The Mothers of All Comics

In On the Joke: the Original Queens of Stand-Up Comedy by Shawn Levy (NY: Doubleday, 2022)

In nearly every book on the history of stand-up comedy, women, at best, get one collective chapter, their existence reduced to a sentence or two or a couple of paragraphs.  (I can only think of one off the top of my head that does more than that: We Killed: the Rise of Women in Stand-up Comedy by Yael Kohen.)  Show business chronicler Shawn Levy, in contrast, selected nine women whom he felt were the pioneers, taking a deeper dive into who they were and how they broke into the "boys' club" of stand-up in his latest book, In On the Joke: the Original Queens of Stand-up Comedy.  They didn't do everything men did "backwards and in high heels" as the saying about Ginger Rogers goes.*   Working harder within the parameters of a testosterone-fueled field and against the mores of their times, they became successes, but not without personal sacrifice or suppressing a vital part of themselves, something their male counterparts did not have to do. The nine Levy chose were Jackie "Moms" Mabley, Jean Carroll, Minnie Pearl, Phyllis Diller, Elaine May, Totie Fields, and Joan Rivers, with Belle Barth and Rusty Warren as the only ones sharing a chapter.

Levy, with his storytelling skills, covers some familiar territory, the parts of the stories we all know (because of those paragraphs or bios).  He also expands on them, allowing us to feel the frustration of his subjects at having to downplay, or hide completely, their looks, their intellect, their sexuality, and more.  His chapter on Phyllis Diller alone ("The Positive Thinker") reads better than her own autobiography (Like a Lampshade in a Whore House).  Do not skip the book's Introduction!

Anyone reading this book will come away with (I hope) a respect and appreciation for these women.  But it will be women who will feel a sense of pride and an urge to suppress a scream of anger on behalf of the founding females of funny.

*While that quote gets attributed to a number of people, Rogers included, the first verifiable appearance of it was in the comic strip, "Frank and Ernest" by Bob Thaves in 1982.

 A Valentine to Comedy's Sweetheart

Love, Gilda: a documentary by Lisa D'Apolito (2018, 87 min.)

A recent news story broke my heart.  As Gilda's Club, a nationwide support community for people with cancer, celebrated its 25th Anniversary, a number of chapters announced a name change.  Many boards of directors felt that the name of the organization should make it clear that its focus is on cancer, but the most devastating reason - and probably the most honest - was given by the Madison,Wisconsin chapter: Their members did not know who she was, particularly the younger ones.

For those of you who have no idea, or a vague one, of who Gilda Radner was, do yourself a favor; scour the streaming services for the early episodes of SNL (called "Saturday Night" when it first started in 1975), and binge watch her brilliance.  (Female co-stars, Jane Curtain and Laraine Newman were no slouches either.)

For the rest of us, Lisa D'Apolito's taut documentary, Love, Gilda, uses Radner's own diaries, home movies, and audio and video recordings to tell the story of an insecure chubby kid from Detroit who grew up to be comedy's sweetheart.  There is no fairy tale here, and that is D'Apolito's focus.  She doesn't gloss over Gilda's eating disorder, drug use, and ovarian cancer.  It is far from a pity party, though.  Gilda's honesty about her life and her bravery in the face of a deadly disease make you miss her all the more.  Even though you know the end, you root for her to overcome it all and you cheer when she finds the love of her life, comic actor Gene Wilder.   

Love, Gilda is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

(😊😊😊😊  out of five Smilies)

Everyone Loves Steve Martin

Inside Comedy: The Soul, Wit, and Bite of Comedy and Comedians of the Last Five Decades by David Steinberg (Alfred A. Knopf, 2021)

David Steinberg had the unbelieveable luck to be born at the right time, and more often than not, be in the right place.  The Canada-born comic/writer/director/host got into the business in the mid-60s, putting him at the cusp of seismic change in comedy and society.  Many of the most successful comics of the 1940s and 50s were still alive and active, and the comics who would upend the safe domesticity-based style of comedy and slapstick were on the rise.  Steinberg had unprecedented access to the biggest names on both sides, and, disappointingly,  we find out very little more than one could reading their biographies, autobiographies, and other non-fiction about the comedy in the 20th century and beyond (Recommended: David Bianculli's Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour).

