Word: pitches
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Dates: during 1950-1950
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...oldtime pitchman employs the "high pitch" and is usually "a screamer, a semi-comedian and comparatively illiterate," says Kaye. On television, the "low pitch" is preferred: "Our people tend to be on the quiet side; they're subtle, more confidential, and much more personal." In evidence, Kaye points to his top TV pitchman, William "Hoppy" Haupt, a college graduate (Loyola of Los Angeles) and a former teacher at Los Angeles' Immaculate Heart College Labor School. Says Kaye admiringly: "Hoppy does everything except gadgets. He's extraordinary at selling finer quality merchandise...
Kaye has noted approvingly that more & more big network shows are using pitchmen's techniques: "Whenever a performer demonstrates an article and sells it, he's a pitchman. Arthur Godfrey is one of the greatest; he has many of the pitch techniques." But Kaye looks with tolerant amusement on Sid Stone, an apostle of the high pitch whose rapid-fire commercial spiels for Texaco are an adornment of the Milton Berle show. "Stone's not a pitchman," Kaye says condescendingly, "he's just an entertainer...
...rate of 19/6 in the ?, plus the Death Duties. In Ireland, he might have been reduced to the alcoholism which had frightened him as a child in the life of his father. And there was a second strain of Irish genius which can be developed to a higher pitch outside that country: the role of the stage-Irishman. Whenever that genius has submitted to the discipline of the theater, it has been irresistible. Behind Shaw the dramatist were Goldsmith, Sheridan and Wilde...
...Yankees had loaded the bases with two out. Lou Gehrig was on first, Bob Meusel on second, Earle Combs on third, and slugging Tony Lazzeri was up. Pete ambled sleepily to the mound, took a couple of warm-up throws and struck Lazzeri out on three pitches, went on to save the St. Louis lead and win the World Championship. Later, Pete reminisced about his second pitch to Lazzeri, which Lazzeri had hit whistling down the third-base line-barely foul. Said he: "A foot made the difference between being a hero...
...little "tatty" in an artfully simple dress, her red curls all over her head. Her first song, about a blooming romance in a laundromat, was delivered in a saucy, off-key voice something like a boy soprano's. Then Elsa climbed on top of the grand piano to pitch a mildly off-color number called The Janitor's Boy. The audience liked some of Elsa's pitches, but they were a little letdown by the delivery: she made no effort to cozy up to the customers between numbers. Persian Room audiences have been trained on entertainers...