Word: raconteur
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...grow up" button is pressed. Heather's blond head has several sensors that pick up sound, so it can turn and face the direction from which someone is speaking. Playmates, of La Mirada, Calif., has come out with Jill, ($150) a trendy twelve-year-old companion and raconteur. Telling a story about a haunted house, Jill might ask, "Should we go in the front door, the back door or crawl in a window?" The child's choice determines the direction of the story. Extra voice tapes include Jill's Slumber Party and Jill Goes to the Mall, complete with credit...
...grandly facetious to accommodate believers as well as skeptics. William Goldman tried all this in his 1973 novel The Princess Bride. His narrative had all the proper ingredients and all the right new moves: he deconstructed his text and undercut it with the cadences of a Borscht Belt raconteur. But on the page, Goldman's wordplay seemed too much of a jape. It needed the expanse of cinema -- where on the late show Errol Flynn and Gunga Din are still storybook young -- to revive the poetry of fable. Now, 14 years later, he and Rob Reiner have got it smashingly...
DIED. Howard M. Teichmann, 71, witty playwright and biographer of George S. Kaufman, Alexander Woollcott and Henry Fonda; of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease); in New York City. A stylish writer and raconteur, the Chicago-born Teichmann scored a solid hit on Broadway with his 1953 comedy, The Solid Gold Cadillac, co-written with Kaufman...
...raged on. To his indignation and amusement, the notoriety transcended the art. Last year brought two scandal- tinged biographies of the playwright, who died in 1983. Last week saw the arrival of a far more affectionate event, Confessions of a Nightingale, an ingratiatingly salty impersonation of Williams the raconteur...
Jackson is cherished by colleagues for his talents as a raconteur and his invariable appearance in braces (never suspenders). His eye-catching collection includes pairs with fox-hunting scenes and depictions of disporting nudes. "I wore braces even in combat," says Jackson cheerily. "Once a fop, always...