Word: lib
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Sponsored by two Paris newspapers, Parisien Libéré and L'Equipe, the 51-year-old classic took an anxious four months of preparation. At every stop on the route, Advanceman Elie Wermelinger, onetime Ivory Coast banana planter, had to prepare food and lodging for no competitors, plus an army of 1,400 managers, trainers, handlers, masseurs, timekeepers, mechanics and assorted camp followers. Bawling, cursing and exhorting, Wermelinger careened across France, waging a one-man war to bring temporary order out of wild, Gallic confusion...
Often, S.P.E.B.S.Q.S.A. men fell to in the lobby for some "woodshedding," a term for ad-lib singing by members who have never worked together. Naturally, woodshedding is considered a complex form of quartet work, since it calls for correct harmony and a working repertory of dozens of songs. This is no place for a crow (a nonsinging member who might sometimes toss in an ad-lib dum-dee-dee-dee), but calls for S.P.E.B.S.Q.S.A. men who can drop (the bass singer drops down one octave at the close of the song), scoop (hitting a note on the flat side...
...playing records.") Allen's pressagent, Jim Moran, is a weekly visitor, and he ordinarily arrives toting a stuffed bearcat or boa constrictor that he claims to have bagged while crossing Central Park to the studio. Allen ends each show with a visit to his studio audience for ad lib conversations. In startling contrast to most TV interrogators, he sometimes asks sensible questions and gets sensible answers...
...prestige of France in [the American] continent." In 1938 the government announced its intention to let the penal colony "disappear by extinction." Red tape, lassitude and the demands of World War II slowed down the process, but last February the government decided to bring home the last convicts and libérés. Last week Théodore Roussel, a freed man who had spent more than 50 of his 76 years in French Guiana for a long-forgotten robbery, gazed blankly at the soft landscape of his native land. "I can't blame anyone but myself...
Freedom to Starve. Most were not so lucky. French law provided that anyone serving under eight years had to stay in Guiana as a libéré, or freed prisoner, for another period equal at least to that of his sentence; anyone sentenced for more than eight years had to remain in the colony for life. About all that differentiated the libérés from the prisoners was the fact that the freed men had to scratch and beg for their living, while the prisoners at least got fed. Money or influence might buy a man special...