Word: rooney
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...essays were not all his, They were written by Andrew Rooney, 49, the most felicitous nonfiction writer in television. Much heard if not seen, Rooney won an Emmy this year for co-authorship of last summer's impressive Of Black America, in which Bill Cosby recounted the century-long misrepresentation of the Negro by U.S. movie makers and historians...
Breakaway Biafra. The essay topics are rarely hard-news musts, and never flunk the Rooney colon test. Andy says he can spot an overly sober TV treatise merely by the colon in its title; for ex ample, "Somaliland: Case History of a People," His specialty is the light TV essay that extracts the significant from the commonplace. Does it bother him that Reasoner gets all the glory and earns about $200,000 compared with his $60,000? "Harry has never actually sent me for coffee," Andy jokes, "but he often says, 'If you're going to the cafeteria...
...Rooney has a ready explanation for his success with TV scripts: "It's not so much that I write well - I just don't write badly very often, and that passes for good on television." The straight news shows, he says, are the worst, although he concedes that "distinguished writing there might be obtrusive." Be cause of lack of tiniw, he feels, news writ ers get away with a shorthand glossary of minor cliches like "breakaway Biafra" or "oil-rich Kuwait...
Slow Listening. Rooney's rule of writing is to stick to short declarative sentences. He is forever quoting Thoreau's comment that "If a man has anything to say, it drops from him simply and directly like a stone to the ground." He adds that "people talk faster than they listen, and you have to give them time to hear what you've said. Clever phrases make slow listening." Andy contends that his veteran colleague Eric Sevareid has discovered that fact only in the past five years and has "improved immeasurably since...
...change. At 21 she was visiting a psychiatrist regularly and living on pills: pills to put her to sleep, pills to wake her up, pills to help keep her weight down. Eleven years, two husbands, and 20 movies (including the Andy Hardy series with Mickey Rooney, Meet Me in St. Louis and Easter Parade) after making Oz, she had established herself as the best of a bevy of girlish filmland warblers that included Gloria Jean, Deanna Durbin and Jane Powell. But she could no longer handle the pressure of stardom. She began showing up for work late or sick, then...