Word: gaggingly
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...comedian," Fred Allen said, "is a man on the treadmill to oblivion." But it is the gag writer who makes him go, and in the specialized craft of making funny men seem funny, few people have larger reputations than Mel Brooks...
...jolly them along, American's "Super Pro," which is offering 250 Mustangs to the first 250 who can fill five blank spaces with the pictures of professional football stars, produced on TV in person the hardest of all the stars to find, Detroit Lions' Wayne Walker. The gag brought nothing but hollow laughter from the thousands of Super Pro players still lacking the Walker stamp...
They still complement each other neatly, but the interplay between them lacks the subtle Laurel and Hardy mix of hostility and mutual dependence, not to mention their patient skill at milking a gag. And so Smashing Time ends up as little more than a lot of pratfalling and pie-throwing...
...envious of talent, get practically blubbery about him. "You spell Bob Hope C-L-A-S-S," says Lucille Ball. Adds Joey Bishop: "I'd like to get the applause at the end of my show that he gets before he opens his mouth." Woody Allen, himself a gag writer as well as performer, says: "He has been a terrific influence on every standup, one-line monologist. The thing which makes him great just can't be stolen or imitated." Jack Benny, Hope's warmest admirer, says: "It's not enough just to get laughs...
Much later, during the Truman Administration, Bob told his radio audience: "I loved the April Fools' gag a fellow pulled in Washington. He walked into the White House and said he was from Missouri, and before he could holler 'April fool!' he was a Cabinet member." By that time, Hope and his sidekicks-popeyed, siren-throated Jerry Colonna, Brenda and Cobina, and Bandleader Skinnay Ennis-had turned Tuesday into Bob Hope night in the U.S. Every Wednesday morning in those days, the Dow-Jones stock ticker used to carry the best of his jokes. During...