Word: showing
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Discovering where the laughs came from is the undeclared aim of this biography. Lahr himself professed not to know. "Put me in a jockstrap and if I entertain people for two hours-it's a good show," he once said. "I'm not an artist, I'm in business. If it's a hit, that's all I care about." Another time, speaking about his dramatic abilities, he said, "All I know is how to do it. I can't articulate." In hopes of doing better, John Lahr, his son and biographer, has endeavored...
...flecked with tragedy as to seem almost unreal. This is how it went: At the start, a poor Bronx childhood, dropout from school, succession of odd jobs and petty thieving. Then Lahr tries burlesque just for fun and is hooked ("I would have done 20 shows a day. It was like a shot of -dope? Adrenalin?"). He rises to vaudeville, lives with and eventually marries his act partner, reaches Broadway while at home his wife is going insane ("She laughed at me, John. Laughed when I was making love to her"). Reluctantly, Lahr has her committed, almost simultaneously scores...
...moments and memories that allow young Lahr to mold humanity around the trite-tragic skeleton that his father's life seems to have been. For instance, there is Lahr as a budding vaudevillian putting makeup on his collar even when unemployed so everyone will know he is in show biz. One is touched by the physical fact that his left wrist was permanently larger than the right from breaking repeated pratfalls. And a fine moment comes when a wino outside the theater holds out a dollar saying "Here, Bert, and thanks." As a young intellectual, John Lahr is eloquent...
...wanted to show support of some type for the black students who had taken over University Hall," one black student said. "At the time, it was not known whether the black students had left University Hall," he added...
...gentleman without depth of character, makes his slightest gestures personally significant. Menjou is eating dinner with Ricardo Cortez in the grandest of opulent restaurants. The conversation takes an odd tack. Menjou pivots his head slightly, and Griffith cuts away to a bevy of side-lit dancing girls, the floor show, advancing and twisting. This cut, inexplicable if one tries to find in it some definite comment on Menjou's character greatly enlarges the weight of his gesture, draining a world from a hint of sentiment. And Griffith cuts not on the formal qualities of the two shots, or on their...