Steinberg's writing is breezy, charming, humble, and funny.  I imagine him sitting like Groucho in his later years (or "Bernstein" in Citizen Kane) with a beret and lap robe, offering anecdotes about a particular comic or a particular time.  Nearly everybody who is or was somebody gets a mention.  For example, on one page (p. 33), you'll find Carly Simon, Dan Sullivan (reviewer), Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce, Harry Kalcheim (agent), Alan Arkin, David Geffen, Cis Corman (casting director), Mike Nichols, Tony Bill, Dustin Hoffman, Sidney Poitier, Robert Alan Aurthur (screenwriter), and Walter and Carol Matthau.  However, that is one of the pages where you'll also find one of the more interesting anecdotes where Geffen, then a junior agent, discourages Steinberg from reading for a part in a certain Mike Nichols movie, because "They're not going to go with a little Jew like you; they're going to go with a tall guy like Tony Bill.  So don't even bother."  (In the end, we know who got the part in The Graduate and it wasn't Tony Bill.)

Some folks get more "real estate" than others, and we get warm and funny stories about Lily Tomlin, Robin Williams, Bob Einstein, Larry David, Martin Short, and Billy Crystal, for example.  And the most often mentioned performer in terms of admiration is Steve Martin.  Practically everyone loves and/or was influenced by him.

Inside Comedy would have benefitted greatly from better editing as there are sentences that repeat in later paragraphs, and an occasional typo, the most egregious being, "By 1957, Marty (Short) joined SCTV."  That would've been impossible on two levels:  Martin Short was 7 years old in 1957 and SCTV didn't exist until 1976.

I so much wanted to love this book (Steinberg was a pre-teen crush), but the best I can muster is "like."  It's a great book for those just dipping their toe in the comedy pool because they learn who's who very quickly, and for those who like to spend some time in the hot tub of nostalgia.  

This Will All Be Over Soon? We Can Only Hope

"This Will All Be Over Soon" by Cecily Strong (Simon and Schuster, 2021)

This is not a funny book, nor was it meant to be, despite the author being best known as a comic actress. What it is, is a memoir of loss and the attendant grief during the most painful year in recent memory.  Strong starts by telling us of the death of her beloved kid cousin Owen at the beginning of 2020 from brain cancer, only to be followed by the tsunami of the pandemic.  In her warm. yet anxious, "dear friend to dear friend" voice, not only does she recount the loss a relative, she honestly discusses the loss of normalcy.  She flees with two friends to an isolated Air BnB in upstate New York, a decision that seems more reflexive than thought out.  Within this bubble, she ruminates about her cousin, about her new boyfriend who comes down with COVID, and about adjusting to an existance without work, without most of her friends, and without the the life she had in general.  Strong's anxiety about COVID and feelings of grief are laid out bare, but not so heavily that it would making reading this book difficult.  It's not all gloom and doom (for example, she learns a lot about herself during this time, including that she's capable of growing her own vegetables), and the ending is cautious, but optimistic. 

What makes this book hard to read, though, is not the subject matter, but the style.  It's part diary, part stream of consciousness.  However, the dated entries are short and are best read a few at a time.

 A Planet Walks Into a Bar...

Planet Funny: How Comedy Took Over Our Culture by Ken Jennings (Scribner, 2018)

"Venus and Mars" may be "alright tonight,"* but Earth is downright funny, sometimes to its own detriment.  

Walking "bar bet" answer book and jokester  Ken Jennings has written an approachable, yet sometimes a bit academic look at the culture influence of comedy through the ages.  Jennings goes all the way back to early homosapiens and works his way up to the current political age.  He observes the evolution of what we value as a society and what we think is funny.  As a matter of fact, he takes an entire chapter - more like one long run-on sentence - to list the things he finds funny. (Some of his past tweets about people with handicaps, for example, have brought his sense of humor under scrutiny.  He has apologized for his "dumb jokes.")

