Word: comicly
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...keeping his life in balance and low-key: a home in the unglamorous San Fernando Valley, a position as honorary sheriff in his town and a steady income from his TV show, small movie roles and voice-overs. So what happened early last Thursday morning--the day after the comic tested a new speedboat--did not fit the role everyone was used to: Hartman, 49, dead on his bed, in boxers and T shirt, shot twice in the head around 2 a.m.; his wife Brynn Omdahl then killing herself as their kids (Sean, 9, and Birgen, 6) were being taken...
...recognizability and helped turn an industry into an art. In 1916, his third year in films, his salary of $10,000 a week made him the highest- paid actor--possibly the highest paid person--in the world. By 1920, "Chaplinitis," accompanied by a flood of Chaplin dances, songs, dolls, comic books and cocktails, was rampant. Filmmaker Mack Sennett thought him "just the greatest artist who ever lived." Other early admirers included George Bernard Shaw, Marcel Proust and Sigmund Freud. In 1923 Hart Crane, who wrote a poem about Chaplin, said his pantomime "represents the futile gesture of the poet today...
...terrifyingly comic Adenoid Hynkel (a takeoff on Hitler), whom Chaplin played in The Great Dictator, or M. Verdoux, the sardonic mass murderer of middle-aged women, may seem drastic departures from the "little fellow," but the Tramp is always ambivalent and many-sided. Funniest when he is most afraid, mincing and smirking as he attempts to placate those immune to pacification, constantly susceptible to reprogramming by nearby bodies or machines, skidding around a corner or sliding seamlessly from a pat to a shove while desire and doubt chase each other across his face, the Tramp is never unself-conscious, never...
Then magic struck. Guided by Ball's comic brilliance, the show developed the shape and depth of great comedy. Lucy's quirks and foibles--her craving to be in show biz, her crazy schemes that always backfired, the constant fights with the Mertzes--became as particularized and familiar as the face across the dinner table. For four out of its six seasons (only six!), I Love Lucy was the No. 1-rated show on television; at its peak, in 1952-53, it averaged an incredible 67.3 rating, meaning that on a typical Monday night, more than two-thirds...
...because Bob Hope turned out not to be dead doesn't mean you can't pay the man a rental's worth of appreciation. This week's pick: My Favorite Brunette (1947). Dorothy Lamour, Peter Lorre, a cameo by Bing, and some of Hope's finest and most cowardly comic double takes. Come on. He needs the royalties...