of an enduring play