Word: silents
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Three broke vaudevillians decide to become tower builders in Babel. George (John Lithgow), May (Deborah May) and Jerry (Treat Williams) open an elocution school in Hollywood to prep silent stars for the talkies. Jerry riffles through people like a deck of cards, May has the patience of Florence Nightingale, and George is purer than the infancy of truth and madder than his true love (Julia Duffy). Through simple unpollutable honesty, George becomes chief of staff to a manic-depressive studio mogul, Herman Glogauer. George S. Irving plays this role as if he were a Yiddish Mussolini...
...imposing man with the build of a football player and the command of a general strides onstage in the high school auditorium. Immediately, the audience falls silent. He captures the students expertly, first soothing them with his soft, sensuous voice, then whipping them into a frenzy with a quickening cadence. "We can be as good in academics as in athletics," he shouts, "but we've got to believe we are somebody. Repeat after me, "I am somebody.' " Hundreds of teenagers rise to their feet, chanting, "I may be poor, but I am somebody. I may be on welfare...
...Agency is working to link fighter pilots directly to computers. As the pilot dons his helmet, fine needles will project into his scalp and enable him to shoot a rocket merely by thinking the command to fire. Another project, developed at Fort Benning, Ga., allows a commander to send silent coded orders to troops in the field-electronic blips are transmitted through electrodes attached to the upper arms or abdomens of each soldier. So far, Watson reports, properly trained men can recognize 95% of these coded messages...
...mean pap, even though the songs are short, catchy, cunningly melodic, modeled after-and sometimes gently mocking-prime Top 40 material. The lyrics can really sap you with a sudden, gleeful surprise. One of Lowe's best tunes, Marie Provost, sounds like an innocuous remembrance of a faded silent-screen star until the first chorus comes up. Then the sweet little ditty becomes a carbolic valentine to an actress who died destitute in a cheap hotel and whose pet dachshund dined on her undiscovered remains. "She was a winner," Lowe sings, "then she became the doggie's dinner...
...dusk deepened, the woman did not turn on the light but sat looking at the television screen. Their set had a special channel for watching the colony playground. The silent black-and-white image revealed her son balancing himself on a tree trunk, while his fat friend kept falling off; except for the two of them, the playground was forsaken. The woman's eyes glistened with tears...