Wide-Awake Sleeper

One Sunday afternoon, the day when TV networks pay commerce's homage to culture, CBS casually dropped a small token into its schedule: a show that offered nothing to the eye but four people talking, nothing to the ear but talk of how to use the English language properly. To the surprise of network skeptics, The Last Word proved the sleeper of 1957, demonstrated that syntax can be made almost as fascinating as sin. Rounding out its sixth month this week, the lively sleeper (now on at 6 p.m., E.D.T.) is still piling up a whopping 1,000 letters a day from Americans who want answers to the tricky problems of the language they speak.

In answering them, with the help of two weekly guests ranging from a British ambassador to Gypsy Rose Lee. Moderator Bergen Evans and Panelist John Mason Brown have fought a running duel over such issues as dangling prepositions, split infinitives, and smokes that "taste good like a cigarette should."

The Emetic "We." Academician Bergen Evans, an English professor at Northwestern who doubles as the question concoctor for The $64,000 Question, takes the easygoing view that language is what its users make of it. It is usually Critic Brown who is the first to cry Fowler. Both quick-witted, the two men also strike sparks with contrasting personalities: stocky Evans, 52, often rides roughshod over the conversation with a donnish cackle and a rapid, sing-song voice that strikes some listeners like chalk drawn across a blackboard; lean, white-haired Brown, 57, a veteran lecturer and darling of women's clubs, is a courtly Kentuckian with effortless charm.

Last week, as usual, The Last Word produced the rarest sound on TV: the crackle of civilized talk. When the panel considered the difference between genius and talent, Brown handily paraphrased James Russell Lowell ("Talent is what a man possesses. Genius is what possesses a man"), and added: "You speak of a talent scout, on the assumption that talent can be found, but I have never heard of a genius scout, even on Madison Avenue." Unable to agree on whether hey liked the editorial "we," the panelists agreed that what Evans called the "hospital 'we' or the emetic 'we,' " i.e., "How do we feel this morning?", is a loathsome usage. "That," cracked Irish Author Frank O'Connor, "is the beditorial 'we.' "

Broken Commandments. Such puns often rile some viewers into protests. But the Last Word puts up happily with Brown's observation on slurred speech ("To slur is human") or Guest Panelist S. J. Perelman's near classic, "I've got Bright's disease--and he's got mine.'' What riles the audience more is Scholar Evans' zest for breaking old grammatical commandments. Evans accepts "it is me," prefers "ain't" to the awkward "am I not," thinks it fine to occasionally split infinitives, regards prepositions as good things to end sentences with. Says the professor: "When I say, 'Well, that's all we've got time for,' it always triggers a bushel of mail from people who think that 'got' is wrong. It isn't."

English instructors in colleges all over the U.S. have made the show required viewing. New York's Governor Averell Harriman wrote for the panelists' views on changing "different than" to "different from" on the state income-tax forms (they approved "from"--and so it will be). Inmates at the Pennsylvania State Prison asked advice on how to shorten sentences. As Variety put it, without bothering Dr. Evans: "Grammar never had it so good."

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