Seriously funny : the rebel comedians of the 1950s and 1960s

736 Pages·2003·3.99 MB·English

by  Gerald Nachman

Also by Gerald Nachman
Raised on Radio
The Fragile Bachelor
Out on a Whim
Playing House

For Randy Poe and Morrie Bobrow,
sources of infinite merriment
You may humbug the town as a tragedian, but comedy is a serious
business.
—DAVID GARRICK,
eighteenth-century actor-director-producer
Contents
Setup Lines: Introduction
The 1950s
A Voice in the Wilderness: Mort Sahl
Rendering unto Caesar: Sid Caesar
Sing a Song of Strychnine: Tom Lehrer
The Start of Something Big: Steve Allen
And Now, a Laugh from Our Sponsor: Stan Freberg
Televisionary: Ernie Kovacs
Mom from Mars: Phyllis Diller
The Wild Child: Jonathan Winters
Out of Thin Air: Jean Shepherd; Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding
Call Interrupt: Shelley Berman
Double Jeopardy: Mike Nichols and Elaine May
The 1960s
Charlie Everybody: Bob Newhart
The Elvis of Stand-up: Lenny Bruce
Color-Coordinated: Godfrey Cambridge
Sibling Revelry: The Smothers Brothers
Bawdy and Soul: Mel Brooks
Curing the Body Politic: Dick Gregory
Lasting Impressions: David Frye, Vaughn Meader, Will Jordan
Schnook’s Progress: Woody Allen
Father Goose, Inc.: Bill Cosby
Girl Squawk: Joan Rivers
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Interviews

S L
ETUP INES
Introduction
There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know
that’s all some people have? It isn’t much, but it’s better than
nothing in this cockeyed caravan.
—JOEL MCCREA, in Preston Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels
OBODY REALLY REMEMBERS the 1950s, where much of our
N
story is set, with any accuracy. Great sport is still made of
the fifties. They’re satirized and exploited and even waxed
nostalgic about, yet nobody gets them quite right; a sharper
close-up of that much-maligned decade is long overdue. The
1950s might have been innocent but they were far from
innocuous. Maybe you had to be there. Yet even people who
were there accept the standard snapshot. The fifties were largely
a victim of bad timing—overshadowed by the heroic forties and
the histrionic sixties.
Viewed through the lens of its satirical comedians, the fifties
were at least as vital and vivid as any flashier decade—and a
whole lot funnier. The historians may have been nodding off,
but the audiences who flocked to see the new comedians of that
time were wide awake. The comedians of the fifties and sixties
were a totally different species from any that came before or
after, comics whose humor did more than pry guffaws out of
audiences. This new post—Korean War comedy poked and
prodded and observed, demolishing fond shibboleths left and