CHAPTERS
0:09 Introduction to YIVO Institute
4:18 The Vilna Collections Project
5:10 Prehistory of Jews and Comedy
5:20 Jews and Their Sense of Humor
7:30 Yiddish Language and Humor
9:26 Jewish Immigrants and American Comedy
11:21 Self-Mockery in Jewish Humor
14:47 The Borscht Belt's Rise
17:09 Introduction of the Panel
18:04 Welcome to the Panel
19:53 Meet the Panelists
20:44 Discussion on Comedy Histories
22:26 The Legacy of Jewish Comedians
27:22 Stories of Old Jewish Comedians
41:35 The Role of Comedy in Culture
43:14 A Living Legend in Comedy
46:24 Milton Berle and His Legacy
54:37 Underrated Comedians
1:12:40 Reflections on Jewish Humor
1:33:34 Closing Thoughts on Comedy
1:37:33 Thank You and Farewell
TRANSCRIPT
TRANSCRIPT
[0:05] Please, please have a seat.
[0:10] I know there's still a couple of people coming in, but we should get started. I'm Jonathan Brent. I'm executive director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Those of you who don't know what YIVO means or even know how to pronounce it, It's from Yiddischer Wissenschaftlicher Institute, a Yiddish organization, therefore deeply and intimately connected to Yiddish jokes of all sorts and comedy, but also the most serious and profound history of the Jewish people of Eastern Europe and Russia over a thousand years. Our archive and our library are the repositories of extraordinary materials. I can't even begin to explain all that is in our archive, but suffice it to say that it runs all the way from rare rabbinical and Hasidic works of the 18th century to the organizational records of Grossinger's Resort.
[1:29] It has, on the one hand, the most devastating materials you could possibly find, original materials pertaining to the Holocaust. We were the first organization in the world to begin documenting the Holocaust in Poland in 1941. We have the records of the Warsaw Ghetto that were put in milk cans. Some of you perhaps know that story and were dug up after the war. On the other hand, we have, to my knowledge, the only archive of Yiddish pornography in the world.
[2:14] So this is a vastness. This is an ocean that you have found yourself in. This is a great gift.
[2:24] The Evo Institute. It was a gift to the Jewish people and to America that was brought about by the devastation of World War II, the heroism of many people who hid our archives, who fought for our materials. The Nazis stole them. The American army in 1946 found a great deal of it in Frankfurt, Germany. Much remains still in Vilnius, Lithuania, which was the home where we were born in 1925. And we are now in the midst of the biggest project in Ivo's history to digitize, to preserve, to conserve, to repair all of our pre-war documents that the Nazis stole. And many of these documents, when I saw them in Vilnius for the first time, are rolled up in balls. And when you unopened them, dust falls out of these balls. And we now have teams of people here in the U.S. And in Lithuania working to smooth these out, repair these documents, digitize them, put them in order, so that for the first time in 75 years, we will have, again, a coherent and complete set of materials.
[3:47] We will never be able to replace that which was lost and stolen by the Nazis and through the chaos of war, but we are doing our best for the first time to be able to present to the Jewish people worldwide.
[4:02] A true documentary history of a thousand years of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, and most of us in this room are the product of that history.
[4:13] I invite you all, if you are interested, to find out more about this extraordinary project. It is called the Vilna Collections Project, and there are materials on our table outside. Now we get to what you're all here for, which is our program this evening. And to introduce the program is our senior academic advisor and exhibitions director, Eddie Portnoy. Eddie is a professor, was a professor at Rutgers. He's published numerous works on Jewish popular culture. He's an inspiration to this institution and to many people outside of this institution. So, Eddie.
[5:10] Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you all for coming. I'd just briefly like to thank the volunteers and Leah Falk, everyone at Evo. They've done a fantastic job preparing this.
[5:21] What I'm about to do is just give you sort of a prehistory of Jews and comedy in America. Now, I'd actually like to begin with the premise that Jews are not funny. If you consider the textual history of this people, from the Bible to the Mishnah to the Talmud and on to rabbinic responsa, there really aren't a lot of laughs. There are a few jokes and some clever wordplay here and there, but for the most part, traditional Jewish texts tend to be a little dry. And this appears to be one of the reasons why 19th century social scholarship conceived of Jews as having no sense of humor. The French historian Ernest Renan, for example, argued that Jews were not funny at all.
[6:05] He went as far as to say that, quote, Semitic people lack the faculty to laugh, end quote. According to Renan, not only were Jews incapable of making jokes, but they did not even have the capacity to laugh at them. Additionally, the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, in discussing their Jews and their relationship to comedy, asserted that Jews did not show the slightest trace of humor at any period in their history. Such statements on the part of European intellectuals are telling, mostly because it's likely that they did rely on traditional Jewish texts to make the assertion that Jews aren't funny. The reality appears to have been that neither of these scholars had much contact at all with actual Jews. That's my stock actual Jew photo.
[6:59] If they had, they might have known that the second half of the 19th century, the exact time they were making these claims, was a heyday of a Jewish Enlightenment in Eastern Europe which produced huge amounts of parody and satire on the surface of social progress. This literary movement drew on the rich humor of Jewish folklore and boasted writers like Sholem Aleichem, who wrote the stories on which Fiddler on the Roof was based. One of the reasons scholars like Carlisle and Renan lacked familiarity with Jewish satire was that much of it was written in Yiddish, the language of most of the world's Jews at the time.
[7:30] Not only was Yiddish the vessel for the modern satire of the late 19th century, but it was the vehicle for thousands of jokes, witticisms, and folktales, including the stories of the wise men of Chelm, the legendary town of Jewish idiots. For their part, Yiddish-speaking Jews knew they were funny, much more so than their neighbors in Eastern Europe. This is revealed in the following Yiddish anecdote. When you tell a peasant a joke, he laughs three times. Once when you tell it, once when you explain it, and once when he understands it.
[8:02] When you tell a Polish nobleman a joke, he laughs twice. Once when you tell it, and once when you explain it. But he never actually understands it. When you tell a Russian officer a joke, he only laughs once when you tell it. He'll never understand it, and he'll put you in jail if you explain it. But when you tell a Jew a joke, he interrupts you to say that he's already heard it, and that, by the way, you're telling it wrong.
[8:30] Yiddish-speaking Jews knew they were funny, and more importantly, they knew that one of the keys to unlocking humor could be found in manipulating language. In 1889, around the same time that scholars like Renan and Carlyle were claiming the Jews weren't funny, a Yiddish newspaper in New York organized a joke contest for its readers. The introduction to it reads as follows. Yiddish is known everywhere as a language in which one can express the best jokes, the most hilarious expressions, the funniest anecdotes, and the wisest aphorisms. In reality, the Jewish language is very flexible and contains many words from a variety of languages and can be bent and twisted on all sides. Yiddish-speaking Jews had no idea that European scholars considered them humorless. It was quite the opposite. They thought that they were funnier than everyone else, and that not only was Yiddish well-suited for humor, but that one of the keys to comedy was its linguistic flexibility.
[9:21] There was also a sense that, more so than other languages, things were simply funnier in Yiddish. These linguistic matters, combined with an outsider's perspective and the sense that humor could serve a necessary social function as both a weapon and a shield helped create a very serious Jewish sense of humor.
[9:39] Now, for Americans who were encountering Jewish immigrants for the first time during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there appeared to be something humorous about these Jews with their beards and hats and wigs, their wild gesticulations, and their funny accents. A significant portion of the American humor industry, which was ethnically based, made good use of these features. And because American humor was already making fun of every other ethnic group, often in very ugly ways, the Jews fit right in. Exploiting cultural and physical stereotypes, Jews were portrayed as dark-haired, hooked-nosed, greedy cheats, doing anything to make a buck. While today's such portrayals would be considered completely unacceptable, a century ago, they were completely normal and appeared in magazines, in books, and on postcards on a regular basis. I just have a few examples here. Thank you.
[10:35] And there are dozens and dozens of publications like these. Similar to blackface performance, there's also a type of Jewface performance common in vaudeville, in which actors put on putty noses and beards and acted as the stage Jew. This is one example. Here's a video of this from 1903, of a stage Jew performance. It's silent, so, sorry.
