Terms Which Have Disappeared

[Zombie_61]

As is usually the case, I think of terms for this thread when I'm writing a post in another thread and they pop into my head. This time it was

Ham-fisted or ham-handed - don't hear those much anymore.

I still use "ham-fisted" on occasion in both posts like these and general conversation but, with the exception of one like-minded long-term friend, can't recall ever hearing anyone else use it. And yet, despite it's disuse in modern society I've never had to define it for anyone regardless of their age--people seem to instantly understand it's a reference to someone doing something in an awkward or clumsy manner, which is one of the reasons I like it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And then there's "hamboning," a stage term referring to a performer who goes in for broad, overdone gestures and exaggerated delivery.

 

[BlueTrain]

I still like to call out "Barkeep, believe I'll have me 'nother". My favorite ones always get a kick out of it.

A man's has to believe in something.

 

[BlueTrain]

And then there's "hamboning," a stage term referring to a performer who goes in for broad, overdone gestures and exaggerated delivery.

In a sense, most everything done on stage is like that. Performers on stage usually don't speak in a normal tone of voice. Everything has to be a little exaggerated so it can be seen and understood by someone sitting fifty feet away. Same with the makeup, although I suppose even all of that can be overdone. It depends a little on what the performance is all about and what the venue is like and maybe how much amplification there is to the sound.

I think Roy Rogers said that he started wearing those really fancy Nudie cowboy outfits with the bright trimmings because he wanted to stand out on a big stage. Same thing.

 

[Fading Fast]

In a sense, most everything done on stage is like that. Performers on stage usually don't speak in a normal tone of voice. Everything has to be a little exaggerated so it can be seen and understood by someone sitting fifty feet away. Same with the makeup, although I suppose even all of that can be overdone. It depends a little on what the performance is all about and what the venue is like and maybe how much amplification there is to the sound.

I think Roy Rogers said that he started wearing those really fancy Nudie cowboy outfits with the bright trimmings because he wanted to stand out on a big stage. Same thing.

This is why, I think, the theater has never worked for me. I grew up on TV and movies (we weren't making trips to the theater in my house) and only started seeing plays as an adult. They rang false and forced to me for the reasons you note.

Even though I understand that it has to be that way, I can't get into it and see it as all but pantomime - I can't get out of the theater fast enough. I haven't gone to a play in over 20 years and, if my life works according to plan, I never will again.

 

[BlueTrain]

I really haven't seen many stage productions, not counting concerts, but I have enjoyed the musicals I've seen. Plain old song and dance productions are rare and musical variety shows are virtually non-existent, as far as I can tell. If they're still around, they aren't anything like what I would like to see. The early TV variety shows were essentially vaudeville transferred to the TV screen and in fact, included many of the same performers.

One of the funniest stage shows I've seen was back when Peter Scheckele was touring with his P.D.Q. Bach show, which I think he continued to do until recently (he is now in his 80s). The performance I saw was around 1969 and I was lucky enough to meet him backstage. It's musical satire, something not appreciated by everyone, but then what is.

 

[Hurricane Jack]

A man's has to believe in something.

I never use the term "barmaid" as I can see how that might sound offensive or insensitive, but I love the term barkeep instead of bartender. And you don't hear it ever.

 

[Fading Fast]

"Going to seed."

Great phrase, rarely hear it anymore.

 

[3fingers]

You never hear the minced oath "By George!" anymore. I used to wonder what George it was -- George Washington, King George, George Pullman, George "Twinkletoes" Selkirk, George Plimpton, George of the Jungle?

I have thought it was a euphemism of God, likewise with the similar "By Jove" meaning Jesus. I also have no idea why George was chosen or who Jove was.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Jove was another name for Jupiter, which was another name for Zeus. I guess swearing by entities drawn from classical mythology was allowed in the olden days, despite the First Commandment.

As far as broad acting in the theatre is concerned, there's broad and then there's BROAD. You really get the difference when MASTER THESPIANS turn up on radio shows and do their whole declaiming-for-the-balcony bit, to the overwhelmed astonishment of Ma and Pa Hicktown sitting home by the fireside listening to the old Philco. John Barrymore was a great stage actor in the old school tradition, but on radio he came across as an outrageous hambone, to the point where he ended up playing a parody of himself to great success on the air. Another actor who had a bit of the old salted pork hock in him was Orson Welles, who, despite his many radio accomplishments, never quite convinced me he was ever playing any character other than ORSON WELLES in any of his programs. I imagine seeing him on the stage would have been quite an experience.

