WHY CAN'T THE ACTORS LEARN TO SPEAK? I really don't know anything about longtime NBC newsman Edwin Newman,
whose death a month ago was announced today, other than that on the evening of February 25, 1984,
he starred in one of the funniest SNL skits from that era.
I totally have premorse about this. I loved him.
ReplyDeleteBest line from the NYT obit:
ReplyDeleteAmong the sins that set Mr. Newman’s teeth articulately on edge were these: all jargon; idiosyncratic spellings like "Amtrak"; the non-adverbial use of “hopefully” (he was said to have had a sign in his office reading, “Abandon ‘Hopefully’ All Ye Who Enter Here”); “y’know” as a conversational stopgap; a passel of prefixes and suffixes (“de-,” “non-,” “un-,” “-ize,” “-wise” and “-ee”); and using a preposition to end a sentence with.
The moment I heard of his death, all I could think was "Iranian's pain was mainly from Khomeni. Khomeni's reign was mainly based on pay-ayn." I haven't seen that sketch since the first time it aired, I think (it doesn't seem to be on YouTube) but I can hear him in my head clear as day. Rest in peace, sir.
ReplyDeleteOne of the highlights of the Dave Letterman morning show was watching Newman adjust to the studio audience applauding or booing his news updates.
ReplyDelete