[11:21] Within the sphere of ethnic humor, where crude portrayals of Irish, Italian, Chinese, and Black stage characters existed, the stage Jew was an integral part of American humor. But unlike most other ethnic groups, which chafed at the abuse hurled at them, many Jews came to the conclusion that they could do a better job making fun of themselves than the Gentiles did. As more and more Jews began to join the entertainment industry during the early 20th century, they began to play stage Jews as well. Actors like Joe Heyman and Fanny Bryce put on Yiddish accents in order to take advantage of the popularity of the stage Jew. Songwriters did the same. Composers like Irving Berlin wrote Jewish novelty songs which were recorded by popular performers and sold as sheet music so people could play them at home. This so-called Hebrew comedy was one of the most popular forms of early 20th century American humor. And here are some examples. Now, we also have more examples on view just around the corner from the auditorium in our Jew Face exhibit, which is based on this sheet music.
[12:26] These two, incidentally, were written by Irving Berlin.
[12:33] Now, there were some Jews who protested this form of entertainment, but self-mockery was already an integral part of Jewish humor. As author Somerset Maugham remarked on Jews and their comedy, he said, quote, I was not quite sure of a sense of humor that made such cruel fun of his own race, end quote. Essentially, Jewish humorists reappropriated the anti-Semitism directed at them, internalized it, and spit it back out as comedy. The Jewish immigrant neighborhoods of New York City, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and the Lower East Side were meccas for popular entertainment. Not only were there more Nickelodeons and vaudeville theaters per capita on the Lower East Side than any other place in the city, but the streets themselves were full of free entertainment, ranging from amateur performers to fights to drunks, bums, and hookers. Perhaps because of the intensity of city life, Jews living in the stifling tenements of these neighborhoods had a strong desire to get out of the city during the sweltering summers. Beginning around the end of the 19th century, Jewish farmers in the Catskill Mountains looking to make a few extra bucks began hosting boarders during their summer months. This was the genesis of the Borscht Belt, and as it became a more popular destination, Jewish farmers gave up farming and opened hotels instead. This is Kutcher's, what Kutcher's looked like in 1908. Now, in the beginning, entertainment was non-existent and only began when bored guests began to stage a mock wedding with a fake rabbi and bride and groom in drag.
[14:03] These weddings became an annual affair, and as their popularity grew, it became professionalized with Yiddish theater actors playing the roles and klezmer bands supplying the music and run by what the Yiddish press called a professionel china kaker, or a noisemaker, literally it's a professional tea kettle banger. As the Catskills began to fill up with the Jews from the city every summer, entertainment became an integral component of resort life there. By the 1920s, the occupation of the Tumler was developed. Typically a comedian, the Tumler or social director entertained the guests when they weren't being professionally entertained by musical acts, dance instructors, plays, lectures, comedy acts, and mountains of food.
[14:44] Stages were built and elaborate plays and musicals were produced. A huge variety of performances were provided for Catskills visitors. Now here one has to ask, what kind of guest needs to be entertained all the time? Prior to the Jewish invasion, the Catskills did have a resort industry, but not one that provided entertainment at all. Why did Jews require entertainment more than other people? Good food and fresh mountain air wasn't enough? As the hotel industry in the Catskills expanded during the 1940s and 50s, the hotel keepers understood that their guests had a need for constant entertainment and built their hotels with this in mind. So look at this picture here of Kutcher's in 1908. Here it is in the 1960s.
[15:27] The major hotels, Kutcher's, Grossinger's, the Concorde, and others attracted major talent. Although all kinds of performances took place in the Catskills, a central component was comedy. This is the theater in the Concorde. These last pictures I'll show you are all from Grossinger's and part of the YIVO archive. Uh, the predominance of Jewish guests created a unique performer audience dynamic. At once voracious and demanding, Jewish audiences already had a familiarity with professionally staged productions in New York City, an aspect that gave them a discerning and perhaps jaundiced eye. Another fact that required the Catskill productions to step up their game. The nearly all jewish in-group environment gave audiences the perceived right to public criticism in other words there was a lot of heckling for comedians this was an opportunity to sharpen their comic knives and aim them at the hecklers but for other performers it was a potential nightmare as mel brooks said the catskill shaped my life i will forever be grateful to those tough jewish audiences if you could make them laugh you could conquer the world.
[16:36] Uh, this dynamic was more important to comedians than any other group of performers. Comedians, in fact, became the number one export of the Catskill Mountains. Dozens of them honed their skills in the raucous casinos at the Borscht Belt, many going on to great fame in New York, Miami, Las Vegas, and beyond. A sort of college for comedians, the Catskills was one of the places that was integral to the development of American comedy and where the careers of some of America's best known comedians were made. This isn't comedians, but it's a good gossip.
[17:09] The exhibit you'll see tonight contains materials on jewish comedy and humor that ranges from the 1860s through the 1960s and is a combination of yivo's materials together with those of drew friedman they will be on view on the third floor following the discussion we're indebted to drew friedman for loaning portions of his incredible collection for the exhibition and now without further ado i'd like to introduce our moderator our esteemed moderator tonight has written comedy material for everyone from Howard Stern to Bill Murray to Meryl Streep. He's currently a writer at ABC's The View and the co-producer and co-host of Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast, named the best podcast of 2015 by The Village Voice. Please welcome Frank Santopadre.
[18:05] Thank you.
[18:12] Oh, thank you, guys. Thank you very much. Laughing backstage.
[18:17] You can hear us? What's a wonderful book, which we'll talk about. First thing I want to say, thank you for having me, Eddie. And I want to say that Judy Gold, sadly, could not be with us because she's working. Judy, you can go come on with me, Judy. How about you? Good. Let's get started. Because time is of the essence Drew Friedman, They're waiting back there Drew Friedman is an awardment illustrator and satirist Who worked a regular year As dozens of major publications Since he's painstaking attention in detail And heritage of Hollywood icons In wide new mind Drew's work is Beard and Entertainment Weekly Newsweek, Time, The Wall Street Journal Esquire Rolling Stone And that magazine as well as many other voices His wonderful must-have books include the coincidence, any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. His brother Josh was here. Wonderful book. Josh, where are you? Not here. Wait. Warts and all, and old Jewish comedians and more old Jewish comedians, which no less than the New York Times Book Review said of these books, a festival on drawing virtuosity and fabulous Frankie faces. Friedman might very well be the premier of a war spell. You're so happy. I'd have that one. You're free.
[19:42] Music.
[19:54] Up next, Cliff Nesterov is a best-selling author and comedy historian, acclaimed to his vast knowledge of show business. In fact, Vice Magazine called him the human encyclopedia of comedy, and Los Angeles Magazine called him the king of comedy lore. Cliff's work has been praised by the Atlantic Monthly, the Chicago Tribune, Comedy Central, and Vanity Fair, among other places. For several years, he moderated classic television showbiz, which is a block for you guys to check out. It's wonderful. And his new book from Growth Press, which I have right here. His book is called The Comedians, Drunk Steve Scandrels, and the History of American Comedy. It's fascinating. Cliff Nestorak.
[20:44] I promise to get through this equipment. I just want to say that Cliff's book is Cliff Andrews books are available for sale outside. Fantastic. Our defense, Jess, is a very funny and very political comedy writer and multiple handing winner. He's written classic television shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm and Scarish Family Show, which he also co-created, by the way. He's written and co-written Robin Hood plays, including Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays. He's written novels, including the third award-winning The Other Shulman and for several years since I've used comedy history as a staff writer I believe the first writer hired on the original Saturday Night Live Alan Zweig applause.
[21:25] Music.
[21:38] Our next guest is nothing short of a show of deepest legend and a multi-analytical one that he has appeared in popular films such as The Owl of the Pussy, Nat, Hooper, and Sue Weiss Notice, among other things. He's recorded several classes on the albums, including Child of the 50s and Light Over Matter, which I played till they weren't. He started an immensely popular HBO special. He was nominated for Tony for his work in the musical They're Playing Now a Song. and he's one of the most respected and admired and enduring standings of the last 50 years, Robert Clark.
[22:10] Music.
[22:27] And our surprise guest today is playing the role of Judy Gold. It's one of the most original comedy talents of the best four decades known as much for his distinctive voice and voiceover as his audacity and fearlessness as a stand-up comedian he starred and did films like Aladdin and Beverly Hills Top 2 and at least 42 versions of the movie problem child, as well as those of the shows his unique friend found me as many to refer to him as the comedian's comedian and his It is all for you, but it is all for you. Friend, coming as everyone from Andy Samberg to Jimmy Fallon. Welcome, my friend, podcast partner, Gil Good-Nog.
[23:07] Music.
