Word: ballyhoo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1920-1929
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Later in the week, there were varying comments on this feast of fake fatalities and free-for-all ballyhoo. Some criticised the apparent foolishness of the press. Others gave great praise to Press-agent Irving Strouse. They said: "Certain flowers have a brief but repetitive bloom; likewise a fashion, a joke, a publicity stunt. Press-agent Strouse was clever in that he accurately gauged the precise degree of reportorial gullibility; newshawks are perhaps to be excused for supposing that no one would dare attempt so blatant a hoax in the hope of practicing a deception. Press-agent Strouse indubitably...
...That these prejudices are real and in some particulars vital, any resident of Mississippi, California, or Manila can explain. They require statesmanlike consideration, not "threeday" vaporings. These things may appear different in Dubois, Wyoming but in Singapore, Saigon, or Manila a condition must be faced and dealt with, empty ballyhoo will not suffice...
While Mr. Lowden has stood thus, he has been shouldered aside by a burly, blatant, sideshow barker from the city, whose ambition is not to sit in the chair himself but to call the crowd, direct the act and lead the ballyhoo. Mr. Lowden's enemy of old, Mayor William Hale ("Big Bill") Thompson of Chicago, has spellbound the bystanders and gained mastery of Illinois, and perhaps a lot more Lowden territory, by an opportunism from which gentlemanliness is omitted with a frank grin. Nor is the Thompson grin as foolish as it looks...
Broadway's producers, who in the crucial moment of selection are most swayed by the prospect of fat boxoffice returns, have of late staked their ultimate pennies on the play of the theatre. Of this description "Ballyhoo," "The Shannons of Broadway," "Burlesque," "The Wild Man of Borneo," "The Barker," and "Broadway" have been the most notable, the last-named two even leaving the secure delights of a Manhattan audience to brave with confident melodrama what is now known throughout the profession as the Boston titter...
...boys and girls-erring corset salesmen, twisted sex victims, brawling cinema actors and actresses-who make the rest of the villagers sit up, rub eyes. But whether it is a good show or a bad show or a peep show, the newspapers have certainly brought the art of ballyhoo to new heights of volume and penetration. Through it all, the hero of the occasion has been, appropriately, the most heroic aspect of it. Never has his tongue or his balance slipped, always has he been what kindly old ladies might call "a real nice boy." Anyone might have said...