Word: starks
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...German expressionists, still painting his slab-faced people. The abstractionists and surrealists showed more vigor and inventiveness, but nothing to compare with the explosive stuff of postwar France and Italy. Among the best of them: Old Surrealist (59) Edgar Ende's The Organ and Deserted Shop, both stark and enlivened by bold strokes of coral, cerise, blue...
...friends, more important than winning the election is governing the nation . . . When the tumult and the shouting die, when the bands are gone and the lights are dimmed, there is the stark reality of responsibility in an hour of history haunted with those gaunt, grim specters of strife, dissension and materialism at home, and ruthless, inscrutable and hostile power abroad...
...Equals Seven. Stark and Herlihy acknowledge their debt to Ralph Edwards, the first of the folksy, sincere-type announcers (the most successful: Arthur Godfrey). They are also uneasily aware that fashions change in announcers, as in everything else. For a while, TV was threatened by an invasion of women announcers-e.g., Betty Furness, Wendy Barrie and Singer Dorothy Collins. But Herlihy says: "Sponsors have found that the average woman listener would rather get her information from a man. Women will watch Betty Furness selling a refrigerator, but what they're thinking is 'I wonder where Betty...
Like all announcers, Stark and Herlihy are haunted by the possibility of blowing their lines. Herlihy made one of the first U.S. television commercials back in 1941: when he saw the TV camera bearing down on him, he forgot every line he had carefully memorized. Announcers still shudder at the thought of the classic fumble made by Radcliffe Hall. He was racing the clock to complete a bread commercial before his show went off the air when, to his horror, he managed to turn the tagline "Always demand the best in bread!" into a whopping spoonerism...
Announcers often dislike commercial cliches as much as listeners do. On Stark's list of pet hates are commercials beginning with "Yes!"; or "y'know, folks . . ." and the phrase "Do it today!" Herlihy detests "Listen!"; having to say, "The supply is limited, so act now!" and "Don't take my word for it, go out and buy a box today." Stark also has a heretical notion that "I can sell just as much of any product in two minutes as I now do in seven." Unfortunately for televiewers, there is little chance that any sponsor will give...