[23:23] Okay. Let me get my notes to go to that. All right. We're going to start on the end. True freedom. True. You know, I've been watching these debates, so I'm going to have to do my... Thank you for your service. Let me... I had to get that up. I appreciate that. Why does he talk about the old Jewish comedians books, since they're here on display and people, as Eddie pointed out, they could be purchased? How do the old Jewish comedian books come back? Well, that's a good question. When I was a little kid, I was a strange little kid. All I wanted to do was watch TV with my guinea pig in my bedroom with my mad magazines and my comic books and my monster magazines. And I just loved old comedy movies, especially in comedy TV shows. And it just started to dawn on the early on that most of the comedians that I loved were Jewish. It's just like the Three Stooges and Jerry Lewis, Sid Caesar and Jack Benny and Phil Silvers, just overwhelmingly Jewish. Not every one of them. I love Jackie Gleason, Art Carney, Buster Keaton, Don Knotts, Richard Pryor. But so many were Jewish. So...
[24:37] As I became an artist, I realized I like drawing old Jews the most, and I like drawing comedians. So I put that together, and I had old Jewish comedians, and that became my business, basically. And that's what led to it. And were there some negative reactions? I know Jerry Lewis and Drew Paul's reactions. Well, the books were sent out to some of the still-living comedians. The publisher sent them out to a few of them.
[25:03] And a lawyer has been contacted i don't look like that and some some of the younger older jewish comedians like robert robert was actually in the third volume you know because i was running out of the old really old ones yeah but he finally crossed over like to but you know i got i got phone calls from um i i got phone messages from mickey freeman from the old bilko show who loved it. Freddie Roman, who adored it, was thrilled to be in there. And then the third message came in and it was on the answering machine. Hello, Drew, this is Jerry Lewis. Please call me back. And he left his phone number twice. Some people might have heard this story, but I'll repeat it anyway. So I got real nervous and I said to Kathy, my wife, I said, oh shit, Jerry is mad at me. What did I do? I said, I didn't put him on the cover. I gave him that stupid expression in the illustration. So I got my nerve up and called him back. I said, hey, Jerry, you got the book? Yes, Drew, I got the book. He said, so did you like it? Did I like it? Jesus Christ, I loved it. Holy moly, what a book. So I felt good about that.
[26:17] And share with us at least one less enthusiastic result. Oh, well, you know, the Los Angeles Times did a profile of the book and they sent a reporter over to Jack Carter or they had a guy called Jack Carter, the comedian from, you know, the legendary Jewish comedian Jack Carter, who Cliff writes about at length in his book. But so the reporter said, what do you how do you feel about being a book in a book called Old Jewish Comedians? And Jack Carter said, old? And he was about 94 at the time. And he goes, Jewish? He goes, I don't work Jewish. So he was pissed about being in a book called Old Jewish. And then he finally saw the book. He hadn't seen it yet. And he was especially angry. He said, he drew me with those liver spots and my hair combed over like that. I don't look like that. Tell him to draw me again. I said, no, that's it. That's the only, you know, that's what he gets.
[27:17] Jack is prominent again in Cliff's book. He can talk about Jack.
[27:22] I was just going to get to that. So you interviewed, you probably did one last. Yeah, well, I spoke with Jack at length. I had a morbid fascination with him because I would see him on every TV show ever. Well, he had his own network show Saturday night leading into Sid Caesar in 1950 called The Jack Carter Show, and he was very bitter that people lionized Sid Caesar and loved him but didn't remember The Jack Carter Show. So I remember asking him for the first time about Sid Caesar and your show of shows, and Jack said, it was always Sid Caesar, Sid Caesar, Sid Caesar! And I was treated like crap!
[27:58] He always screamed, he always yelled, but he had this incredible memory going back to when he started stand-up in 1943, and I interviewed him right through 2015, So it was kind of fascinating to me that this guy could tell me firsthand stories about Al Jolson and he's sitting across from me. Of course, he had nothing good to say about anybody, but I found that absolutely amazing. And the last thing he said to me before he passed away, this is in the introduction to my book. And I had collected all these great stories from him and he wanted to write his own book. And he was ranting one day. He goes, everybody's got a book now. Betty White's got two books. Dick Devin Dyke's got two books. this this nickel and dime comic jeff ross is calling himself the king of roasts king of roasts i'm the king of roasts you know chelsea handlers writing shit books about vodka bestseller what the hell you know ranting and raving and uh i had uh recently gotten my book deal and i told him that and as i was leaving his house he said how does a total fucking nobody like you get a book now.
[29:05] But jack jack was so entertaining for that reason you know and i really loved him even though his act if you see it on the ed sullivan show it's very maudlin and he'd finish with a song about how much he loved to entertain and then he would get off the stage and go those fucking cocksuckers didn't give me anything yeah so i loved him he was great i want to plug to google shit jack car says, which is something that I've got. That's both together. Yeah, I put together. It's a hashtag I put together for some of the more salacious things Jack Carter said to me. Yeah, there's a story in there about, well, I won't go into it. It's maybe a little bit too salacious for this crowd, but you can Google it if you want. I could tell you. Really? Yeah, no. Hey. Jack, you were on the Carol Burnett show once. Vicki Lawrence was a Nazi cunt!
[30:04] Uh, Jack, uh, you worked with, uh, Alan and Rossi. Oh, yeah, we were down in, in Bermuda with Steve Rossi. He went to pick up a hooker. He felt under the skirt. He felt balls. He said, what the fuck? He got beat up by a transvestite. I don't know how Steve Rossi stayed out of jail. You were on the, uh, game show Password. jack alan ludden was just bill cullen without the limp i don't know there's more and more you can look it up shit jack carter says don't stop man uh this is why bell yes no general stories, no no and i'm the only one on the panel's not jewish too by the way, This is Nordic. Yeah.
[30:59] Oh, my God. Yeah. You started out, we were talking backstage about the Catskills. You started out, you were four. Well, you mentioned Freddie Roman. I wrote for every, this was the early 70s. The heyday of the Catskills was already in the past. Whoever was going to be a star was already a star. so I wrote for the guys who were left every Morty, Dickie, Freddie Mickey and Lee that ever lived I wrote $7 a joke, that's how much the going rate was in 1973-74 the first joke I ever wrote for Freddie Roman, was about a Hasidic orgy, where the men were on one side of the room and the women were on the other yeah.
[31:51] Seven dollars yeah, and um then my uh price went to 10 and then 12 and um you know these were all very, nondescript comedians who wore tuxedos and had you know the false teeth and everything with the names out at us i mean cliff will recognize him morty gunty dick capri He's still working. Still working? Not only is he still working, Robin, my wife and I went a few years ago to see Catskills on Broadway, okay? Okay. Okay, on the bill were Freddie Roman, Dick Capri, Malzi Lawrence, and a woman, Louise Duarte, or Marilyn Michaels. So Robin and I are sitting in the audience, and Dick Capri is telling jokes, and I'm whispering the punchlines to Robin. And she says, how do you know that? That i said it's the 35th anniversary of the jokes that i wrote for the guy, afterwards we go backstage just to see the guys right and capri comes up to me and he says hey you know the jokes still work and i go yeah he goes any notes for me.
[33:14] I i said well now that you bring it up you might want to consider you know the joke that i wrote for you in 1973 about the secretary of state who's yeah i said you may want to consider changing kissinger's name, to madeline albright and he looks at me like i'm talking a foreign language and he goes and i go well because unless you do that joke in the past tense, it really would be a little more current if you did madeline albright so he said let me give it some thought about six months later i walk into the friars club and i walk into the main dining room and dick is across on the other side of the dining room he sees me he stands he goes alan madeline albright.
[34:16] I mean these guys let me just tell this you know these I hung out at the Friars Club a lot and um, I don't know where these guys came from, but they were wired differently than us because I don't know, once they die, who replaces them. For example, remember Henny Youngman, King of the One-Liners, right? I was walking towards the Friars Club shortly after I joined. It's on 55th Street between Madison and Park. Okay, so I'm walking on Madison. I turn onto 55th Street, and I'm going to now cross the street to go to the Friars Club. Nobody was around that's an important part of this story no one was it was like a saturday or sometime in the afternoon the people were in their offices no one else was on the street out of a door in front of me comes henny youngman who now crosses the street he doesn't see me he thinks he's alone this is an important part of the story he thinks he's alone he crosses the street, gets to the curb right in front of the Friars Club. A pigeon comes fluttering down. He looks at it and goes, any mail for me?
[35:30] Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. He thought he was alone. He's speaking to a bird.
