Word: ad-lib
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Verdict cannot afford star salaries, but many big-name actors ad-lib happily without riches, become convinced of the "truth" that they are relating. Last week Betsy von Furstenberg was on trial for shooting her "husband" on the pretext that she mistook him for a prowler. The prosecuting attorney, in real life Manhattan's Seventh District Assemblyman Daniel Kelly, had built up a damaging case against her. "It all looks very black for us, but wait until I take the stand!" she cried. Verdict's lawyers get just as engaged, lose their tempers in "court," on one occasion...
Oscar discusses his illness, brings his hand to his heart and says: "If I didn't hold it, my heart would fall out." He has a knack for sharp, snide ad-lib remarks on just about anything, including his sponsors: ("Now for the most important, climactic moment of the show-Queen Bee [vitamins], which cures everything, except me"). On Leonard Bernstein: "I don't think as much of him as he does. Lennie has no humor about his egomania. I do." On love: "Because of my attentiveness to other women on the show, my wife told...
What gives Murrow his big edge in prestige and following over his rivals? He does not write so well as his own colleagues Sevareid and Howard K. Smith, or ad-lib with the graceful ease of ABC's John Daly, CBS's Walter Cronkite and Robert Trout, or analyze the news with the pungency of ABC's Quincy Howe. As a reporter, he is not always as knowledgeable as ABC's Edward P. Morgan. Murrow's pontifical superficialities in his pundit's dialogue with Sevareid in CBS's presidential-election coverage last year...
...Minute Labyrinth. Since Texaco became sponsor in 1940, the program has introduced regular intermission features such as Opera News on the Air, Opera Quiz, and Clifton Fadiman's interviews as a roving reporter. Before that, Announcer Cross sometimes had to ad-lib for as long as 35 minutes. "Frantically reaching for ideas," he recalls, "I once described the labyrinth of paths beneath the opera house, then the cellar under the stage where the technicians were located." Another time he "dwelt thoughtfully on the numbers on the railroad cars" in which each singer would travel on tour...
...Ad-Lib Writers. In that tradition, producers try to leave so little to chance that TV has spawned a group of craftsmen who call themselves "audience participation comedy writers.'' Not only do they interview prospective participants and write the ad-lib banter between contestants and M.C.s on such shows as Two for the Money and Edgar Bergen's recently ended Do You Trust Your Wife?, but their lines are carefully rehearsed...