Word: berman
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...have introduced the human brain to nightclub audiences. Julius Monk's Upstairs at the Downstairs, where all the waiters are job-hunting actors, always has witty, literate revues. To an ever greater degree, the Blue Angel is the Eastern institute for bright nightclub acts, helped Mort Sahl, Shelley Berman, Mike Nichols and Elaine May to stardom. In their turn, they helped the overcrowded Blue Angel, which is apparently trying to discover how many potential angels can sit on the head...
...played by Eddie in the film, and you wouldn't want Liz to be calling Eddie Eddie, would you? It would be terribly confusing. It is legitimate, I suppose, to change Eddie Fisher's movie name to Steve, but it is harder to see why producer Pandro S. Berman would go to even that much trouble to insert Mr. Fisher into a role which he plays with a total lack of distinction...
Even in these conventional contexts, the classic theme of salvation by prostitution preserves a little of its ancient power. The power is blunted-though commerce is served-by a glossy production (Pandro S. Berman), slick direction (Daniel Mann), solid but stolid performances, and a script (Charles Schnee and John Michael Hayes) that reads as though it had been copied off a washroom wall. Heroine to hero, with a broad wink, as she glides seductively down the hatch of his sailboat: "You can-uh-drop anchor any time." Motel proprietor to hero, who betrays a certain anxiety...
...Berman (IQ 149 by Stanford-Binet, one disappointing point short of genius) and his friend Juicer Montague (IQ a dandy 162) are 15-year-old men who live in Lakewood, Ohio in the late '30s, admire Omar Khayyam, Thomas Wolfe and Ben Hecht, the poet, and discuss serious matters. This is how Dan recalls one conversation: "Hee hee hee, snickeree. 'Who is our real mother?' Hee. 'Maybe your father was my father, Juicer. It's possible.' Snickeree. At last these questions, and others as pure, slipped away from us, and now the extremest demands...
...observations untainted by sentimentality, Wallant follows every step of Berman's descent into melancholia. His eye and ear, as he tells of Berman's deterioration, are so good that time after time readers may experience the discomforting shock of self surprised. At first the plumber's grief seems simple-inward weeping set off by a breath of perfume from a bathroom cabinet, or the sudden spaciousness of his bed. Then, wallowing in his sadness, Berman turns on everyone who offers comfort. Even his married daughter, who tries to mother him, is stung by his quick, aimless angers...