Word: scriptless
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Marxian formula is simple, scriptless, and enormously successful. Each couple of contestants (three for each half-hour show) is given $20 and a chance to bet on their answers to questions in a given field. Quizmaster Groucho perches on a stool by the microphone, and chats with them between questions. He encourages them to tell their life stories, and as they talk, he festoons the impromptu dialogue with strings of rapid-fire gags, or simply guides his victims into verbal traps and lets them writhe. "Women are the best ones on this program," says Marx, carefully flicking cigar ashes...
...nights after their television premiere, Olsen & Johnson unveiled their new revue Funzapoppin before 8,700 people in Madison Square Garden. Next morning the gun-shy critics produced mixed notices. "A gargantuan honky-tonk," sniffed the Time's Brooks Atkinson. "Olsen & Johnson would be practically scriptless if the Chinese hadn't invented gunpowder," grumped the Herald Tribune. "A cheerful nightmare," said the World-Telegram. Actually, Olsen and Johnson seem to be criticproof. Funzapoppin's predecessor, Hellzapoppin, was disdained by almost every critic, yet it ran for more than three years on Broadway...
...Kesh-ke-kosh is Don Whistler, a rugged Sac and Fox Indian, who persuaded his alma mater to let him go on the air two years ago. His half-hour program (Indians for Indians) has the only regular Indian language broadcast in the U.S. It is unrehearsed and almost scriptless. Because of the diversity of speech among Indian tribes, much of the broadcast has to be delivered in English. "They all under stand that," says Whistler...