Word: gagmen
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Stars typically take the cheers or the heat for these moments; writers just take the money. It has ever been thus. Bob Hope's gagmen were awakened at 3 a.m. for emergency jokes; James Allardice wrote the droll TV monologues that made Alfred Hitchcock a household deity. But these scribes were as anonymous as the Roman speechwriter who whispered into the dying Caesar's ear, "Say, 'Et tu, Brute?'" So it's nice that Vilanch, a wide guy with a blond mop that makes him look like an obscene Senor Wences puppet...
Died. Harry Hershfield, 89, perennial master of ceremonies, raconteur, columnist and cartoonist; in Manhattan. Hershfield first exercised his wit as the cartoonist-creator of the Desperate Desmond and Abie the Agent comic strips. In the 1940s he gained a wide following as one of the three gagmen who tried to tell funnier stories than the radio audience of Can You Top This? A leading light on the "rubber chicken circuit" for more than 50 years, Hershfield was famous for such sententiae as: "A conscience cannot prevent sin. It only prevents you from enjoying...
Outrageous subjects that were once shocking sources of satanic laughter now seem hardly ticklish at all. Black Comedians today tend to be admired like TV gagmen and nightclub acrobats -less for jolt than for sheer agility...
...long ago, Hope and Jack Benny were sitting in a studio while a young rock group was rehearsing. The two old gagmen observed and listened to the zippy youthfulness of the kids with some bemusement. At length, Hope turned to Benny and asked, "Jack, do you realize how fortunate we are that the audiences still want
...organization with scholarly overtones and heavily social undertones," the Sons of the Desert (named after an L. & H. film) was founded two years ago by a group of Manhattan literary and show-business people, now has chapters, or "tents," in seven cities, numbers among its members such modern-day gagmen as Jonathan Winters, Dick Cavett, Dick Van Dyke and Soupy Sales...