[35:42] Now, Robert, speaking of the cat skills, you have your own experience. I have no comment. Is this on here? Well, I was a lifeguard. I saved the kid's life once. His parents tipped me $5. We're so grateful. We're so... I mean, how did they come up with the figure? I mean, you know, I don't know. Saved the kid's... How about $50? What am I, Rockefeller? Let's see How long have we had the boy Let's see They came up with five dollars I um, And the owners, one of the band let me put on one of their tuxedos. I was a 17-year-old kid and have a tuxedo. And I actually got up on stage a little. I didn't play the Catskills until I had a reputation. I played it at the top. That is the Concord and Kutcher's who would send a limo and a nice paycheck. And the whole thing is a sham. Last time I was in this auditorium, they showed a film that I narrated called When Comedy Went to School. I don't know if anybody, yeah, not according to this audience.
[37:07] And I will be here May 16th, an evening with me as a benefit for one of the organizations under this roof. I'm not sure. I think it's Catholic Charities. There are a lot of things here. Um i i have talked about being a jew on television for since my first tonight show was january 68 with johnny um lawn michaels was very uh nervous about me doing my uh merchant of venice bit on the tonight on the saturday night live the first year because i went to a school with a tremendous amount of anti-Semitism, Alfred, you know, hey, Joe boy, you know, one of those. So I got back at them and I played Shylock in The Merchant of Venice in front of an all anti-Semite audience. So in this wonderful Act III speech, I don't know if Shakespeare knew Jews, but it is the most eloquent speech about prejudice ever written, I think. And, you know, I'll paraphrase, hath not a Jew eyes, hath not a Jew hands, senses, organs, dimensions, affections, fashions. And the audience went, no, Jew boy, Jew boy. It was tremendous.
[38:27] I learned, I went to Yale Drama School, but they didn't teach stand-up comedy. Although years later, the dean invited me at a fellowship to teach it. But I learned Rodney Dangerfield was my mentor for stand-up. I met him at the Improv in 1966. I was at my first Broadway show, Apple Tree. I used to take a tape recorder down 44th from the Schubert Theater to the Improv. And this guy came up. I'll tell you. He wasn't famous yet. But he wrote his own jokes then. And they were worthy of an Art Buchwald. Well, who's that guy from New Jersey used to have the humor column in the Times, Russell Baker, you know, moderately funny. I thought Buckwell was funny. Rodney had things like, I'll tell you, you know, our schools aren't safe. Our parks aren't safe. Our schools and streets aren't safe. But under our arms, we have complete protection, you know. I mean, well, I'll tell you, I played some tough clubs, I'll tell you. Aldo's, formerly Vito's formerly Nunzio's I'll tell you, it's Nunzio's this was a tough club, I tell you, Nunzio's he went down two steps, physically and socially.
[39:53] And that is like, way up I mean, he got a little crazier as he got to be a star, you know, about his grandfather sneezing on the Christmas tree but he was pretty You know him when he was Jack Roy, before he made the transition? Well, I called him Jack I was very close with him for about 11 years. I always kept in touch, and I'm still very close with his daughter. He was a remarkable individual, a very unhappy man, even though he had success later in life. I'll tell the story later if we have time about saving his life. That's it. It's not important. I just saved Rodney Dangerfield's life, but let's go. It's a hell of a story but I'll tell him later I don't want to tell him I had too much time, yeah I don't want to talk to you any more than I have to yeah you get the first Jewish theme quest which is ironic because they were not practicing you were not bar mitzvah no yeah Yeah.
[41:11] You are not bar mitzvah. Not bar mitzvah. A non-practicing Jew. Yeah. And yet, on the podcast that we do. I don't have to practice it. I just fell into it. Really? You're constantly obsessed when we do the show with who's Jewish and who is a Jew. Yes. How do you explain that? I don't know. That's something I, like Cary Grant, I heard is a Jew. Right. We established that on the show.
[41:36] Marilyn Monroe converted to Judaism. Right. And let me see. I think Lincoln liked the Jews. That was something.
[41:49] I once worked on one of Rodney Dangerfield's last movies. Yeah, Back by Midnight. And I remember he came up to me and he said, Hey, thanks for being on the movie. Hey, come back to my... We're having lunch now. Come back to my dressing room. We'll sit in bullshit. And then, wait, we're eating lunch, and most of it's around his face and his shirt. And at one point, he picks up a piece of bread and wipes his face with it, and then he bites into the piece of bread. It was, it was, it was all, I pretty much, I couldn't eat for the rest of the shoot. We have somebody to send them to you. We have a special guest in the audience. You might have just. I'm back here. Can anybody see you? Yeah. That is Larry Snorch. Oh! Larry, stand up. Good job, buddy. Thank you.
[43:15] All right larry larry's one of the living legend of jewish comedy i think without question yeah without that true louis he's in my second book and larry actually contacted me and asked to be in it and i knew i was i was like the one of the greatest honors of my life he sent me a note he said could i be in one of your books and so i knew like you know i had uh you know i just made it you You know, to me, that was like, you know, the most important thing. I think Larry is 94 or 93. Matt, you hear me? Oh, yeah. Hi. Yeah. Larry, you know, 93. God bless. 93.
[43:53] I interviewed him in his apartment last year. Yeah. And Larry Starch refuses to talk about Forrest Tucker's penis. But speaking of penises. You know where we're going with this yeah but let me just say larry is going to be here for a little while so if anybody wants to meet larry or pose for a photo he's going to be here for a bit so um and there's going to be food afterwards so larry will be there as well so well i was going to save the burl story but if you want to uh well yet is one story, it's up to you frank if you want to save it let's get it out of the way Alan, Milton Berle's penis. Is it even a penis? Let's talk.
[44:50] That's the most polite description. I used to write for the friars, all these friars roasts before I got the job on SNL. And, you know, just you've all seen those roasts. And they were disgustingly dirty. They were wonderfully disgusting. And Burl was usually the roast master, okay? And he came and he hosted an SNL when I was still a writer on the show. And because my background was joke writing and he was a jokester, Lawrence sort of assigned me to him. So I'm in his dressing room. And he's wearing one of those bathrobes that go about.
[45:36] Halfway between the thigh and the knee like this. And I'm sitting on the couch and here's a coffee table. He's on the other side of the coffee table. And I very innocently say, Milton, it's so weird that I'm meeting you now. I said, cause for years I wrote jokes about your cock. I used to write these jokes like you know um you know after his bris they use the uh foreskin to cover the infield at yankee stadium you know all these all these big dick jokes you, And he's standing there in this bathrobe. He said, you mean you never saw it?
[46:25] And I go, no. And he said, would you like to see it?
[46:34] I'm somewhere between the N and the O in no. When he parts his bathrobe and he takes out this anaconda, okay? And now I'm looking into it, okay? He said, it's nice, huh? And I'm looking into this thing, and I go, yeah, it's really nice. And as I'm saying, yeah, it's really nice, the door to his dressing room opens, and Gilda comes looking for me. Gilda Radner sees me looking into Milton Berle's cock, going, yeah, it's really nice. And she said swipe out i'll see you later and she left it was everything i had ever heard it was, yeah no at the friars club he was legendary for it i don't remember who it was they said they walked into the steam room and milton was there and he was stark naked and they looked at his cock and they thought it was his son didn't someone didn't someone challenge him once something, and his wife said, Milton, just show enough to win, and let's go home. That's okay.
[47:53] Freddie Roman, the only joke that Freddie Roman has ever done that really made me laugh, but he said that Milton Berle's cock is more popular than the rest of him was the line. Well, you know, there's a great 1976 roast of Pat Henry, that Jan Murray hosted and Sid Gould does a bit where he says if you took Pat Henry, Guy Marks and Milton Berle and lined up their schlongs, you could bring in a woman to braid the challah.
[48:28] Can we have equal time for the vagina now, please? We don't have any women. I interviewed Will Jordan. Do people know who Will Jordan is? Yeah, he basically invented the Ed Sullivan impression in the 1950s. And he's still alive. He's in his 90s. He's hard of hearing. But when... Yeah, yeah, he should do your show. But I asked him, I said, can we talk a little bit about this famous showbiz dick? I just wanted to ask you a little bit about Burl Schlong. And Will Jordan's hard of hearing. And we're talking on the phone. He goes, oh, yes, yes. Very, very talented man, Dick Sean. I said, no, no. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Burl's flung.
