Word: slapsticks
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Died. Moe Howard, 78, last survivor of the original Three Stooges slapstick comedy team; of lung cancer; in Hollywood. His black bangs cropped as if his barber had used a chamber pot, Moe cheerfully assaulted colleagues Larry, Curly and Shemp through more than 200 1930s farces, whacking them with mallets, tweaking noses, kicking shins, and deftly delivering thousands of the two-fingered eye punches that became his trademark, and endeared him in the 1950s to the first generation of television children...
...slant of Princess Ida because, like any G. and S. operetta, it is, after all, a period piece. And that is exactly how the play is handled in this production--which, thank God, doesn't try to get funny with any embarrassing 20th-century gimmickry. There are plenty of slapstick embellishments, but--from the opening blast of "God Save the Queen" to the fake 19th-century programs, this production remains true to the spirits of Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan themselves...
...Stooges are for kids, and whether you liked them or not you're liable to look back at them after fifteen years and see that shapes that fleshed out much of your consciousness when a glimmer of the world first stirred. The Stooges are pure slapstick--they pound each other and never draw blood, they communicate with a cuff and a twist of the ear, they love each other as they fight, like Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man. Getting up from the TV floors when you're five years old and trying to bash your sister with...
...loose-ankled, slightly pigeon-toed walk, with his hands clasped tightly against his waist. The unworldly astonishment never fades from his pudgy face. A natty clerk displays an uninspiredly clever knack for his work that his pompous boss lacks, and briefly supplants the others with an act verging on slapstick. Fortunately, he reins the performance in before the proportions of his minor character become too inflated...
...Ford after her cancer operation. Ward was there when Mrs. Ford said goodbye to her son Steve following her mastectomy. He was present at Camp David when Ford decided to coax Liberty, his golden retriever, into the pool. Shooting rapidly, and somehow managing to keep dry, Ward recorded a slapstick sequence as Betty Ford pushed her husband into the water, then Press Secretary Ronald Nessen and Nancy Howe, Mrs. Ford's personal secretary, dunked each other. And in a Truffautesque bit of business, Ward even caught Ford being rigged with electronic paraphernalia for a TV taping session with...