Word: meaders
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...BRUCE GREENWOOD THIRTEEN DAYS For actors, playing John F. Kennedy must seem a challenge as frustrating as it is irresistible. Impersonating America's dishiest president - satyr and martyr - did not bring lasting luster to the careers of Stephen Collins, William Devane, James Franciscus or Cliff Robertson, let alone Vaughn Meader...
...back then," the Spinmaster explained, "those jokes were never told in public. In the '50s topical humor was Bob Hope joking about Ike's golf swing. With Kennedy, it was Vaughn Meader and The First Family--incredibly gentle, friendly jokes...
Former comedian Vaughn Meader said that was his response when told of John F. Kennedy's assassination. He thought he was being set up for a punch line. At the time, Meader was one of the country's most popular performers, thanks to his ability to impersonate the 35th President with gently mocking good humor. His 1962 album, The First Family, was the nation's fastest-selling LP ever. No wonder Lenny Bruce is said to have walked onstage the evening of the assassination and, after a respectful pause, to have broken the silence with "Man, poor Vaughn Meader...
...Meader wasn't totally washed out of show business: today he sings and plays honky-tonk piano in small nightclubs in Maine. But it is with Meader and more recent news events in mind that we offer similar sympathy to the producers of Diana & Me, a romantic film comedy about a woman who is obsessed with the Princess of Wales. In her effort to meet Diana, the heroine hooks up with and eventually falls for a paparazzo who is stalking Diana. This lighthearted Australian production finished shooting only recently, not long before the paparazzi-related automobile accident that has riveted...
...generation ago, Meader was so identified with his amiable parody of the President that comic Lenny Bruce cracked that two graves were dug in Arlington: one for Kennedy and one for Meader. Following J.F.K.'s assassination, Meader stopped calling himself Vaughn, his middle name, in favor of his first name, and went into what he calls "deep hibernation." Today he sings and plays honky-tonk piano in small clubs in Maine. "Lenny Bruce was right," he says. "I was stuck in something deeper than I thought." And still is. He recently recorded The Last Word, a biblical satire in which...