[49:18] I was i was once asked to draw the schlong but well actually howard stern when he wrote his book private parts which i illustrated asked me to draw it he was doing a chapter on milton burrell because milton used to go on a show all the time and howard would only want to talk about his cock and milton would like say howard please grow up there's other things i was mr television i was mr tuesday night the biggest thing in show business and that's all you want to talk about So Howard would like, you know, be polite and start talking about the show business and Milton would get it back to the subject of the cock somehow. But when Howard wrote private parts, you know, I illustrated. So he had a chapter on Milton and he wanted me to draw Milton with his fly open and then the penis emerging and then wrapping around each page of each chapter. And then the ending in the last page. But Simon and Schuster somehow had a problem with that. It never happened. But that could have been my legacy.
[50:15] Roberts, did you ever work with Uncle Volte? You must have been. No, I met him through Rodney. And I was with him at his last birthday. He died a few months later at the Beverly Hills Hotel. We have a very small ballroom. And I was in the wedding, the bride's room, the room off the ballroom. And he was with this Latino attendant. He was rather enfeebled in a wheelchair. No windows in the room, and a big cigar burning, which you never even puffed on, And I did a service by when Sid Caesar came in and other people, I directed them towards his room to wish him the happy birthday. Anyway, I'm talking to him and that subject came up and I made some joke about it. There's nothing short about it. He said, the word short came up. There's nothing short about you. And he was so weak, he goes, ba-dum-bum.
[51:12] I loved him as a child, his stuff.
[51:16] He had a reputation for being a kind of totalitarian leader on his show when I met him with Rodney he was playing at the Americana and he had an act which involved.
[51:31] Operetta give me some men who was out and he comes out with a blackened tooth and you know a dress, and real plotis you know very low comedy and And anyway, I'm with Rodney, and he introduced Rodney. And then I didn't say anything to do anything. Look at the kid. He wants to get introduced. You know, he's sort of like mean. But all in all, it was a thrill hanging around with him, working with him. No, I never worked with him. No. Yeah, Alan had a lot of great experience working with Uncle Mildy's on Saturday night. Well, he was everything the show was not, okay? So on paper, it seemed like really poetic. The guy who started TV, Mr. TV. Uh nbc right and he came to host the show and i believe it's the only show that lauren doesn't repeat if i'm not mistaken it might be on the box set but i'm not sure yeah now it's on dvd but for years it was taken out of syndication taken out of syndication i remember he was um he was blocking it was camera blocking his opening monologue all right so he's talking into the camera there's obviously no one in the studio except for the crew and he's um rehearsing his monologue. And then at one point he says to the director.
[52:47] At this point, when I get to, when I say sneaker, okay, I want there to be a sound effect of like a crowbar falling and hitting the floor and just sort of vibrating until it comes to a stop. And they said, well, why? He said, because when that happens, I will add lib.
[53:12] Oh, it looks like NBC dropped another one. I will add lib. Okay so think about that sentence it was everything that the show wasn't anything you you know nothing was prepared like that and it was also was around this point of his 70th birthday and he got to another point a monologue where he said he was going to say that i just turned 70 and he asked the director just to shoot him here to cut off the frame here the reason being he said because he will have his hands underneath the frame so when you're watching on TV. You won't see his hands going like this to ask the audience to give him a standing ovation. And that's what happened. And it was just everything that was antithetical to what that show is. So that's, that was just my experience with it. That and his huge pepperoni. Yeah.
[54:05] And there was an article in the New York Times the week that he hosted SNL because Robin Williams was playing the Copacabana that same week. And it was a weird kind of shift in comedy. Here's the new hot comedian playing the old nightclub and the old kind of square comedian hosting the hip new show. And there was a quote in there where Milton Berle said he was excited to do SNL because they're the stars of tomorrow. And then they interviewed Lorne Michaels, and he said what Miltie doesn't realize is they're not the stars of tomorrow. They're the stars of today, and he's the star of yesterday. And it was kind of a controversy at the time.
[54:38] You see Milton is featured on the poster here for our show. And when you go up to the Juseum exhibit after the panel and the food, Milton is the second most featured comedian in the exhibit. Jerry Lewis is number one. There's more Jerry Lewis ephemera up there than anybody. Milton, I think, is a close second. And there's a story in this book that I didn't know about Uncle Miltie being stabbed, being attacked by a white. Yeah, I think it was Albert Anastasia or one of his henchmen in the 30s at a place called the Vanity Fair.
[55:09] And he tells this story in his book, actually. But it was difficult in the 30s when Prohibition was lifted. It was the first kind of wave of the mafia owning the nightclubs. And most of these comedians had been used to vaudeville where they didn't really have to deal with the mob that much so they were learning that you couldn't really insult the audience in these nightclubs because you never knew who was in the audience so uh this one night milton uh did what became just a stock hack joke of his where he said oh it's novelty night you're sitting here with your wife and the man who he said that to was a was a mobster and the woman was a mobster's mole, And so when he went backstage, the maitre d' said, table two wants to see you. And he goes, oh, they probably want to buy me a drink or something. So he went and sat down. And everybody at the table was stone-faced. And he said, did you enjoy the show? And the mobster said, no. And they just stayed quiet. And Burl got very nervous. The guy grabbed him by his throat with the necktie and took a fork and jabbed it into his chin and stabbed him.
[56:10] But that was one of the early instances, that and Joey Lewis, where comedians were slowly starting to learn, Yeah, but I mean, guys like Jack Carter, Milton Berle, Alan King, they all seem to have a story, if not more than one, like that from the 30s and 40s of getting into trouble by saying the wrong thing to the wrong guy in a comedy audience. Robert, you last came along and went for the nightclubs, but no longer mob. Well, I tell you, Rodney's wasn't. And I was in the men's room next to a William R. And he said, it's all mob. Rodney borrowed money from everyone, including me, and kept them at arm's distance. I came up at the bitter end of Laker Street. And they didn't even have a liquor license. There occasionally a chess piece would fall over, you know, and the guys with berets, they'd get angry and say, you know, Kierkegaard was wrong, you son of a bitch. You know, there would be, you know, an occasional string string quartet would come in after the gig at Carnegie Hall. I don't like I don't like heckling. And Rodney would say anything. They loved him. These mobsters. he told me many stories of talking to these guys who did disastrous things and somehow they would talk to him about it.
[57:31] Should I tell the story quickly about him? All right. So he had a, I was, I used to follow him around all the gigs because, you know, learning how to do it. And he was the best at it. And he had a gig in Buzzards Bay in the Seacrest Hotel. And And he was starting to get well-known, but he wasn't a superstar. And I just was along for the ride. Nobody knew me. And it's just 35-knot winds blowing in this sailing capital of New England. I mean, Rodney goes, you know, it's like a hurricane. He goes, I'll tell you, man, let's take out a sailboat.
[58:09] So I notice no one else is sailing. The boats are locked up. People are in shelters wearing helmets. FEMA is giving out. donuts. Nice job. Brownie. He wants to go. So he gives $20 to this little boat boy from Boston. He says, I don't know, Rodney. The boss may not like it. There's a 35 knot wind out there. It's dangerous. He said, that's all right. It's all right. I said, Rodney, what do you know about sailing. He says, what's it? I don't know. It's a fucking wind. So the kid says, I have to give you a sailing lesson. Rodney was like an impatient spaniel. He wanted what he wanted. By the way, you're absolutely right. He was a sloppy eater. Very clean of body. He showered. His ties, his things were ripped and he ate, you know, shall we say lustily, at Chinatown at two in the morning, you know, as he said, a little new invention, napping between courses, you know. So... The kid starts going, this is the mainsail, and this is the folksail, and this is the jib. He goes, never mind that bullshit. Just give me the keys.
[59:34] So the kid pushes us out. In nine seconds, we're a thousand yards from shore. You could have water-skied behind this catamaran, like a wake, like the Queen Mary. and he's in the bow, as I learned, standing up like Washington in the painting. And he's still grabbing here. He's wearing a bathing suit. There's no collar, but he's, I'll tell you. I'll tell you, this is too fucking much. I'll tell you. And he's like in ecstasy, like a dog when its head out the window going on the highway. You know, he's so happy. And suddenly in his reverie, he goes, I'll tell you, man, I'm going to take a swim. I go, Randy! There's a two or three foot chop. The man was smoking two packs of Marlboros a day. He was in his forties, you know, but, uh, so I don't, I don't know how to, you know, come around closely to get them. I don't know how to change the folksel or the mainsel. I'm from the Bronxel. We're not a sailing people, you know, yody, hoody, shiver. There's Bronx. It just, yo, it stops. There's no hoody ho. So I pushed the rudder all the way to one side, made a nice tight turn of six miles.