When the book came out in paperback, the subheading was changed to How Comedy Ruined Everything. (Shades of Tru TV's Adam Ruins Everything.)  The new subhead sums up Jennings thesis that we've evolved as a society from one that valued physical strength (survival) to one that appreciated intellect (creative) to one that sees the ability to joke around as probably the most important attribute, as evidenced by practically everything and everyone having to be funny in some way to get our attention - so much so that we elected a reality buffoon as President.

*Thanks, Paul McCartney and Wings.

 Still Standing: Documentary by Elizabeth Zephyrine McDonough Shows Great Comedy Is Ageless

Some say that starting in comedy is a young person's game, what with the running from open mic to open mic at all hours of the night just to get some stage time.  Natalie K. Levant and George Saltz, the subjects of the short documentary Still Standing, show that just because you've made four score-plus trips around the sun doesn't mean you can't make people laugh, including those young enough to be your grandkids. 

Director Elizabeth Zephrine McDonough, who is also an actor and writer for The New Yorker and Full Frontal, was working on a documentary about the comedy scene in New York.  At one open mic, she was blown away by Natalie Levant, a tattooed, shaggy-haired octagenarian in sequined boots who dropped f-bombs and shot out jokes about sex, love, her kids, and more, leaving the audience in paroxisyms of laughter.  McDonough found a muse.

Enter George Saltz, another 80+ year old.  Both he and Natalie got into comedy in earnest when they became widowed.  While Natalie pursued her love of performing through community theater over the years, George first tried his hand at performing comedy in the Catskills when he was 18. (He bombed badly and became a clinical psychologist instead.)  Their approach to humor is different, but their result is the same - hysterical laughter.

Still Standing, which premiered at the Lower East Side Film Festival in New York City, will be making the film festival circuit, and will hopefully be available in the future either in theaters or via a streaming platform.  In the meantime, you can satisfy your itch for documentaries about mature merry makers with Lunch by Donna Kanter and If You're Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast by Danny Gold.

(😁😁😁 out of five Smilies)

So, You Think You're Funny? Put It in Writing!

So, You Think You're Funny?  Put It in Writing! 

Poking a Dead Frog:  Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers by Mike Sacks (Penguin, 2014)

My sister's vocal coach had a gentle, yet pointed, way of telling his not-so-on-key students that singing was not for them.  After suffering through a Florence Foster Jenkins-worthy performance of one my my sister's friends, the coach said, "Bonnie, dear, have you ever considered taking up an instrument?"  He wasn't saying that she didn't have musical talent; he just felt that her voice was not her medium.  The same could be said for those who have killer material but can't deliver on stage:  Drop the mic and pick up a pen. (I'm "old school.")

In "Poking a Dead Frog,"* Mike Sacks introduces the reader to more than 40 folks who make a living writing, producing, publishing, and performing comedy, from the obscure (Peg Lynch, one of the earliest and most successful female radio and TV comedy writers) to the universally famous (Who doesn't know Mel Brooks?).  He divides the interviews into three types:  the long form, "Ultraspecific Comedic Knowledge," and "Pure Hard-Core Advice."  All can be read at one's leisure, yet if you're looking for quick pep talks, reality checks, or answers to questions you may or may not have considered, the latter two are most helpful.  You'll find information on how to find an agent, how to write for an awards show, from-the-trenches observations, best movies for potential comedy writers to watch, etc.  In all three types of interviews, you'll find honest assessments of the field, then and now.  You'll read about the work involved and years of toil, but if someone was in the right place at the right time, they'll admit that as well.

Women represent about 20% of those interviewed.  That's more than are usually included in other comedy-related books, so props to Sacks for putting a spotlight on how many women are making us laugh despite the pervasive belief that women are not funny. 

*In case you're wondering, the title is derived from a quote about humor from that noted funnyman, E.B. White. 😉  You'll find it in the foreword.  (What? You were expecting me to spoon feed it to you?)