Word: sahl
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quot;Right!", echoes an almost fanatical following-dedicated fans who are sure that by Election Day Comedian Mort Sahl will have reduced the major candidates to little more than a 5 o'clock shadow and a few odd wisps of singed hair. Often introduced in nightclubs as "the next President of the United States," Sahl is unlikely this year to achieve his stated ambition to overthrow the Government. That will take time. His audience is still narrow and his appeal is anything but universal. But he is the freshest comedian around; he is a permanent and popular attraction...
This was Morton Lyon Sahl. delegate from everywhere and nowhere, just about the only un-TelePrompTed speaker in town, and a sideshow considerably brighter than the main attraction. Busy as a Kennedy, he appeared nightly on local television over station KHJ (the call letters, he said, stand for "Kennedy Hates Johnson"), nibbled petits fours and strawberries while matching attitudes with Senators, Governors, 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...
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...
...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 enthusiastically reviewed the merits of Adlai Stevenson on the air, finally barged...
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...