[1:00:52] Thinking of an American tragedy, what am I going to tell the Post? Two of us went away, one came back. Were you personally jealous of Mr. Dangerfield's work?
[1:01:07] I was terrified. finally a white hand i was a lifeguard and i knew i've won a white person is close to drowning i saw it at long beach it's it's like almost green i mean it was this guy was close to death his hand comes up on the thing and he admitted to me that he was about to give up he was exhausted and cold and the water was 60 i mean it was not good and but even drowning he sounded like you would imagine Rodney Dangerfield, if he would drown it. Oh, the water is in there. That's the story. Thank you.
[1:01:42] Music.
[1:01:51] Mr. Godfrey, that story reminds me of a joke that you like to tell about a rescue. Oh, okay. An old Jewish woman goes to the beach with her little boy, a little grandson, three-year-old grandson. And the old Jewish woman falls asleep on the blanket and her three-year-old grandson wanders off. That's how he wanders. And he walks like that. And then all of a sudden, a wave takes him and pulls him to the middle of the ocean. And the kid's screaming and crying and being pulled under. And everyone on the beach is going, you know, is yelling, that kid's going to drown. So one man leaps into the water and he starts swimming against the current. And it's knocking him against the rocks. And he's swimming harder. And then he grabs the kid and pulls him up from the water. And as he's pulling the kid up, a shark starts coming at them. So he starts beating off the shark. Well, no, that's beating off the shark. See, he starts punching the shark. You wouldn't beat off a shark because you want the shark to leave.
[1:03:18] And, yeah, because if you start, they teach you in self-defense. Uh, if you're getting attacked, don't try to give, don't try to jerk the guy off because he's just going to stay longer. And, and, uh, you know, don't, don't finger his ass and jerk him off because he, he's not going to run away. So he starts feeding the shark, not beating the shark, beating him this way. And then he finally brings the kid to the shore. He drops, the kid's not breathing. He's pumping on his chest, nothing, and he's lifting his arms up and down. He's giving him mouth to mouth. And then finally the kid spits up water and is breathing. And the old Jewish grandmother goes, he had a hat.
[1:04:34] You talked about before, this great story in Cliff's book about a tale about a great comedian. I don't know how many people in the room that are very dark at Carcass. That's good. Albert Brooks. Albert Brooks' father. Right. Who died during a fryer's roast. For Lucy and Desi.
[1:04:59] Sure. Well, Albert Brooks's father was a kind of a second banana on the Eddie Cantor radio program in the 1930s and was sort of a bit of a put on artist. He would do like local gigs in Boston, posing as like a famous dignitary and then go up there and kind of do this double talk act. And then it revealed itself as a punchline as he spoke. And Eddie Cantor hired him to be a second banana on his show. And at one point, he asked for a raise. He didn't get it. He went and worked for Al Jolson's radio program for a while. But of course, his children were Albert Brooks and Bob Einstein, who people know as Marty Funkhauser on Curb Your Enthusiasm and Super Dave Osborne. So comedy through the whole lineage of the family. But in the late 40s, he had severe back trouble and went in for a spinal operation that was botched and was basically relegated to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. So he couldn't really do stand-up anymore, but he could still appear at roasts because he could sit on the dais and not have to stand, or he could lean on the podium when he performed. So the last 10 years of his life, he almost exclusively did Friars Club roasts and kind of owned the act and sort of really polished it up. So he was booked to do a gig at the Beverly Hilton in 1958, a roast of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. It was a fundraiser for a leper colony in Burma, which is like a big charity kind of thing at the time. It was also the 10th anniversary of the Friars Club of California.
[1:06:24] Art Linkletter hosted the show. There was a thousand people in the audience, all Beverly Hills upper crust. George Burns went up, had a good set. Milton Berle went up, had a good set. Uh, Tony Martin, uh, or Dean Martin, sorry, sang a song. Tony Martin was also on the show.
[1:06:41] Park your carcass goes up on stage, delivers this routine that he had perfected over the course of 10 years, destroys, brings down the house, the set of his life. There's a recording of it, actually. You can hear it. People are laughing and silverware is jumping up and down as people pound their fists on the table. Park your carcass goes back, sits down at the dais next to Milton Berle. Art Linkletter says, let's hear it one more time for park your carcass. How come we don't see him on TV anymore? Harry Einstein, park your carcass. And just as he was about to take his second bow, he keeled over face first and dropped dead in front of a thousand people. After he brought down the house, it was remarkable.
[1:07:20] Milton Berle, I don't know if this is apocryphal or not, yelled, is there a doctor in the house? And when he yelled that, Milton Berle yelling, is there a doctor in the house? Everybody thought it was a joke. So there was a hesitation. But then, of course, it was Beverly Hills. So there were a thousand doctors in the house. They ran up to the stage they tore open his shirt they cut open his chest with a pocket knife frayed a lamp cord to administer, electroshocks directly to his heart but it was too late he had died and so it was this big tragedy and Milton Berle said to Tony Martin why don't you go up and sing a song distract the people and Tony Martin went up there and sang one of his hits which was called There's No Tomorrow ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
[1:08:08] But that was Albert Brooks' father. And he says he remembers helping his father with the script the night before. Yeah, it's a great story. His name is Albert Einstein. Yeah, and he changed it.
[1:08:24] So, Andy and I were talking a little bit today about, this is a hard question to ask, but we're talking about Jewish comedy specifically. And I'm going to ask everybody here, and this is a question that's been asked many times, I suppose, in many different ways. But for lack of a tidier way of asking it, what do you think makes Jews funny? Truth? Well, I think, you know, with me, I love the faces. You know, it's like I actually, and I'm going to admit this, I like unfunny Jewish comedians more than funny Jewish comedians. To me, there's nothing I like to listen to more than Georgie Jessel, like going on and on, never funny for a second in his entire career. I just love that. And when I did my first Jewish comedian book, I put Milton Berle on the cover and this old Milton Berle pointing at the reader like angry, pissed off, drooling his cigar juice down his chin. And it's like, I remember watching him on Joe Franklin and he was always angry and telling Joe to shut up, shut up when I'm talking, Joe. And that's what I wanted to capture. So there's nothing better. There's nothing I prefer more than unfunny Jewish comedians. So we should. We should. The great you were. Thank you.
[1:09:48] Dad's health, physically he's not great these days, but his mind is still sharp. He's still writing. So thanks for mentioning him. Georgie Jessel was one of the earliest of the phone. Yeah, he kind of, with his mother. Hello, Mama. How are you, darling? What, you seeing spots in front of your eyes? Uh, well, why don't you put your glasses on? Are they on? Oh, now you see the spot's clearer. What, did you get that parrot I sent you on your birthday? What? You cooked it and ate it? But that parrot spoke five different languages. Oh, he should have said something.
[1:10:39] Our friend Tom Leopold went to see Georgie Jussel live when he was in his 90s, and he did the same Hello Mama with a plastic phone. Hello Mama! And drooling. Well, when he became old, he became like a super patriot, sort of like a Dennis Miller kind of jingoistic rah-rah Americana. And apparently he used to close his act in the 70s with, I don't know if it was Yankee Doodle Dandy or something like that. But to make it seem more heartfelt, he would stare into the spotlight so that his eyes would tear up and people would think that it was like this really heartfelt thing. The toupee falling off his head. We have some great Georgie Jessel things upstairs in the Jewsium, as you'll see. And his song was.
[1:11:28] One bright and shining light that taught me wrong from right. I'm found in my mother's eyes. Those babies held, she told, Of streets all paid with gold, I'm found in my mother's eyes. Just like a wandering sparrow, A lonely soul, I walked a straight narrow till I found my goal. A life from above, a bright unselfish love, I found it.
[1:12:26] Music.
[1:12:41] My turn, huh? I was in an elevator once with Mel Brooks, and we were going down, and then the elevator stopped, the doors opened, and an Asian woman wearing a sari and one of those red dots in the middle of the forehead walks on, and Mel looked at the red dot and went, your coffee's ready. I'll see you next time. I think that pretty much says it all. Okay, yeah. You know, there's always a question in my whole career I've been asked, you know, occasionally, why are there so many Jewish comedians?
