Word: wisecracking
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...studied (Buster Keaton, her onetime office mate at MGM, taught her how to handle props) and impersonated (her mirror-image confrontation with Harpo Marx and her Chaplin homage were priceless), Ball rehearsed every sequence obsessively. Yet when the cameras were rolling she made each gesture look spontaneous, each wisecrack seem an ad lib. Memorably, Lucy and her sidekick Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance) took a job wrapping chocolates; as the candies hurtled past on a conveyor belt, the hapless duo tried to keep pace by stuffing half of them into their mouths. Seeking to emulate a pioneer woman, Lucy opened...
...sort of careless quip for which Ronald Reagan has become infamous. But while past remarks about nuking the Soviets or lying to Congress only caused embarrassment for the President, the tasteless wisecrack Reagan delivered last week ignited a minor political storm. At a White House press conference, a reporter working for a journal published by Extremist Lyndon LaRouche asked the President about rumors that Michael Dukakis once sought psychological help. "Look," Reagan replied with a smile, "I'm not going to pick on an invalid...
...Hare Airport that evening, Hart became hopelessly lost while searching for the right baggage-claim carrousel. As the couple and a small group of reporters wandered aimlessly around the terminal, Lee could not resist taunting her husband, "You're not showing leadership, Gary." She even repeated the wisecrack for the reporters' benefit. Later, in South Dakota, Lee's interjections caused Gary to ask her to hold her peace until she had an interview of her own. "O.K.," Lee retorted. "I'll wait until I run for President...
...evolved into an unabashed celebration of revolving multicolored staircases, grandes dames in glittery dresses and kick-stepping lines of chorus boys in top hats. One of the new numbers, performed deadpan by Diana Rigg, is a striptease ending in a bubble bath. The original Follies might have inspired the wisecrack that nostalgia isn't what it used to be, but in this version, it certainly...
Knocking down his previous story that he had been on such chummy terms with the President as to joke with him about the delicious irony of sending the Ayatullah's money to the contras, the Marine placed a proper bureaucratic distance between himself and the top boss. (This wisecrack, North conceded, had been uttered out of the President's hearing as he and his superior, National Security Adviser John Poindexter, left a White House meeting.) North said he had never even discussed his far-flung secret operations one-on-one with the President. But, he insisted, "I assumed that...