Word: spieling
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...moment, Teddy Green is a car salesman in Boston. He is a pretty good one, too, with an unusual spiel. He tells customers that Fords are reliable and have great pickup-which is why he always chose them when he was stealing getaway cars. For Teddy Green used to be a bank robber; he got out of jail just four months ago. "I feel like Lazarus," he says, risen as he is from the living death of what was once a 56-year sentence. Unlike many ex-cons, however, Teddy has refused to mope, instead is coping by making...
...presents Marlon Brando as a U.S. diplomat with a fortune in oil, and Sophia Loren as a White Russian prostitute with a heart of gold. They meet in Hong Kong, and when his ship sails she stows away in his stateroom. For the rest of the show the principals spiel some of the most hilariously awful dialogue the screen has presented since sound tracks replaced title cards. Items: "Common harlot! Are you trying to ruin my career?" "You won't believe me when I tell you that this is the first real happiness I've known...
...champagne circuit, his audiences are as attentive as seers at a seance. But he still talks, talks, talks. Rewardingly so. In a performance at Carnegie Hall last week, on the first of a series of tours booked into virtually every major U.S. nightclub and concert hall, his blend of spiel and song was an unqualified success...
...early, and these may have brought him more bad luck than good; when the law of averages straightened out, he fell easy prey to frustration, confusion and bitterness. He didn't have the equipment, and that only whetted his ambition further. What he did have was a fast spiel, a talent for flattering the real movers and shakers with grandiose ideas, and an astonishing gift for getting people to part with their money. "People do not understand me," he once said. "They reproach me for announcing six films for a year and then making only one in four years...
Such "signature music" is based on the Madison Avenue conviction that the name of a product can root itself in the subconscious more readily if it is accompanied by an instantly identifiable musical trademark. Jingles are fine for the one-minute spiel, but for the short, hard pitch, signature music is the thing. Thus Siday's eight-note bleeper, played above a sizzling, highballing beat, gets the message across even without the slogan, "You're ahead in a Ford all the way"; his seven-note arrangement for the litany, "You can be sure, if it's Westinghouse...