With all the insanity in the world…Israel and Hamas, Ukraine and Russia, Republicans and Republicans, I thought it was time to revisit how comedy had changed in the past century. Americans like to laugh, it’s our vitamin of choice.
For the first three decades of the 20th Century most comedy emanated from vaudeville and the Nickelodeons…laughter and pathos…Chaplain, starving, eating his shoe, Harold Lloyd dangling from a clock high above the street. The Keystone Kops pie-in-the-face routines.
Vaudevillians gave us music and humor, the straight man and his foil, Frank Fay and Fanny Brice, Al Jolson and Sophie Tucker. They gave us jokes, sometimes self-deprecating, sometimes insensitive.
Will Rogers, a captivating part-Cherokee Indian was one of its biggest stars.
He’d simply stand on the stage, twirling his rope and pontificating on the times: “Don’t let yesterday use up too much of tomorrow.” “Make crime pay…become a lawyer!” “When the Okies left Oklahoma and moved to California it raised the I.Q. of both states.”
The” Talkies” helped carry us through the dark days of the depression…W.C. Fields, The Three Stooges, Laurel & Hardy, and The Marx Brothers made us forget the soup lines. Radio exploded in popularity at the same time as Fred Allen, Burns & Allen, as well as Jack Benny with his miserly persona. In one episode, he was being robbed. ‘Your money or your life,’ the robber asked. Silence! “’Well?” The robber asked again.’ Benny’s reply: ‘I’m thinking about it.’ This line became an instant ‘water-cooler’ retell at the office.
When the war came, we needed humor more than ever and the talent didn’t disappoint. Bob Hope visited military camps in every military theater. Abbott and Costello gave us ‘Who’s On First?’ as well as ‘30’s holdovers such as Joe E. Brown and Martha Raye.
By the 1950’s the world of comedy had changed. Television was in our living rooms giving us Sid Caesar, Ed Sullivan and Steve Allen’s Tonight show. Comedians were plenty, some telling jokes, some creating zany situations. Elaine May and Mike Nichols, Buddy Hackett, Jonathan Winters, Don Rickles, Shelly Berman, Martin & Lewis…a never-ending stream that told us how crazy the world was in which we were living. Mort Sahl, wearing a cashmere sweater, would enter with today’s newspaper and we’d laugh at his views on the war, the politics, racism, in a style Will Rogers would have been proud of.
Today we find humor on television, in comedy clubs and concert venues. Black comics deal with stories in a vernacular unavailable to white comics. Women and Gay comedians have added a fresh slant on sex. Limits on what’s acceptable are pretty much gone. If you can’t say it on Network television, screw it, there’s always cable.
So, I will leave you with the only joke I know that has 3 morals:
Sacha is walking in the snow in the dead of winter when he sees a little bird, lying frozen in the snow. He picks up the bird hoping his body warmth will revive it…it isn’t enough, but he sees a large pile of warm fresh dung nearby and puts the bird in it. The heat revives the bird, and it begins to sing. A large cat, nearby, hears the little bird sing, pounces on it and devours it. The morals of the story are:
- He who puts you in the poop is not necessarily your enemy.
- He who takes you out of it is not necessarily your friend.
- And, if you’re in it up to your neck, for goodness sakes, DON’T SING.
Remember…look up, things can always get worse!
(Actually I looked up and, guess what…they’d gotten worse!)