Word: ballyhooer
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...admixture of good buffoonery, high audacity, bad temper and bad taste appeared on newsstands this week in the form of Editor Norman Anthony's Ballyhoo, ballyhooed as the funny magazine devoid of advertising (TIME, May n). Much of the content was devoted to burlesques of familiar advertising campaigns. Therein lay most of its humor, most of its audacity, some of its bad taste. Examples...
Because he believed it would impress the reader, Publisher George T. Delacort Jr. had printed on Ballyhoo's cover: "Edited by Norman Anthony, former editor of Life and Judge." Thus did Editor Anthony trade upon the very reputation he was bitterly attacking. He was discharged by Life, is suing for alleged breach of contract...
...Anthony temper was most bitterly expressed in a page headed "We Nominate for Oblivion-," an imitation of the feature created some months ago by Vanity Fair. Nominated for oblivion by Ballyhoo are Vanity Fair because its Oblivion department is "unsportsman-like"; Life, because "it cannot make up its mind whether to imitate Judge or the New Yorker...
...Ballyhoo's page of "editorials" is composed entirely of the repeated word "Blah," written thus line after line: "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Throughout the book only one joke appears, over and over again: "Who was that lady I seen you with last night?" "That was no lady. That was my wife...
...Significance. Call Her Savage is a good example of an unamazing third-rate book backed by amazing and first-rate ballyhoo. Author Thayer's first published book, Thirteen Men (TIME, July 14, 1930), was publicized into the best-seller class, drew (according to Publisher Kendall) 700,000 words in reviews...