Word: ostrichized
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Executives at ABC, by contrast, were exuberant in their praise after Carson's performance as host of the Academy Awards on their network in April, and they gave him an expensive ostrich-skin attaché case. Last June, Carson, vacationing on the French Riviera, found himself staying at the same hotel as ABC Executives Elton Rule and Fred Pierce. They went sailing, and Carson told friends that he developed a fast rapport with the men from...
DIED. Sally Rand, 75, tart-talking blond fan dancer whose trademark routine-a nude vamp performing behind peekaboo ostrich plumes to the strains of Debussy -wowed 'em for 45 years; of a heart attack; in Glendora, Calif. She started flaunting her feathers and teasing her audiences ("the Rand is quicker than the eye") in the early 1930s, kept her 36-24-37 figure into her 70s by dancing every day, and claimed that over the years she had changed her act "not a whit, not a step, not a feather...
Gracie became the screwball and George her straight man. One of their skits went like this. Gracie: "My sister Bessie couldn't come today because her canary is hatching an ostrich...
George: "The canary is hatching an ostrich egg?" Gracie: "Yeah, but the canary is too small to cover the egg." George: "So?" Gracie: "My sister Bessie is sitting on the egg and holding the canary in her lap." The laughs would come as if they too had been written in. "Now the audience believed that Gracie believed that story," says Burns. "That was the great thing. Not the joke, but the fact that she could make it believable. It takes a damned good actress to do that." Theirs was a durable formula that lasted through vaudeville, radio and television, ending...
WHAT THIS ALL boils down to is boldfaced sophistry, a beautifully-embroidered defense of amorality, a well-fabricated philosophy of avoiding moral choices wherever possible. This ostrich-like posture is exalted to the high plane of statesmanship: Everyone wants him to do different things, Bok seems to say, so he'll do nothing at all. He'll take Engelhard's money and name the damned library after him--then the deed will be done and everybody will have to look to the future. And if critics ask to examine all future gifts to prevent further Engelhards, Bok answers that...