Word: laughter
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Hippocrates revolutionized medical thinking when he moved the seat of reason from the heart to the head and wrote: "From the brain, and from the brain only, arise our pleasures, joys, laughter and jests, as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs and tears." Since then (circa 400 B.C.), says famed Neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, a few highly localized parts of the brain have been shown to control vision, hearing, speech, some physical sensations and most movements, but by far the greater part of the brain remains unexplored. To fill in one of the blanks on the cerebral map, Dr. Penfield...
...refused to clear a book written by a former Army intelligence officer about the intelligence service. It was a very funny matter when, even after the book had been cut to exclude references to every war since and including the American Revolution, it was still not approved. Gales of laughter went up at the story that the Pentagon would not tell how much peanut butter the Army consumed for fear such knowledge would give the Russians an indication of our manpower strength. But the "laughter has an echo that is grim...
...richly encrusted hilt by Eileen Herlie, a script that often plods as it perplexes, and that perplexes less and less as it proceeds, just manages to squeak through. With a stylish, long-discontinued look, Actress Herlie can rivet attention; with a bass-fiddle-deep laugh, she suddenly arouses laughter. The Guthrie treatment fares best when there is nothing much to treat: the air of secrecy proves more rewarding than the secret, the theatrical Herlie-burly than the philosophical coda. When the play finally turns serious, it seems, more than anything else, like a last-minute spoilsport. Were the play better...
...said. "If you make a mistake, you can use that old ham bone and capitalize on it." Last week Dinah almost got knocked off-camera by a playful poke in the ribs from Guest Star Jimmy Durante, but Dinah's ham bone was up to it; gasping with laughter, she bounced back to make it seem a small bonus in an hour of unpremeditated fun. Week to week, just such spontaneity fuses with a haunting vocal talent to make blonde (since 1944) Dinah Shore the nicest musical treat...
...French never seem so amusing as when they are laughing at themselves and at human nature in general. And it is kindly and tolerant laughter. The subject of spoof in Fernandel the Dressmaker is the Parisian haute couture...