Word: wisecrack
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Most of the characters are hysterical too much of the time for anything meaningfully comic to occur. It's like a prolonged night-club sketch. Andy and Norman know how to wisecrack like second-rate Henny Youngmans, and use this to put Sophie at a disadvantage. She can only spout whatever middle-Americanisms that the New York Jewish quipster-author felt right for the moment. I would for the life of me like to recount some dialogue for the record, but it is all so inert, so clearly the work of a hack intent on a string of easy laughs...
...large-caliber wisecrack, like the horse pistol, is part of America's past. As the Norman Mailer-Germaine Greer exchange indicated recently, the snub-nosed innuendo aimed below the belt is today's favored weapon. When quips were quips even a President of the United States could get them off. Remember the British diplomat who told Lincoln that "English gentlemen never black their own boots"? Lincoln looked up from buffing his own and replied, "Whose boots do you black...
...collaborator of more than two dozen comedies and musicals, including You Can't Take It With You, Of Thee I Sing and Silk Stockings. His career as a critic, playwright and director spanned nearly 40 years, and his influence was enormous. Brooks Atkinson credited Kaufman with making the wisecrack part of our language. Groucho Marx claimed that "Kaufman gave me the walk and the talk...
...novel itself is ruled by chance. Some sequences click, and others clunk. Much dice-induced motivation is suspect. Luke might have left his wife and children without ever touching the dice. Even when the plot dawdles, Rhinehart's language and humor exert their wiles. Though he leans more to wisecrack than to wit, he gets off fine mimicrys of TV talk shows, journalistic deepthink and professorial psychoanalytic jargon. Between sheets (the book is copiously copulative), Rhinehart works up a positively Joycean lather-blather...
Died. Glenda Farrell, 66, actress; of lung cancer; in Manhattan. Often cast as a tough babe with hair and heart of gold, Farrell began her screen career as a gangster's moll in the 1930 film classic Little Caesar. She went on to wisecrack her way through scores of Hollywood movies, including I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), Gold Diggers of 1937 and the Torchy Blane series. Weary of being typecast, she made a deft transition in the 1950s to motherly roles on television and Broadway...