Word: drunken
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Drunken Bandleader. It was a momentous decision. "Practically all the comedy shows owe their structure to Benny's conceptions," admitted Comedian Fred Allen. "The Benny show was like a One Man's Family in slapstick. He was the first comedian in radio to realize that you could get big laughs by ridiculing yourself instead of your stooges...
...structure. Even today, Benny's influence still echoes around the channels. Jack's wisecracking girl friend -and offstage wife-Mary Livingstone is the original of Rhoda. Don Wilson, the pompous announcer, can be seen in Ted Knight's role on the Mary Tyler Moore show. The drunken bandleader, Phil Harris, is a 100-proof version of Ed McMahon, Johnny Carson's sidekick. Rochester, the sardonic Negro valet, is the granddaddy of all the servants, black and white, who have hilariously put down their employers since the invention of the vacuum tube...
...counterpoint, hinting that the Millers have within them the same talent for self-destruction as the Tyrones of O'Neill's autobiographical Long Day's Journey Into Night. With bad luck, comforting Mother Essie might become junkie Mary Tyrone; responsible Father Nat could turn into drunken James. These nuances were obviously hidden from O'Neill himself-or he would have undoubtedly hammered them out into the open, thereby robbing the play of its warm and lyrical humor...
...character to sustain interest, and his mooncalfing is made graceless by O'Neill's wooden dialogue. But Arvin Brown's staging has a rich visual impact reminiscent of Fellini. A dwarf of a maid scuttles around the dinner table, which is dominated by a jolly drunken uncle (John Braden) sucking on lobster shells. Button-nosed Spinster Teresa Wright alternately gig gles and blushes in a new dress while Geraldine Fitzgerald presides as super-mother, projecting the presence of a queen, whatever the state of her court's dishevelment...
...More importantly, people aren't rational all the time, and very, very often if the gun is there they will use it, whether it be in a family argument or a drunken brawl," she adds. The Eisenhower Commission report bolsters her position with the conclusion that the victim knows his attacker in nearly 80 per cent of all homicides...