 

[Fading Fast]

Jove was another name for Jupiter, which was another name for Zeus. I guess swearing by entities drawn from classical mythology was allowed in the olden days, despite the First Commandment.

As far as broad acting in the theatre is concerned, there's broad and then there's BROAD. You really get the difference when MASTER THESPIANS turn up on radio shows and do their whole declaiming-for-the-balcony bit, to the overwhelmed astonishment of Ma and Pa Hicktown sitting home by the fireside listening to the old Philco. John Barrymore was a great stage actor in the old school tradition, but on radio he came across as an outrageous hambone, to the point where he ended up playing a parody of himself to great success on the air. Another actor who had a bit of the old salted pork hock in him was Orson Welles, who, despite his many radio accomplishments, never quite convinced me he was ever playing any character other than ORSON WELLES in any of his programs. I imagine seeing him on the stage would have been quite an experience.

For movie acting, Lionel understood the difference and subtly needed better than John did. It's fun to watch the silent screen actors adjust to the talkies (which has some parallels to theater-to-radio-or-screen adjusting) as some got it right away, but others you'll notice got better as the '30s rolled along and some (did someone just say Norma Shearer) never fully got it and kept slipping back into "silent screen" mode even late in the '30s.

I hear you on Welles - he definitely had an Orson Welles-ness to him in whatever he did - but I still think he had talent as an actor which he, IMHO, shows in "The Stranger" or "The Long Hot Summer," but much less so in "Jane Eyre" or "The Third Man" where he's mainly Orson Welles-ness.

That said, he's one of those talents that can pull off his Orson Welles-ness, like he did in "The Third Man." You know it's Welles, he knows you know it's him, but it still all works. Cary Grant could do this too - sometimes he was the character and showed real acting chops / sometimes he was just Cary Grant playing a role - but it usually worked.

 

[BlueTrain]

I think Cary Grant was playing Cary Grant all the time. And that suggests something about all of us.

Somebody said a long time ago that all the world's a stage and so we're all actors, after a fashion. Some are better than others. Acting isn't easy and I don't know how they remember their lines. Sometimes I even think that actors put a little of themselves into a part, although that can be taken too far and the actor becomes inflexible and typecast. I used to wonder why Spencer Tracy was called a great actor or "an actor's actor." Then I realized (with hints from several sources) that he couldn't be imitated the way, say, John Wayne was. He didn't have mannerisms that always came through on the screen. Some did and were still good actors and had a great screen presence and that certainly included John Wayne, who acted best when he played John Wayne. And that's who people went to the theater to see.

Some early movie actors almost sounded like they were on stage and "overacting" on the screen, at least compared to other individuals at the same time (in the same movie). They were melodramatic. On the other hand, there used to be a formal style of speaking (public speaking) that is no longer heard. It wasn't simply public speaking; it was oratory. And some of the acting I'm referring to was a little like that.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's very entertaining to listen to broadcast recordings of politicans and clergymen from the Era, speaking at conventions and the like. You wouldn't think someone like Calvin Coolidge would be much of an orator, and he did have a very thin, nasal voice -- but he was an excellent speaker in the old-school tradition, and it comes thru when you listen to his 1925 inaugural address or his speech welcoming Lindbergh back to the US. Hoover, on the other hand, was everything bad about old-time stump speakers -- long-winded, orotund, and tedious, and he always went on about fifteen minutes longer than he should have. FDR, on the other hand, always left his audience wanting more -- his speeches came to a quick point, and then he was done.

For my money the most exciting orators to listen to on radio -- never mind their polnts of view, I'm just speaking of speaking style -- would be Father Coughlin and Judge Rutherford. Both of these guys had the whole 1890s William Jennings Bryan style of oration down pat -- start out slow and modulated and build to a dramatic crashing crescendo with each point expressed leading up to a thunderous climax at the end. They were about as diametrically opposed politically and theologically as two personalities could be, but they both came out of the same oratorical mold. They're very different from more modern clergyman-orators like Fulton Sheen or Norman Vincent Peale, who had a much more insinuating, low-key approach on the air.

 

[Fading Fast]

While not my political bent at all, I've would love to hear Bryan giving his Cross-of-Gold speech - just reading it gives you the chills and everything written says his delivery was incredible.

