Word: clowning
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Looking back, though, it seems likely that the Beatles--with their buoyant spirits, their bottomless charm, their unaccustomed and irrepressible wit--could probably have boosted the mirth quotient at a clown convention. Their overflowing gifts for songcraft, harmony and instrumental excitement, their spiffy suits and nifty haircuts, their bright quips and ready smiles, made them appear almost otherworldly, as if they had just beamed down from some distant and far happier planet...
Buster Keaton, the great silent clown working as a consultant at MGM, recognized her comic gifts and worked with her on stunts. She got a few chances to show off her talent in films like DuBarry Was a Lady (with Red Skelton) and Fancy Pants (with Bob Hope) but never broke through to the top. By the end of the 1940s, with Ball approaching 40, her movie career was all but finished...
Ball was a lithe and inventive physical comedian, and her famous slapstick bits--trying to keep up with a candy assembly line, stomping grapes in an Italian wine vat--were justly celebrated. But she was far more than a clown. Her mobile face could register a whole dictionary of emotions; her comic timing was unmatched; her devotion to the truth of her character never flagged. She was a tireless perfectionist. For one scene in which she needed to pop a paper bag, she spent three hours testing bags to make sure she got the right size and sound...
...school, few took Kinkel's menace seriously. He was known as a class clown, a little weird but with plenty of friends. Although small for his age, he played football as a backup linebacker and took karate lessons. And if classmates failed to report his darker side, teachers seemed equally nonchalant. He reportedly gave a presentation in speech class on how to build a pipe bomb, complete with illustrations. In a literature course, he was said to have read from a diary in which he mentioned plans to "kill everybody." Asked at a news conference whether officials should have reacted...
Usually when a comedian speaks with great seriousness about his art, he is either being totally insincere or has fallen victim to a modern cliche, the clown who's laughing on the outside and thinking on the inside. In the case of Shandling, though, the sentiments seem both authentic and well considered. It's not always true, as the shibboleth holds, that the best comedy grows out of characters, not jokes, but the characters on Larry Sanders really are what make it so funny. The one-liners, the self-mocking guest stars, the setting so rich in hypocrisy--these would...