Word: libbing
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Easily the top man on the bill was our man Bell, current A-Section Leader. Bell, a New York attorney, demonstrated a mastery of the ad lib racket with a couple of take-offs. Other feature performers included the inimitable Witt, "Orson" Wells, "Red" Pace, Overson, Briggs, Baker, Barker, Bridgeman, and Gress on the blew-harp...
Howard and his daughter, Ruth, write the show, which he owns and sells as an $1,800-a-week package. There is no ad-libbing, nor any necessity for it. The four oldtimers can make any line sound like an ad-lib. Experienced listeners wait especially for Howard to crack down on Lulu McConnell with something like "Miss McConnell, if you ever get a chance to live your life over again...
When he stopped working for Comedian Jack Benny, the veteran gagman Harry Conn was asked his opinion of Benny's ability to ad-lib a joke. Said Conn, sourly: "Benny couldn't ad-lib a belch after a Hungarian dinner...
...vaudeville is the key to Hope, even though he has recently had the lock changed. He is first & foremost a gag man, with a gag man's brash ability to keep moving, ad-lib, hit back; above all, with a gag man's sense of timing. Says Hope: "I was born with timing and coordination." Artistically he was born with little else-no special trick of speech, gift of pantomime, sense of character. Quite inartistically, indeed, he was born with a kind of strenuous averageness-which paradoxically managed to set him apart...
Written by MacLean Russell and Richard R. Rogan with generous and lib contributions by the cast, Rogan staged the production with typical Hollywood touches. Happy Graves did a nice job as stage manager, improvising plam trees out of cardboard and grass skirts out of shredded newspapers...