Word: mort
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...showfolk and intellectuals, including a bewildered Max Lerner. Sahl also did two shows a night at the Crescendo on Sunset Strip and managed to write at least one newspaper column each day, mainly for Hearst. First and still the best of the New Comedians whose specialty is topical humor, Mort Sahl, 33, is emerging as the most successful political satirist in the U.S., a sort of Will Rogers with fangs...
Blitz & Avarice. As usual, Sahl spared neither friend nor foe, but last week he concentrated his intramural rounds on Jack Kennedy. Mort wondered if the nation was searching for a "son-figure." The Senator, Mort suggested, was a natural for TV's Father Knows Best, and he noted that Kennedy's appearance on College News Conference made sense because "kids like to talk over problems with someone their own age." Smoothing his edges somewhat when he appeared on the dais with Kennedy at Paul Butler's Beverly-Hilton dinner, Sahl pictured a line-up of war heroes...
...These people in Washington must know what they're doing or they wouldn't be there," he declared in tones of grudging admiration; then, turning the worm, he added: "And they're not there." On the same theme, Mort announced: "President Eisenhower is in charge of everything-whenever Nixon leaves the country." Picking off the mighty and famous, Sahl got the surprise of the week when his angriest foe turned out to be his TV sponsor, California Millionaire Bart Lytton (Lytton Savings & Loan Association). A Kennedy backer.* Lytton simmered in the control booth as Sahl and guests...
Sick Comic Mort Sahl, 32, was beginning to sound as healthy as his earnings, now running to more than $300,000 a year. Sahl, who delights in proving that almost all popular heroes have clay heads to match their feet, owned up to some personal idols. On his list: Mark Twain ("a prism through which the young country expressed itself"), Herman Melville ("he had scope and virility, didn't internalize"), Tom Paine, Albert Einstein, Edmund Wilson, Theseus, George Bernard Shaw. Allowing that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was "a father figure" to him, Sahl said that he regards Dwight Eisenhower...
...Chicago cops' political "clout" and time-perfected "take" systems, reported with scholarly awe that only one procedure would clean up the department: fire all hands, start over. Mob murders go unsolved as in Capone's reign, and petty bribery of traffic cops is the accepted procedure (Comedian Mort Sahl describes Chicago's Outer Drive as "the last outpost of collective bargaining"). But last week Chicago's cops got a new boss, and the legend of irresistible corruption ran into a legend of immovable rectitude...