[1:13:35] I would say it's a cultural thing. All cultures laugh. Some laugh more than others. I would say the Jewish culture is absolutely saturated with humor. And Irish, too. And American slaves and the concentration camps, they had their humor. So that it must have to do somewhat, even if obtusely, with oppression. But to give you an example, one of my most, I'm a beloved friend, Arthur Gelb, who was well known at the New York Times. He basically ran the Times under Abe Rosenthal for years. And he and his wife are O'Neill scholars. Anyway, at his memorial last year in a Broadway theater, his widow Barbara asked me to do a certain routine of mine that he just loved. So at this memorial, where there was some mirth, but, you know, it was, I mean, he was an old fellow, but it was a, so, you know, it was about ordering a kosher meal, and, you know, so, will the Jew who ordered the kosher meal, please ring his hostess call button, repeat, will the Jew who ordered the kosher meal, Mr.
[1:14:53] Abramowitz's burger hang gold and silver, are you the Jew, sir? We'll check your code in a moment. Jew? You're the Jew? May I see your genitalia, sir? We have the Jew here. This hospitality doesn't end. I mean, the pilot... Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is Captain Duncan up on the flight deck. We're about 70 nautical miles from Atlanta. The temperature's 82 degrees. Humidity is 64%. Incidentally, I sure hope the Jew enjoyed the kosher meal back there.
[1:15:23] As much as we enjoyed bringing it to you, and Delta ethnic foods week, I had the Koshyvnushkis, which it says here, help the Jews in their programs in Russia and Poland.
[1:15:45] The pursers having the kishki, which is, I'm told, Jewish health food. That's flour and fat stuffed into the intestinal tract of a cow. God bless you people. No wonder you've lived over 3,000 years. I say you keep going. The first officer has had the cholent. You ever see cholent? It's a stew with fatty, with prunes floating in it. Think Gowanus Canal after a cruise ship leaves the harbor. So even in, in tough times. And I got to say, I don't know everything about every comedian. And I sort of, I mean, I love show business, but I'm not too involved. I mean, I don't know who's what and what, but I think a lot of comedians, Seinfeld may be an exception, have some depression or neuroses. The wives are laughing here, both of these guys here.
[1:16:52] And, you know, that's the sand and the oyster for a lot of people. Like Tennessee Williams said in some preamble to a new edition of what's the one about glass? The glass menagerie. He said he's thankful for his neurosis because it was the sand in his oyster to create. It's sad to think that that's what it took. I don't think it takes him everything, but I think that there is in professional comedians a counter yin and yang of sadness there's a pagliacci syndrome i just made that up.
[1:17:38] One of the best descriptions was actually from pat cooper i was talking to and he's a yeah i can't talk about him yeah he he's italian and he was saying you know i used to I used to watch the Jewish comedians, and they were brilliant. They were brilliant, and it was so meaningful. And then I'd listen to the Italians, and they all sound like assholes. And then I realized what it was. The Jews have gone through pain and suffering for centuries. And what did the Italians ever do? They sit in their yard. There you are.
[1:18:34] Speaking with service performing at rar was talking about a friend passing away in a service you recently spoke at the service mr jaffried of our friend you want to share some of what you said oh yeah i i said And, well, when they announced that he was dead, everyone had the same reaction. How could you tell? And then I pointed to the coffin and I said, this is the 20th time we buried Abe Vigoda. Well, there was a false story that he had died a few years ago for some stupid reason. All right. So as we wind down, I got a question for everybody. By the way, you wanted to comment about, I told you, I was going to ask you about it.
[1:19:30] Yeah. I mean, this goes back to this joke about the boy on the beach. A scholar by the name of Richard Raskin wrote an essay on this joke. And he traced, it's called the evolution of a Jewish joke. And he traces its history. And the joke actually comes from an anti-Semitic joke that was first published in england in 1822 and the the joke then was uh a jewish boy went to the theater uh and was so eager to get to the front row that he fell into the orchestra pit and was injured uh at the the theater at their own expense uh paid for his treatment at the hospital uh but the boy died his mother came to collect his things at the theater uh which they gave her and uh she said Thank you for having him treated. But I'm also going to need the ticket. He didn't get to see the show.
[1:20:24] That sounds like the Joey Ross story, doesn't it? How Joey Ross isn't Jewish, is he? He is Jewish. Can we tell the Joey Ross story? You know who he is. Ooh, ooh, ooh. Velko in Car 54. He was Tutty, right? Joey Ross was like a strip club comedian who Nat Hyken cast in The Phil Silver Show and Car 54 made him a star, but the consensus of most comedians was that he wasn't that talented, but there was something about that character actor grizzled face that, you know, people took to. But by the late 70s, his career was over. It was just those two sitcoms. So he was booked to do a stand-up gig in 1982. Some people say it was an old folks' home. Some people said it was Bud Friedman's improv. Everybody's got a different version of this story. But he was doing his dreadful act, and halfway through, he felt chest pain, and he sat down on the stage and dropped dead, again, like Park your carcass.
[1:21:21] And so the next week, they wanted to bury him, but they didn't have any money, so some people say it was his wife, some people say it was Chuck McCann, some people say it was a hooker who came to collect his pay. Rashomon. Yeah, it's like a Rashomon version. And so anyways, the woman went up to the fellow, the booker, and said, I wanted to collect his money. And he said, sure. And cut her a check for $50. And she said, it's supposed to be $100. And he said he didn't finish the show. But it kind of reminds me of that joke. Yeah. Children were all seen with me and Pinsley are hookers. Yes, he only married hookers. It had to be a hooker. He married nine of them. He lived in common law with a hooker. I think nine of them he wound up. He kept divorcing them because they kept fucking all his friends. And he would marry another one. He was what Rodney called a rounder. Like Rodney would do these theoretical things like ask him because he thought of him as quite prehistoric. You know, I mean, he was... Played a caveman. He once asked him, let me ask you this, Rodney. He said, how much would you want to kill your sister? And most people would say, what, he's crazy. He goes.
[1:22:41] 10,000, you know. And there's a story. And the cast hated him, by the way, in Car 54. He supposedly smelled. Also, if he continues the show, it'll be without Joey Ross. They hated him. But I heard a story that the heads of Johnson & Johnson, who were like the sponsors of the show, stopped by the studio. And they were introduced to each cast member. Each one shook their hands and smiled and had their picture taken with them. And when they passed by Joey Ross's dressing room, the door was open and he was jerking off. And the heads of Johnson & Johnson just, of course, screamed and made a run for it. That's... Yeah. Yeah. It's a shame you never got a star on the Walk of Fame.
[1:23:50] Yeah yeah Sherwood Schwartz creator of Gilligan's Island and Brady Bunch created that, this this about time it's about space about two guys in the craziest place yeah, what what was the question again I think I didn't get moved what's the question yeah, Winding down as a Oh, I'm sorry In the end, Once again, the comedians You talk about A lot of people, a lot of topics I don't think, How many people I know Also.
[1:24:37] Yeah, I mean, yeah, he wasn't he wasn't Jewish. He influenced some of the biggest Jewish comedians of the 20th century. Jack Benny was influenced by Frank Faye. Milton Berle was influenced by Frank Faye. Bob Hope was influenced by Frank Faye. And the reason he was considered influential was that for the most part prior to him, Some comedians wore costumes, funny hats to get laughs, they used props, or they performed in a two- or three-man team. Frank Faye had done that as well, and he didn't like it. He didn't like the seltzer bottle thing. So he attempted to do stand-up dressed the same way he'd be dressed offstage, in a nice suit, just went up there alone and just talked in his normal voice. And initially, this is around 1916-17, the reviews were very hostile. They said, Frank Faye needs a proper straight man to feed his punchlines. Clearly doesn't know anything about comedy. You can't do comedy without props. You know, all these kind of comments. But slowly but surely, the style gave way and people started to emulate it. There was a guy named Julius Tannen, who Jack Benny kind of ripped off early on. And they all started performing like that. Bob Hope, same thing. This kind of glib persona. But the strange thing was that Frank Faye was known as a notorious anti-Semite. Milton Berle tells a story. He was such a fan of Frank Faye. He was standing in the wings of the Palace Theater watching him perform.
[1:25:57] And Frank Faye saw him with his peripheral vision and whispered to the stagehand, get that little Jew kid out of the wings. Get that little kike out of the wings. And so when Frank Faye finished, he got all this applause. He walked off the stage. Milton Berle was waiting for him with a stage brace and clubbed him in the face and tore open his nose. And Frank Faye married Barbara Stanwyck before she was famous. And some people believe the movie A Star Is Born is based on their relationship. How the woman became more famous than the man. And at the time, there was a joke going around Hollywood that said, who has the biggest prick in Hollywood? Barbara Stanwyck. You can see Frank Fay in the movie Nothing Sacred, which is an early color comedy from 1936. Still holds up, but he's the guy who hosts the nightclub scene with Carol Lombard. Can I remind everyone that I am here May 16th in this very auditorium? I want a full house like today.
