Word: raconteur
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Died. "Prince" Mike Romanoff, eightyish, Hollywood's reigning restaurateur-raconteur for more than two decades; of a heart attack; in Los Angeles. That no one knew Romanoff's precise age is a fitting footnote to the life of a legendary impostor who at various times passed himself off as Rasputin's assassin, the son of Victorian Prime Minister William Gladstone and a cousin of Czar Nicholas II. Actually, there is evidence that he was born Harry F. Gerguson, the son of Russian immigrants. After trying his hand at farming, peddling papers and bumming, the flamboyant phony with...
Born into a wealthy landowning family in Tay Ninh province. Tri choppered daily between the battlefield and his sumptuous villa, complete with swimming pool, on the river at Bien Hoa. There, Tri reveled in the role of host, bon vivant and raconteur. He was something of a zoo keeper as well, with ducks, pigeons, a deer, an ox and a pig roaming the grounds. Tri was devoted to his wife and six children; he taught economy to the younger ones by using their allowances to buy animal feed for the pig, then letting them split the profit when...
George E. Allen, lawyer, raconteur and poker-playing intimate of Presidents (F.D.R., Truman, Eisenhower), has made some money in the stock market over the years. Not, however, on any inside tips from his friends. His secret: Allen's Law of Politico-Market Cycles...
...whiz at rummaging through his mind and producing an apt quotation or literary reference. The result may not be original literature, but it is nonetheless a rich anthology. At his most recent press conference Pompidou, a former teacher, editor of a collection of French poetry and longtime literary raconteur, casually served up a classical mélange. Samples...
...trying to speed things up by finishing the S.T.O.A. man's sentences. It doesn't work. The S.T.O.A. man continues to munch each sentence 32 times, and the interviewer drops off to sleep as the interviewee gets in the last agonizing word. Another interview features a famed raconteur who cannot recall the punch lines to his stories but finally remembers a punch line without any anecdote to go with it. One wickedly funny parody of a news commentator, David Chetley, achieves a masterly mimicry of the arch pauses and polysyllabic whimsy of David Brinkley...