by Jack Valenti
The author is that little man with beautiful white hair who shows up on the Oscar broadcasts, mostly, it seems, to be the butt of Johnny Carson jokes. Valenti is in fact the president of the Motion Picture Association of America. He was a young public relations man in Texas when John Kennedy was shot, and Lyndon Johnson took Valenti to Washington and made him his speech writer. Drawing on that background, he has assembled this slender book, subtitled "How to prepare, learn, and deliver effective speeches." The advice is simple, with suggestions such as: "Practice, practice, practice. Never rise to your feet without having given thought to what you are going to say." Valenti quotes a lot of famous people, such as Winston Churchill ("I got into my bones the noble structure of the simple English sentence"), and also rates our recent Presidents on their speaking ability: Reagan "powerful," Carter "sing-song," Nixon "fabricated" and LBJ "a boring grandfather on television." Unfortunately, anyone who heard Valenti's speech at last May's Friars Club roast of Cary Grant would rate him worse than any of them. (Morrow, $10.50)
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