[1:26:57] And I also have a book that's not on sale here, but it's called The Amorous Busboy of Decatur Avenue. And it's pretty good. It ends when I'm 25. So I owe about two more books if I want to cover them.
[1:27:15] One of the things that turns up in the book a lot is that, it's the theme of it. It's these people stealing each other's acts. Yeah. Thank you.
[1:27:25] Frankie Hires. There was a really interesting nightclub in the 40s called the Club 18, and it was kind of an antidote to the idea that the mafia ran all these nightclubs. If you were an insult comic, you couldn't really work without fear. So five kind of now obscure insult comics, including this guy Frankie Hires, banded together and opened this club on 52nd Street called Club 18, and it was an insult club. That's how it was advertised. Come to this club, and the audience will be insulted, and they would rove the audience with cordless mics, and do insult comedy. Jackie Gleason, who was unknown at the time, got booked there as kind of a substitute comic. But this guy Frankie Hires would start every show with, away we go! And then they would start insulting people. And apparently, Jackie Gleason took that later for his show. Yeah, and Rickles accused of stealing Jackie Leonard from the show. I don't agree with that. Jackie Leonard was insult, but they were totally different. He just had bitterness. And by the way, I worked with Rickles. I shot some film with him, actually not filmed anymore, you know. His mind is, like, right on the money, just like Jonathan Winters was at the end, one of my idols, not Jewish. Body was giving up, but the head was still there. All the wit, all the quickness. As I get older, I'm more and more interested in the acuity of old comedians.
[1:28:48] Like henny henny youngman lost it at the lunch table at the friars but he still could do his jokes well to a pigeon i know what kind of acuity is that that's fantastic he's talking to a bird that's a beautiful story just automatic but then he couldn't do his jokes anymore that old comedians Because today, four or five nights a week, Mel Brooks drives over to Carl Reiner's house, and they watch old movies together. And I asked Carl, what movies do you watch? And he said, any movie that's got the phrase, secure the perimeter. We watched that movie. And I asked Mel the same question and he said, mostly the born ultimatum, mostly the born. He says, well, at this age, we don't know who the bad guy is. So every night we sit there, he goes, I think it's him. I think it's him. I think it's him.
[1:29:51] The last question we're talking about our most workers on we have fully frank faye jackie a lot of these characters from the book mark your park is from certainly not a household name starting with drew who is uh who do you consider an underrated talent the name that people wouldn't know necessarily who you found well um i think it when you see the juizium show after the panel You'll see, you know, Jerry Lewis is all over the place. But then there are a couple of guys who's like one little image. And one of them is Jackie Miles, who was my dad's favorite comedian growing up. He used to see him perform at the Laurel's Country Club in Lock Sheldrake every summer. He loved Jackie. That was his Joe DiMaggio of comedy, he would say. So I always heard about the legend of Jackie Miles. But then I later heard some of his recordings. And he really is funny. He did kind of like a gay Jewish shtick. And he would imitate Jewish women at the resorts. And the stuff really holds up well. And I was really happy to, you know, to hear that and to realize my father was really right about the guy. So there's two there's two samples of Jackie Miles up in the Jewsium, which you'll see. But yeah, I think this guy is also probably upstairs in the Jewsium, a guy named Al Kelly. He is. Now, that's a Jewish name. He did this great, for people that don't know, he did this great double talk. And when you listen to it, it's just some of the best comedy.
[1:31:11] I mean, the way he runs is just incredibly precise. And, you know, it doesn't just make you laugh. It makes you laugh.
[1:31:21] Al Kelly. Al Kelly. Al Kelly's autobiography is up in the Jewsium in one of the cases. So, Jackie Miles and Al Kelly. And Al, I'm curious. Well, this isn't really a comedian, but as a writer, there was, I wonder if you guys remember him. There was a guy and he died. He used to be at the Catch a Rising Star. His name was Ronnie Shakes. Oh, yeah. He did a joke you know and as a writer you listen to jokes and go i could have written that i could have written that and um one night he i sit in the back and he said i was at my shrink today, and this is a man that i've been telling everything to for the last seven years has been spilling my guts to telling him everything that hurts me and where i come from and what all my torches and everything. And today he said something to me that brought tears to my eyes. No hablo ingles.
[1:32:27] And when I heard that, I went, wow, if I live to be a thousand, I don't write that joke. Okay. Yeah. It's a wonderful joke. I remember Shakespeare also had a line. He goes, my biggest fantasy in life is to have sex with two women. I don't mean at once. I mean, in a lifetime. Well, two, actually, I think. Lord Buckley, who preceded Lenny Bruce, he used to do these kind of jazz takes on the Bible. The Naz was Jesus. And he was actually a guest on Groucho, You Bet Your Life. I have it on tape. But I'm thinking the way you are, but really he was in the mountains, and his name was Bernie Burns. And I mentioned him somewhere, one of my HBO specials, and I got a letter from him. He's like, oh, man. He had a routine because the World Series always came at the same time as Yom Kippur. And the Brooklyn was always playing the Yankees in the 50s. So the cantor wants to know, you know, boy, chiggle, boy, chiggle.
[1:33:34] Go out and tell me what this score is.
[1:33:37] Music. Reb-a-la, Reb-a-la, with two out in the bases loaded, Jackie Robinson hit a triple. And he go, yam-ba-ba-ba-yam-ba-yam-ga-ga, yam-ba-la. About a half hour later, boy, chiggle, boy, chiggle, it must be the fourth inning. Now go out and find out what they score.
[1:33:43] The kid goes back and the praying goes on. And the kid goes back.
[1:34:08] Music.
[1:34:12] He says, Reb-a-la, Reb-a-la, With one out in first and second, Hank Bauer hit a home run in right field. And it goes back and forth. The Dodgers go ahead. And at the end, it comes in rebel, rebel on the ninth inning.
[1:34:30] Music. It was so apt, you know. Bernie Burns. Lou Menchel, Bernie Burns, Larry Deutsch. I saw them when I was a kid. First time I ever saw a live comedy. And what a way to make a living, I thought. They come, they make people laugh for 45 minutes. They forget about their disappointment in their husbands or their wives or their children or their health. Their stomachs hurt from laughing. And he gets into his Cadillac and he goes to another bungalow colony or hotel and makes them laugh. Not a bad calling. High calling, in fact.
[1:34:31] Yogi Berra hit a double with a minute loaded and the Yankees win. And he goes, Yuskadawi, Yuskadawi.
[1:35:25] Not an obscure by any stretch and not unsuccessful but i always thought the most underrated comedian was bud abbott wow, yeah i mean i always thought when when you listen to who's on first what makes it so funny is you're laughing at how stupid Lou Costello is for not knowing what is very logical because Bud Abbott explained it to you. It's logical that it's who's on first, what's on second. And so to me, he's underrated. Most of his part was, yeah, go on, stop, Lou. Come on. He never had a full sentence. And he was Jewish, half Jewish. And he had epilepsy throughout a lot of his life. Yeah. And what's your favorite Bud Abbott line from Bud, Abbot Costello? Costello is there. He's in fear, trying to explain the monsters to Bud. And he's going, you know.
[1:36:48] And and and avid just goes okay okay put your hands down.
[1:37:01] Well i love their television shows i think they were the best right yeah yeah they had no love interest in those stupid songs they're just uh old burlesque comics like sid fields on the show gags but joe besser right your favorite i'll hurt you i'll harm you joe besser bobby barber uh joe Kirk, a lot of greats. That show had it all. Of course. Stinky. I, I, yeah. He became one of the Stooges.
[1:37:33] This was, Steve Cox was on the show, and he was, he's a writer, and he was always a big fan of Joe Besser as a little kid, and so he wrote him a fan letter, and then a few weeks later the phone rings uh his mother answers and she goes oh uh steve it's for you and he picks up the phone and it's joe besser and he goes i you know i i just want to tell you how much your letter meant to me it it was it was really very sweet and and the kid he's nervous he's a little kid And he's going, um, um, uh, could you say one of those things that you say on TV? And he goes, what? And he goes, you know, those things you say on TV, can you say? And he goes, I don't know. And he goes, you know what you say on TV? And he goes, I can't. And he goes, the things you say. And he goes, not so loud. With that, gentlemen, thank you very much.
[1:38:47] Music.
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