Silver screen actress known as British Bombshell / SAT 9-27-20 / Philippine port with reduplicative name / Bony projection found just behind ear / Father of Anne Frank / So-called Pearl of the Black Sea

Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (not sure why, but it played really slow, esp at first) (~12:00?!)

THEME:"Playing with Food"— four themers have circled squares that contain food items; four other themers are actually cryptic clues that explain why the food in the other formers is presented the way that it is:

Theme answers:

• BANK OF GUYANA (24A: South American financial institution since 1965)
• T(O LIVE) AND DIE IN L.A. (31A: 1985 thriller with the tagline "A federal agent is dead. A killer is loose, And the City of Angels is about to explode.") 
• [2D: TV host with two Peabodys (JOHN OLIVER)]
• BASEBALL CARD (49A: Collectible item with stats)
• FOOT PATROL (59A: Elements of neighborhood watch programs)
• -----
• BANANA SPLIT (72A: Food depicted cryptically at 24-Across)
• STUFFED OLIVE (78: Food depicted cryptically at 31-Across)
• CHOPPED SALAD (98A: Food depicted cryptically at 49-Across)
• MASHED POTATO (106A: Food depicted cryptically at 59-Across)

Word of the Day: MASTOID (67D: Bony projection found just behind the ear) —

1: being the process of the temporal bone behind the earalso : being any of several bony elements that occupy a similar position in the skull of lower vertebrates

2: of, relating to, or occurring in the region of the mastoid process (merriam-webster.com)

Today is my 17th wedding anniversary. Glad I solved this on Saturday evening so it didn't tarnish this otherwise joyous day with its particular blend of oldness and sadness. I don't understand even accepting this puzzle. This type of (very rudimentary) wordplay is the stuff of last century. The "salad" isn't even "chopped" evenly. And is anagramming really a good example of "mashing"? And all the cryptic-clue themers, once you get to them, are totally anti-climactic. It's just belated groan after belated groan. Not even groan. Groan would imply that the answer was at least surprising enough to merit an eye-roll. But all these punny cryptic-clue themers are more afterthoughts than revelations. "Oh, yeah, I guess that is what is happening in those circled squares. Huh. OK." Just cornball "humor." There are no good, exciting, interesting, current answers in the entirety of this 21x21 grid. What passes for "colloquial" dialogue in some of the fill feels awfully forced ("OH I DUNNO,""I S'POSE," [grimace]). I think I like I.T. BAND, in that it is a real thing, and a real (tight) issue for many people. But I DARE SAY there's nothing else here to really cheer for. And so much wasted real estate. The whole eastern chunk, for instance—three 7s all line up alongside each other ... and all of them mere filler (super-common letters, boring answers). The worst thing about the theme is the idea that anyone should know what the BANK OF GUYANA is. What in the world? Are all the random banks of the world just fair game now? Awful. And on top of all that, the puzzle played hard, which makes me even more resentful. If I gotta work for something, it should be worth it. But this was just a grind. And a letdown.