Right on!! Tim Conway’e deadpan…
It’s hard to believe he’s from Ohio!!
phouka: knock knock.
Who’s there?
Interrupting cow 
I admire her too but haven’t seen her in years. Is she still at it?
Some of my favorites:
- "If I had a child I know I would be an overprotective mother…I would never let the kid out…
…of my body…"
- "The other day I was driving and I saw a BMW with one of those Nike stickers, ‘Just Do It’…
…so I hit him…
…knocked the phone right out of his hand…
Another of my favorites is the “Donna Chang” episode of Seinfeld, where Donna calls something “ridicurous.” The audience cracks up and Jerry just gapes, and finally says, “What did you say?”
In a radio episode of Hancock’s Half Hour, Tony Hancock is undergoing a major image change for a movie, including plastic surgery and new romantic photos. One of the photos is as a “beachcomber” type chap on a beach, and as they’re looking at it someone points out that Hancock’s legs have been made thinner by simply removing one, then cutting the other in half and shifting one half over. Hancock declares this nonsense, then pauses. LONG silence.
“He’s right, y’know…”
Also the best bit about Baldrick’s “Yes my Lord, he’s hiding in the box” is that he doesn’t say it with any sense of failure. He is excited and happy, because he thinks, after his long deliberation, that that’s really what he’s supposed to say!
[nitpick] According to the published script, he says it because he can’t quite bring himself to lie for Percy. [/nitpick]
I think Jack Benny wins top honors (although Mr. S points out that Oliver Hardy invented the “camera look”). But as runner-up I’ll nominate . . .
. . . one of the last episodes of Cheers, in which Carla whips up a batch of potent booze and everyone (except Woody) gets so sloshed that they can’t remember what they did the next morning. Norm and Cliff go through the receipts in their wallets and discover that they visited a tattoo parlor – and worse, that the tattoos are apparently on their butts. They go to the men’s room to see what they got – then come out and sit on their barstools looking rather chagrined. Norm sips his beer. Cliff does this great thing where he fingers his chin, looks as if he’s about to say something, decides against it . . . Hilarious.
The payoff is that Norm’s tat says “God Bless the US Post Office” and Cliff’s is a big red heart with “I Love Vera.” “I guess they got them mixed up, huh?”
[nitpicking nitpick] Yeah, it does. And it’s rubbish. Baldrick isn’t smart enough to have moral scruples or to handle such a complicated scenario. He is honestly flummoxed as to what he’s supposed to say and delighted that he’s worked it out. The humour of the pause is that you can see the gears turning in his head, then a light bulb appears, but he still gets the answer 100% wrong. And the line is most definitely said with an air of triumph, not a resigned “I cannot tell a lie”.
The published script was written after the programmes aired, they weren’t what the actors were playing to because they fine tuned and changed so much in rehersals. I don’t know who transcribed them, but it wasn’t the writers or the actors. And this time they got it wrong. [/nitpicking nitpick]
*Young Frankenstein * seems to be an excellent source. I immediately thought of the exchange ending in
" . . . Ovaltine!"
Cloris not only uses verbal pauses perfectly, but combines them with body language to great effect.
This reminds me of a rather good bit in (I believe the original) Austin Powers, after Austin is thawed and begins to… micturate 30 years of accumulated urine. Every time you think he’s finished, there’s a great pause, (and a voiceover begins to declare the process complete), but then he starts again.
From Shakespeare in Love: the “origin” of one of the most common lines used in show business:
After finding “Juliet” has lost his “voice”:
Philip Henslowe: The show must. . . you know. . . .
William Shakespeare: [prompting him] Go on!?!
I’m not sure it’s quite a pause, but Eddie Izzard’s Englebert Humperdink is/isn’t dead bit comes to mind.
And another one from Young Frankenstein:
“Abby who?”
“Abby…Normal.”
Some of my fave pauses in movies:
The Last Starfighter: “What do we do now?!?”…“We die.”
Tombstone: “Well…bye.”
Holy Grail: “There are some who call me…Tim.”
Highlander: “Haggus, what’s haggus?”…“Sheeps stomach stuffed with oats and barley”…“and what do you do with it?”…“You EAT it you spanish peacock”…how REVOLTING. Now, get out of my boat…"
Conan: “Do you know what terrors lie beyond those walls?”…“No.”
Le Femme Nikita: “And what if I refuse?”…“Row 34, Plot 12”
and finally
Willy Wonka: “And remember what happened to the boy that suddenly got everything he ever wished for”…“What happened to him?”…“He lived happily ever after.”
D.
If I recall correctly, Jones said that the delay is exactly 14 frames. Less is not enough, more is too much.
From Seinfeld
Jerry comes back into the apartment and sees George sprawled on the floor with his pants around his ankles.
pause
“And you want to be my latext salesman.”
Arrested Development has a lot of great pauses from Justin Bateman. The one I’m thinking of (and I don’t have the exact quote with me), is from the episode where Tobias says, “I blue myself” and then is put in the hospital later.
“So what did Tobias say?”
pause
“Wonderful things.”
The one from “The Last Starfighter” reminds me of another great Jack Benny moment, this one from “To Be or Not to Be” where he plays, believe it or not, Carol Lombard’s husband. They are the Turas, a famous Polish acting couple living and working in Warsaw when World War II starts. German bombs are falling and the Turas and their company are all down in the basement. Someone asks Benny what they’re going to do now.
Benny: What are we going to do? We’ll do what actors always do in wartime.
(Pause as a look of sheepish self-loathing crosses his face)
We’ll hide.
Another great moment is in “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad World.” Jimmy Durante, pulling a Thelma and Louise, goes flying off a cliff. The other characters find him thrown several feet from his car, his body broken and Durante clearly dying. I’m paraphrasing again but one of the witnesses is Sid Ceaser.
Ceaser: Look, I’m not really a doctor. I’m only a dentist. But is there anything I can do for you>
Pause.
Durante: Is he kiddin’?
That one had me screaming.
Bill Cosby had some great ones, many of them that I’ve only experienced on audio.
Noah, this is the Lord.
.
.
.
Yeah. Right.
My favorite combination of Cosby pauses and nonpauses was on his album It’s True, It’s True, a routine about Spanish Fly. He’s already described the street-corner talk he grew up with, “Hey you guys know about ‘Spanish Fly’? There was this girl, Crazy Mary, and we put some in her drink, heh heh…” and segues to how as an adult he’s working with Robert Culp when the director comes in and announced “Boys, I Spy is going to Spain.”
.
.
.
.
<applause begins> <accelerates>
…A childhood dream come true!
So (he continues) I turn to Bob, because of course he don’t know, and I say Guess what I’m going to get when I’m over there and he says ‘Spanish Fly’.
.
.
.
. :eek:
In the Cosby routine, it wasn’t “Yeah, right.” – just, “Right.”
Which was just right.
Yes, she is. According to her website (www.wendyliebman.com) she’s still touring.