Word: wits
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Hope laces his wit with good taste. He may sometimes play the ogling goof, but he is essentially a monologist who portrays no other character than Bob Hope. Jack Benny is a "character" comedian-stingy Jack. Such comics as Danny Kaye, Red Skelton and Jackie Gleason shine best in sketches. Many of today's young monologists, in the style of the late Lenny Bruce, specialize in acutely perceived, often bitter commentary, not to say four-letter words. Hope's comedy is broader, less original in viewpoint, but it is almost always clean, just as topical, more deftly timed...
Reagan, of course, had planned it that way-or so claimed his detractors. After all, he dined with Yaleman William F. Buckley Jr. Unbaitable and well read in his homework, Reagan fielded questions with aplomb and wit. Asked whether he felt homosexuals had any place in government, he drawled: "Well, perhaps in the Department of Parks and Recreation." Queried more querulously about Selective Service Director Lewis Hershey's suggestion that draft dissenters be reclassified, Reagan admitted that "emotionally I could go along with him" but "intellectually I realize we can't make military service punitive." The anti-Johsonian...
...erratic in his attempts to use stage business in harness with Shakespeare's verbal wit or verbal wisdom. Often he finds success in pointing a line with a gesture, but sometimes too, his compositions are simply too full of movement for good focus. On a few occasions, he has literally obscured potentially funny or significant dialog by drawing the audience's attention to some simultaneous comic bit. In a single instance, he shows an excess of reverence to the lines, freezing an admirably raucous forest banquet to a tableau, while Jaques (Kenneth Tiger) puts the "Seven Ages of Men" through...
...Fact & Wit. Such self-effacement is the price that Pompidou has paid for enjoying De Gaulle's confidence. On one occasion De Gaulle is said to have angrily rebuked his premier: "I told you to go out and show yourself. I did not tell you to make yourself noticed...
...spite of that stricture, Pompidou has managed to make himself noticed. As the chief Gaullist spokesman in the National Assembly, he has proved a masterly orator, demolishing the opposition by a mixture of hard economic facts with wit and elegant phraseology. Twice this year he has displayed these same rhetorical talents on long TV interview programs, has made state visits to Austria and India and soon will journey to Iran. And every two weeks he invites the most important Gaullist Deputies to his office at the Hotel Matignon for strategy sessions, laying the foundation for the day when they will...