Word: flipping
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Narrative Gift. On his show, as well as on his records, Flip Wilson spins out these impersonations in anecdotes, not one-liners. His gift is for dialect and narrative, not gags. The laugh track of a Bob Hope or a Milton Berle is a crescendo to climactic punch lines. Flip's graph would be all hills and valleys, zigs and zags. He puts his material over gently, through sheer likability-and considerable body English. Though only 5 ft. 6 in., he has an amazingly elastic physical grace, and a repertory of motions that recalls the masters of silent movie...
...Color. To those who say that he should do more to advance the "cause," Flip has a ready reply: "I have feelings about these things, but I'm selling professional entertainment. Politics is for politicians. Each man has his own style; mine is that 'the funny' has no color. I do these characters because they're what I know. But people are just people to me. The way I see it, I don't have to think black-or not think black. I just have to entertain. I'm just a comic...
...ratings bear witness to Wilson's success at comedy and to his appeal to whites as well as blacks. In their second season on NBC-which, Flip jokes, now really is "the full-color network"-Flip, Geraldine and his other characters have become regular Thursday-night fare for an estimated 40 million Americans. In recent Nielsen ratings, The Flip Wilson Show has been the No. 1 variety entry and the No. 2 show of any kind (after CBS's situation comedy All in the Family). Sponsors' money has followed the audience, and NBC now charges...
Some middleclass, well-educated blacks are offended by the updated Amos 'n' Andy quality of Flip's material. Wilson's way of playing with the stereotypes, however, unselfconsciously holds them up to ridicule. Not even Archie Bunker could find much ammunition for bigotry in Flip's presentation of Geraldine (see box, page 59). If Flip is Amos 'n' Andy, he is Amos 'n' Andy in reverse shuffle-with 30 years of civil rights battles behind...
Most blacks, uneducated as well as sophisticated, seem to realize this. Last year when he appeared at Black Expo '71, a trade and cultural fair in the International Amphitheater in Chicago, the audience was screaming for Geraldine even before Flip came on. "There was such a massive outpouring of love and appreciation that it overwhelmed the cat and broke him down," remembers the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who helped organize the affair...