Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From Life, May-Aug. 1928:

***
He breathed my name. Then he exhaled it.

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There is always a little difficulty in hearing these all-star revivals, owing to the presence in the audience of demonstrative adherents of the various stars....But when you do catch a line of dialogue...it fits in very nicely with your general idea of what the play is about. [Benchley]

***
A laboratory theater could be established where the work of new dramatists could be tried out and discarded. [ditto]
***

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From Life, Jan.-Apr. 1928:

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in France, where the black-out is the whole thing and the sketch nothing [Benchley]
***

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From The Gazelle's Ears, by Corey Ford:

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From The Adventures of Dr. Whitty, by G. A. Birmingham:

[A human tennis ball; and civility for etymologists.]

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From the New Yorker, Oct-Dec 1927:

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At the sight of a camera...Aldous Huxley knots himself into langorous poses. [Woollcott]

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They were an emotional lot, these people of the [early] comics; let any character they encountered in their day's wanderings offer them a mild retort based upon the catch-line of an aged and impeccable joke, and question-marks would shoot from their heads, great globules of sweat would burst from their brows...and they would fall over backward in a sort of epilepsy of amazement. [Parker]

***
It has one of those super-intelligent movie dogs barking around in it.
***

Bonus: I learned that No, No, Nanette had a follow-up called Yes, Yes, Yvette.

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From the New Yorker, June-Sept. 1927:

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From Move Over, by E. Pettit:

Mrs. Harriss used the kiss as a semicolon.

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From the New Yorker, Apr-May 1927:

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This plot, peppered with meticulous commas and semicolons, is a good deal worse than when served raw. [Brackett]

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The numerous actors involved float around in the plot without getting very wet.

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Miss Lawson requires a thread of emotion running through her comedy parts, or at least a thread of comedy. [Brackett]
***

[Bonus: I learned that "maggott" can have the sense of a "nonsensical or perverse fancy."]

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From The Adventures of an Oaf, by Frank Sullivan, and illustrated by Herb Roth:

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From One, Two, Three, by Paul Selver:

***
Tancred glanced down the menu, which was as long as a sonnet, and more poetical than many of them.

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So that was settled, whatever it was.

***
Some pranced like palfreys, others bounded like kangaroos....Some evidently strove to cover the maximum of space in the minimum of time, while others were pursuing the precisely opposite aim. There were some whose movements suggested that they were plotting graphs on the floor with their feet, and others who by the oscillatory maneoeuvres of their arms demonstrated that they were exponents of the pump-handle system of dancing. And then a select minority performed some esoteric rites by waggling their legs esoterically.

***
Complications and quandaries might very well arise. Anthony shrank from complications and quandaries.

***
"Perhaps they're like Martial, who said that his libellum was thingumabob, but his vita was what's-its-name."

***
Anthony resumed his duties with increased zeal, or rather, decreased reluctance.

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Somebody...described the dramatic articles of Mr. Lincoln Vesh as "cwitticisms."

***
Mr. Stilton could bore six persons with as much ease as he could bore one. [This character called Montague Stilton predates Wodehouse's "Stilton" Cheesewright, btw. [See also the "St. Ilton" business in one of the attachments.]

***
Dr. Scutt-Grindle's tone was one of studied politeness, but the study had been incomplete.
***

Bonus names:
"Uncle Chubbychops" (a hypothetical elixir advertiser)
Miss Niblick
the Tinberry-Vennears
Mr. Gordon Gordon

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From the New Yorker, Jan-Mar 1927:

As to Mr. Errol, that collapsing corkscrew trick with his legs happens to have gotten on my nerves. [Brackett]

It belongs to that school of farce which believes repetition to be the soul of wit. [ditto]

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From Life, Sep-Dec 1927:

***
Don't you try and Shakespeare me. [Broun]
***

Bonus: Benchley gives a lengthy, heartily enthusiastic review, full of detail, of a new play...only for it to be revealed, toward the end of the column, that he has apparently imagined both the play and its author while dozing at his desk!

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From Life, May-Aug 1927:

I don't want to be unfair to other terrible movies by lavishing overenthusiastic calumny on [this one]... [Sherwood]

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From Life, Jan.-Apr. 1927:

***
A "scientific Nemesis" is no fun to have around the house. [Benchley]

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You can't frighten people by shouting "Boo" at them if they have seen you coming a hundred yards away or if you aren't very good at shouting "Boo." [ditto]
***

Notes on a couple of the attachments:
1. They completely missed out on using a "baby grands" gag in the piano cartoon! (Do I Have to Do Everything Myself? dept.) The term goes back to the 19th c., so no excuse on that account.
2. LOL/ouch to that Benchley quip about Baker's Plays (publishers of The Can of Yams). (:v>

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From Vanity Fair, Jan.-June 1926: