Word: shtik
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...tour. The act is a lunatic deluge of sight gags, supercool show-biz parodies, zany body language and well-paced one-liners. Martin seems spacey, and his props appear to be simplistic. But below that surface, the act is as tight as a bear hug, and even the simplest shtik has flip-side gags within gags...
Comedians are supposed to shtik to their lasts: Harpo could never speak and Groucho could never be at a loss for words; Fields could never seem to draw a sober breath or a sunny moral. What, then, is Woody Allen doing starring in, writing and directing a ruefully romantic comedy that is at least as poignant as it is funny and may be the most autobiographical film ever made by a major comic...
Jerry Cutler was born into a family of rabbis. While training as an Orthodox rabbi in Brooklyn, though, he used to slip up to the Catskill resorts on weekends, where he did a stand-up comic shtik using the name Jerry Herring. His fellow students at the yeshiva took a dim view of his enchantment with show business. On his return to classes from the Catskills, they would mutter in Yiddish: "Der bum iz du [The bum is here]." All the same, Cutler was ordained at 24 and served a Conservative congregation in Stamford, Conn., before becoming a reviewer...
That blessed event was midwifed by the match with Court and the vast interest it created in the Riggs shtik. An ecstatic Bobby suddenly captured the fame that had eluded him even when he was the nation's top amateur tennis player in the late 1930s. After he signed with Promoter Jerry Perenchio, president of Tandem Productions* (Maude, All in the Family, Sanford & Son), Tandem sent him on a promotional trip to Beverly Hills...
...bass, who plays the four incarnations of the devil. No surprise, since the roles are sung by that master of operatic guises and disguises Norman Treigle. By design, and also by the sheer magic of Treigle's acting, this Hoffmann is a black comedy that belongs-curly locks, shtik and fiddle-to the devil...