Accent on Living
Reflections from a Television Screen ITEM: In a series of half-hour programs, a teacher has been showing how to compute the rate of acceleration of a falling object. He writes on a blackboard neat symbols for such points of information as weight, distance, time, and so on, and these he proceeds to arrange in harmless looking equations. Sometimes he lets the little ball that he uses fall straight down, or again he may let it swing at the end of a string. He is never hurried or confused, never at a loss for his next utterance. His air is kindly, his voice pleasant. Step by step, he brings his problem to what is obviously, to him, a successful conclusion. Although his diction is faultless, I have never been able to understand any stage of his explanation. It means nothing to me, but it all seems to make sense to him. Query: Can it be that this man is insane?
ITEM: The ardent, connubial kiss for which one party or the other has, only seconds earlier, been preparing by gargling full-strength Listerine.
ITEM: The plight of the advertising agency when the president of the client company insists on delivering, to a national network audience, the commercial. That was a sound piece of institutional copy that the president of Clinton Engines expounded during a time out in the Giants-Colts football game, but the involuntary expression of relief that swept over his countenance when he realized that he had finished it was a hilarious glimpse of amateurism unawares.
ITEM: The commentator who believes his words can take on added authority when he refers to Premier (pronounced preh-meer) Nikita S. Khrushchev instead of just Premier Khrushchev. Or is this designed to distinguish Nikita S. from Anthony M. Khrushchev or J. Howard Khrushchev? “What Preh-meer Ni-ki-ta S. Khrushchev’s latest outburst probably means is . . .”
ITEM: The large number of announcers who insist on pronouncing it “stummick,” as in (one word) “ acidupsetstummick. ”
ITEM: The sports commentators to whom every college team is a “club,” usually a “ball club.” It is quite impossible for these men to speak of a “game” or the “ball.” The reference must be “this football game” or “that football.” Example: “And now, about to try for a field goal for Coach Wodnesjek’s Berserk U football club, here comes Light Horse Harry Doozy. He’ll be kicking that football from Wingding’s thirty-yard line, and with only two minutes playing time left in the football game, it looks like the dee-fensive unit of Coach Roop’s Wingding ball club will try to get in there and block it,” and so on. A similar affectation has developed in the running account of a program called Championship Golf, in which the narrator alludes to any approach shot that reaches the putting surface and stays there as a “beautiful golf shot.” This, presumably, is for those viewers who had thought they were witnessing a curling match or an egg-and-spoon race. Sports columnists and commentators are, of course, pioneers in the school of language which converts a banana into “the elongated yellow fruit,” and the winter’s best in this category so far was a Florida announcer’s description of men in a fly-casting contest as “disciples of Izaic [rhymes with mosaic] Walton.”
(I must digress briefly to acclaim once again the Wall Street Journal as the incomparable source of elongated yellow fruit examples. “Here’s a passage,” William Pinkerton writes me from the Harvard News Office, “from the Wall Street Journal [December 3] about transistors versus vacuum tubes; ‘. . . the tiny bits of coated
metal have been losing a few rounds lately in the competitive battle with their older, more cumbersome, tubular counterparts.’ ”)
ITEM: The WBZ announcer who, plugging a self-education program called Sunrise Semester, referred to Gide and Colette as “Geed and Colay.” Also, the announcer for Boston Movietime who repeatedly assured his audience that the film they were watching was The Adventures of Robinson Caruso.
ITEM: Dr. I.Q. (“The Mental Banker”), who seems to have been around ever since the early days of KDKA and the neutrodyne sets and whose audience now muff the same questions on TV that floored them on radio. Example:
Dr. I.Q.: If a drink is drinkable, is it potable, edible, or not fit for man or beast?
Female Contestant (after a spine chilling wait): Edible?
Dr. I.Q.: Oh, I’m sorry, but . . .
ITEM: The gay and altogether delightful interval when Francis X. Bushman was a guest on the Jack Paar Show. Handsome, gracious, and with a great manner of his own, he made an unforgettable response to his host’s request for an example of pantomime from the silent films: he offered, smilingly, to show what he would have done when the subtitle had him saying, “They went that-a-way.” The words would have been unnecessary, so complete was the Bushman mastery of the visual effect. For an instant he looked thoughtful, then portentous, as if a great decision had been taken. His right hand, forefinger extended, began a slow, fluid gesture, first to the left, where the actor seemed to be looking, then sweeping a full 180 degrees to the right, where it stopped in a triumphantly dramatic directional thrust. That, yes that, was indeed the way they’d gone, and Mr. Bushman’s ability to make the viewer believe it was awesome. It would be pleasant to see more of him on the TV screen.
ITEM: The Jack Paar Show, which was subjected to a ruinous sojourn on the West Coast but managed to regain its quality once again in New York. In spite of the late hour, I find Jack Paar more often than not worth sitting up for.