Word: sahl
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Janus has spent ten years and $20,000 of his own money traveling around the country to interview top comedians and give them psychological tests. So far, he has tested 76 Jewish humorists, including Milton Berle, George Burns, David Brenner, Sid Caesar, David Steinberg and Mort Sahl. Most, he says, were ambivalent about their Jewishness and compulsively turned to humor to ward off their private demons. As Joan Rivers told Janus, "If I were marching to the ovens, I'd be telling jokes all the way." What makes them funny, says Janus, "is their pain...
...presidential race has not been a laughing matter. "The banality of the candidates destroys humorous comment," complains Roger Angell, humorist and a fiction editor of The New Yorker. To Johnny Carson, Carter v. Ford is "fear of the unknown v. fear of the known." Chirped veteran Mockingbird Mort Sahl: "Choosing between them is like choosing between Seconal and Nembutal...
...sooner. Ford and Carter came into the campaign like Herblock caricatures. The Hard-Nosed Bumbler ("We must either shorten our Presidents or lengthen our helicopter doors," said Bill Vaughan) was opposed by the Born-Again Peanut Farmer ("I pray 25 times a day," Carter was misquoted by Mort Sahl, "but I've never asked God to make me President because I didn't want to take advantage of the relationship"), with teeth like Bugs Bunny ("That man can eat a pineapple through a tennis racket," observed Comedian Pat Paulsen). But Ford's maladroitness as a topic...
...Saturday night. But somehow every Saturday night Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows managed to kid every facet of '50s life, from commuters to foreign films. Satire thrived in Washington, where Cartoonist Herblock made savage, premonitory caricatures of Vice President Nixon in search of prominence. Mort Sahl earned $100,000 a year kidding the splayfoot, clayfoot maneuvers of the middle class, in and out of ofiice. Jules Feiffer, Walt Kelly, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, and Mad magazine all flourished in the allegedly timid decade. Jack Kerouac's road, Allen Ginsberg's Howl, Gregory Corso...
They laughed at Sahl and Pogo, but took one step forward when they received their military greetings. They took The Catcher in the Rye to heart, but rarely ran away from home. They dug the character of Rebel Without a Cause, but concluded that James Dean carried futility on his back like a motorcycle jacket. It was easier to act like Sal Mineo, wronged and quietly suffering. It was simpler to mainline on paperbacks, to get kicks from the hot parts of the Mickey Spillane books or Peyton Place ("With her mouth almost against his, she whispered, 'I didn...