Word: deadpan
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...that understands what I say." Exactly what happened when CBS Interviewer Charles Collingwood came up and saw Mae in her Hollywood apartment? One of the droller exchanges came when he commented on all the mirrors in Mae's plushy bedroom. "They're for personal observation," said Mae, deadpan. "I always like to know how I'm doing." Sensing that the going was getting a bit hot, Collingwood suggested that they switch the subject to foreign affairs. Said Mae: "I've always had a weakness for foreign affairs...
...whimsical the next about animals (their specialty) or plants in love. Their tone is sophisticated; they never spell words out, and use many that are foreign. Their joking is educated, with here a lurking bit of Wordsworth, there a pun on Kyd. They can be most lively when most deadpan, and most deadly when most daft. But their triumph rests on their total effect. Delightful as their songs can be (one is about an Oxford-bred cannibal who no longer likes eating people), the evening would grow a bit becalmed were it not for Flanders' animated patter. And winning...
...sets (lost in a plane crash), Robbins & Co. proved to be the hit of the Edinburgh Festival. Most of the program at both Edinburgh and London's Piccadilly Theatre was originally devised for last year's Spoleto Festival. Included last week were N.Y. Export, Op. Jazz, a deadpan exercise in which knees break, shoulders shrug in a serpentine evocation of youthful loneliness; The Concert, Robbins' acidulous spoof of the classical ballet; Moves, an abstract ballet without musical accompaniment; and Afternoon of a Faun, Robbins' coolly lyrical dissection of Debussy...
...critic once asked a lady what was the best way of "reaching" Marianne Moore. He was speaking of her poetry, but this was the deadpan reply: "Take the Sixth Avenue Independent Subway at 47th Street, the D train to Borough
...made her name and fortune as a teller of tales. Last week in London, she told of vacationing recently in Yugoslavia when, at the wheel of a rented Rolls-Royce, she collided with a motorcycle on a winding road overlooking the Adriatic Sea. To her astonishment, recalled Gypsy, deadpan, the rider and his passenger high-tailed it for the woods, abandoning their machine. Later Gypsy asked a Yugoslav official why the wild ones had acted so wildly. His explanation (sounding almost as if it had been composed by Columnist Leonard Lyons): "It is well known that there are only...