Word: gaggingly
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Such was the comedy of Buster Keaton, the granddaddy of deadpan and one of the four or five masters of the sight gag produced by Hollywood during the silent days. In the sequences adapted from the old two-reelers, these gags prove as good as ever they were, and provide the public with about ten minutes' worth of belly-shaking fun. But when this earnest little biopus turns from Keaton's silent comedies to his noisy domestic tragedies, the guffaws turn to unmitigated guff. Donald O'Connor, who plays the title role, does pretty well with...
This is the central situation of John Steinbeck's latest booklet-an underdone novel and overdone gag which is a long, long way from wrathful Okies and Tortilla Flat. After Author Steinbeck and the Assembly make their momentous decision, there are of course almost as many pretenders in France as there ever were premiers, but the royal prize goes to a man who does not seek it-M. Pippin Arnulf Héristal, a distant collateral relation of Charlemagne...
...wild spender. He shoveled money around like snow, ostentatiously picked up the tab at parties and restaurants, jazzed around town in a new $3,500 Oldsmobile convertible. When his friends asked him where he was getting all his cash, John always brightly shot back that old gag, "I robbed a bank." It was great for laughs...
...book follows the original's satiric story line but kills its spirit by relentless pursuit of the obvious gag, the single entendre, the rhyme-at-any-cost; e.g., "The air is full of your infidelities," sings Juno. "No? The hell it is," rhymes Jupiter in one of the better couplets. And so it goes, with garter-Sparta, Hades-ladies, loony-Juny (for Juno), until the elegantly frothy music is almost lost between the heavy text and the embarrassed sighs of the audience. Most remarkable fact of all: the man who managed thus to combine the theatrical naivete...
Turbulent, Turgid. As an elaborate gag, Shepherd began booming last month a purely imaginary historical novel-a "turbulent, turgid, tempestuous" composite of "Frank Yerby, Kathleen Windsor and Norman Vincent Peale." The book was first conceived as a hoax to shatter the faith of day people in their own "book lists." Shepherd urged fans to canvass shops for the nonexistent title I, Libertine, ascribed to "nonauthor than" Frederick R. Ewing, "well-remembered for his BBC talks" on 18th century erotica. By noon next day, one Manhattan store had received some 30 orders. The title mysteriously appeared on Boston's list...