 

[ChiTownScion]

While not my political bent at all, I've would love to hear Bryan giving his Cross-of-Gold speech - just reading it gives you the chills and everything written says his delivery was incredible.

And what is also interesting is that when it was given, there were a number of good conservative religious folk who deemed the rhetoric ("You shall not press this crown of thorns upon the brow of the working man! You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!") to be downright blasphemous. Ironic in that he eventually became the patron saint of Fundamentalism... at a time before the Scopes trial and when the greatest battlefront for Fundamentalism was control then predominantly Presbyterian Princeton Theological Seminary.

 

[Zombie_61]

...Some early movie actors almost sounded like they were on stage and "overacting" on the screen, at least compared to other individuals at the same time (in the same movie). They were melodramatic...

Part of the problem was that some actors found it difficult to make that transition from stage to screen because they were slow to realize they no longer needed to make the broad physical gestures and facial expressions and/or use loud voices that were necessary in a live theater so that the people in the back row could see and hear them--the camera (and microphones when "talkies" became the new norm) did that for them. Some had probably been stage acting for several years, perhaps decades, and were unable or unwilling to change the style of acting they had been using all of those years, but those who were often regarded as "better" actors in early movies were those who understood how to work with the cameras to make their performances more natural.

 

[BlueTrain]

Some movies are very "talky," and that may have been difficult for some but some movies are only a little more than filmed stage productions, with most of the action, such as there is, taking place in one room. Still, I suppose there needed to be a different style of speaking and moving around. And sometimes in movies, real oratory is called for in a part. But for many movies, there's nothing natural about any part of it, although I'm not implying the movie can't be enjoyable.

 

[Bugguy]

Waiting in traffic for a red light to change and the guy in front doesn't go when it's green, my dad always commented "What's he doing, waiting for a color he likes".

I think my wife is sick of hearing it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Some movies are very "talky," and that may have been difficult for some but some movies are only a little more than filmed stage productions, with most of the action, such as there is, taking place in one room. Still, I suppose there needed to be a different style of speaking and moving around. And sometimes in movies, real oratory is called for in a part. But for many movies, there's nothing natural about any part of it, although I'm not implying the movie can't be enjoyable.

Pretty much any talkie made in 1929 is going to fall into that description -- there are exceptions, but that style was very much the rule. The idea was "OK, the people want TALKING PICTURES, well by Sam Warner they're gonna have TALKING PICTURES." There were a few films made during this period that even dispensed with the opening title cards and had the credits announced by voice. "Dear ladies and gentlemen! Hal Roach presents for your entertainment and approval his Rascals, in their latest Our Gang comedy entitled..."

Those actors who were most comfortable with dialogue during this period were usually stage veterans, so the studios began importing stage actors by the carload and throwing them into films to see which ones worked on the screen. If you watch a lot of early talkies and wonder who the hell most of these people are, you're not alone. Most of them were completely unknown outside of New York, many of them photographed horribly, and very very few of them caught on.

Moviegoers and critics got sick of this within a very short time, and the box office took a pretty sharp hit during 1930. People were complaining right and left about the "squawkies," and there were even hopes expressed in some quarters that the silent pictures might come back as a way of offering relief from the incessant pointless gab.

 

[Fading Fast]

Pretty much any talkie made in 1929 is going to fall into that description -- there are exceptions, but that style was very much the rule. The idea was "OK, the people want TALKING PICTURES, well by Sam Warner they're gonna have TALKING PICTURES." There were a few films made during this period that even dispensed with the opening title cards and had the credits announced by voice. "Dear ladies and gentlemen! Hal Roach presents for your entertainment and approval his Rascals, in their latest Our Gang comedy entitled..."

Those actors who were most comfortable with dialogue during this period were usually stage veterans, so the studios began importing stage actors by the carload and throwing them into films to see which ones worked on the screen. If you watch a lot of early talkies and wonder who the hell most of these people are, you're not alone. Most of them were completely unknown outside of New York, many of them photographed horribly, and very very few of them caught on.

Moviegoers and critics got sick of this within a very short time, and the box office took a pretty sharp hit during 1930. People were complaining right and left about the "squawkies," and there were even hopes expressed in some quarters that the silent pictures might come back as a way of offering relief from the incessant pointless gab.

Trial and error (one variant of creative destruction) ain't always pretty, but it works as can be seen by the rapid quality improvement of the "talkies" throughout the pre-code era. A well-done '34 movie looks and sounds miles better than the '29/'30 ones.