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unearths some literary gems.
From The Club of Masks, by Allen Upward:
***the Order of Saint Somebody or other***One was a Lady Greatorex, the other a Mrs. Antrobus, both of them assumed names for aught I knew.***Captain Charles read out from the paper in a round, commanding voice:“Dr. Weathered, deceased. Any patients of the late Dr. Weathered desiring to have their letters to him returned are requested to apply, mentioning number, to Messrs. James, Halliday and James, Solicitors, Carmichael House, Chancery Lane, E.C.4.” He did not spare us even the 4.***Bonus: If you wish to skim chapters XV-XVI, you'll see Mrs. Baker getting the names of Sir Frank Tarleton, Dr. Cassilis, and others wrong, with great profusion and variety:https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/69845/pg69845-images.html#Page_216
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unearths some literary gems.
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unearths some literary gems.
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unearths some literary gems.
From the New Yorker, Oct.-Dec. 1929:
[All these lines come from Benchley]
Ah me! Me ah!
She always used to get a great deal of applause, albeit over my dead pan.
Owing to the hero having lived one hundred years (almost, it seems, in full view of the audience), a birthday party is arranged and had. There's your plot....The program did not state in what country the action ("action," ha-ha-ha!) took place....
[You may recall that we've seen another review of this play, from Life, in which that reviewer made the same criticism of the "plot," in different words.]
Otto Kruger may have been good, but he was talking through a big beard and I was sitting in Row "O."
The disguise worn [by Sherlock Holmes] in the last act would not fool my three-year-old boy even if he were still three years old.
***
Bonus funny names:
Tessie Van Artichoke
Aloysius Tweetle
Notes on attachments:
"Mr. Anno" for Peter Arno is an intentional running joke of an error in the spurious advice column from which I've taken that excerpt.
"Do you do other things besides stand on your head...?" This cartoon would have been much better, imho, if they'd left the question unanswered.
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unearths some literary gems.
***
It is a triumph of the gulp school of affected simplicity. [Brackett]
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Miss Bentley has put into her pot all the ingredients of a moving story, but there is no fire under the pot.
***
Notes on some of the attachments:
1. I included the "pastimes" item for the moostache-shaped lampshade and the shmoolike ornament who seems to be "playing along."
2. I looked into this business of ping-pong at the Little Carnegie theater. I get the impression it was in a separate room, but I like the suggestion here that it was directly competing with the movie being shown.
3. Shaw and Lee can be found online; but, unlike Fuzzy Knight, they did not (imho) live up to the promise. Best moment I found was when, in a routine where they trade off delivering oneliners, they both start delivering the same joke at once, in unison (then look at each other in surprise, and simultaneously stop talking).
4. The "West" items are Rebecca West (aka Lynx) being filtered through an Alexander Woollcott piece that quotes her extensively--hence the peculiar framing.
5. You'll see that I pasted in E. B. White's remark about his funny illustration hopefully being on "this" page--because, technically, it wasn't (only because the end of the article, where the remark occurred, ran over onto the next page).
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