Word: ad-lib
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...vaudeville is the key to Hope, even though he has recently had the lock changed. He is first & foremost a gag man, with a gag man's brash ability to keep moving, ad-lib, hit back; above all, with a gag man's sense of timing. Says Hope: "I was born with timing and coordination." Artistically he was born with little else-no special trick of speech, gift of pantomime, sense of character. Quite inartistically, indeed, he was born with a kind of strenuous averageness-which paradoxically managed to set him apart...
Shipwrecked on Hollywood's fixed idea of the North African desert, still unchanged since the days of Rudolph Valentino and E. M. Hull, Hope and Crosby ad-lib their way to a native village ruled over by Princess Lamour who retains the pleasant knack of looking undressed even when fully clothed. Already betrothed to a native sheik (Anthony Quinn), Lamour gives her affections first to Hope, then to Crosby. Tribesman Quinn's desire for revenge touches off the Keystone excitement. Chief difference between Road to Morocco and its predecessors is that Hope also gets a girl...
Jimmy Durante's methodical performance, on the other hand, lacks the zest and originality of his usual ad-lib burlesque. Ilka Chase, also prominent in the comedy sequences, carries off one of the show's funniest scenes with Durante and Bolger in "Rhett, Scarlett, and Ashley." Typical crack out of the mouth of academy award winner, "Scarlett O'Leigh" is: "Mr. Selznick made me--he made me over night...
...details, and on an infallible ear for the rhythm of conversation. He will rehearse a play for 15 minutes without looking at the stage, only listening to the dialogue. Suddenly he will call a halt, take out one word which interrupts the flow. No actor has ever managed to ad-lib even a syllable into his lines without Kaufman's spotting...