GERALD NACHMAN:
Revisiting the '50s & '60s
A Time When Comedy
Was a Serious Business

by Joanne Johnson / Humor Editor T a l k i n g C o m e d y . c o m

“Comedy is a serious business,” is a quote attributed to W.C. Fields. But it even goes back to a time earlier than Fields’ day. Author Gerald Nachman in his book Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s points out that David Garrick an eighteenth century actor, director and producer was quoted as saying “You may humbug the town as a tragedian, but comedy is a serious business.” Possibly no other group of comedians proved this statement better than the comics that emerged during the '50s and '60s.

The decade between '53 and '65 gave birth to a new style of comedy. A sort of comedic revolution, if you will. “Nearly every major comedian who broke through in the 1950s and early 1960s was a cultural harbinger … socially aware making satirical comments on the world, on society, on America, on relationships…” says author Nachman, who observed the period first hand in the underground clubs of San Francisco while attending college. “The decade left an indelible mark — not the least of which was caused by a revolution of laughter, a muffled explosion that occurred one night in late December 1953 in a small downstairs room in San Francisco called the hungry i.” Nachman is referring to '50s stand up comic Mort Sahl’s first foray onto the stage of this small celler club. This, and other emerging clubs like it in various cities across America, had been, up until that time, primarily hangouts for folksingers and beat poets. But Sahl and other young comics who followed him were soon to change all that.

Mort Sahl may have followed Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante and Abbott & Costello into the world of comedy … but he was nothing like them. “They (Cantor, Durante, Abbott & Costello, and others that had come before) were consummate entertainers, but they had little to say about the emerging world.” They came out of the clubs or the Catskille resorts in New York or Miami Beach … or the vaudville or burlesk circuit. “They sang, they danced, they told jokes, they did impressions. But they really weren’t saying anything significant,” adds Nachman.

Sahl, and those who followed him, “changed all that, simply by the unheard-of comic device of being themselves and speaking their mind onstage.” They would soon make nightclubs places known and loved for the political satire, rabid social commentary, and bleak and black humor they offered their audiences.

“It was a huge and total change,” says Nachman of the comics of Mort Sahl’s day compared with those who had come before them. And it went beyond political commentary, there were insightful social commentaries on many aspects of life in America at the time. “Mort Sahl and Dick Gregory were the only (exclusively) political comedians. The others made more social commentary. Lenny Bruce very rarely said anything on politics. His legacy is mainly the dirty stuff because he used language that had never been used before on stage. But people don’t realize he also dealt with issues like the hypocrisy of religion or racial segregation. Lenny Bruce really had something to say.”

Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl and Nichols & May. Mort Sahl was the first political comedian in history … doing pretty scathing comments. Dick Gregory was the first black comedian to break through. Even Phyllis Diller" says Nachman, of a comic who today may not seem like a revolutionary character … but when you look more carefully at the times she started out in you understand what a revolutionary she really was. "When she came along, in the fifties, she was the first woman comedian in the mainstream clubs. And she was making fun of motherhood and family which was pretty radical for the time. Until Phyllis Diller you wouldn’t ever see a woman doing stand-up. There were underground comediennes. Women like Belle Barth, Rusty Warren — there were a handful of them who would sit at the piano and sing kind of dirty songs. But Diller was the first to make it respectable … and go toe to toe with her male counterparts in prime clubs.”

“After these comics came along there was no follow up. You would have thought it would have started something,” Nachman adds, with some regret that the later waves of stand up comedy didn’t seem to have the same deep content and satirical social commentary that these comics had.

And yet Nachman finds this period in comedy to be largely ignored by historians. Books and documentaries about the 1950s always seem to skip over the satire of the period giving it little or no mention. “These people had never been written about in one book before,” says Nachman of the need to focus on the important contribution these comics made. In his book, Seriously Funny, Gerald Nachman covers such ‘50s and ‘60s comedy greats as Mort Sahl, Woody Allen, Dick Gregory, Tom Lehrer, Stan Freberg, Shelly Berman, Mel Brooks, Bill Cosby, Nichols & May and of course, Lenny Bruce, to name a few. “It was an amazing golden age from 1953 till around 1965. It was a real flowering of comedy that we didn’t even realize at the time,” reminisces Nachman. “You always think that it’s something that’s going great and that it’s going to last forever. Nothing lasts forever. And it was all over in about 10 or 12 years. People like me, that were growing up with all these funny people around, thought … they’ll always be all these funny people around. I never sensed that it was over … that it was coming to an end. And then you turned around suddenly and it was all gone.”

“If you listen to some of these comedians on their LPs,” says Nachman, “they’re really structured. There’s real craft to it. A lot of them were doing full sketches like Nichols and May. They’re really worked out. Every word counts. It’s not just some guy standing on stage with a beer just rambling on about who knows what.” If this era of comedy was before your time many of these comics 1950s and 1960s recordings are available these days on CD. Comics like … Woody Allen, Bob Newhart, Bill Cosby, Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce, Phyllis Diller, Dick Gregory … Mel Brooks (Reiner & Brooks), Nichols & May, Bob & Ray and the Smothers Brothers, Mort Sahl and others.

Speaking of rediscovering these comedy gems on audio … A new phenomenon that came about in the 50s was the importance of the comedy LP to comedians careers. Comedy LPs were not just a tool used to capture a comics act for the enjoyment of fans at home. Many comedians during this time became famous not because they’d been seen live or on TV but because of the success of a comedy LP they had released.

“A lot of these comedians, like Bob Newhart, Allen Sherman and Tom Leher had never appeared in a nightclub before they cut an album,” relates Nachman. During the days of theatrical radio … the radio airwaves were much like TV … they featured dramas and comedy shows, variety shows and detective series. “After theatrical radio, which is what I wrote about in my first book (Raised on Radio),” adds Nachman, “…theatrical radio ended when TV came in and after that the local DJs became a new power in radio in cities across the country.” Radio was constantly searching for material to broadcast. The DJs would play the pop music of the day. To break up all the music they began to play comedy albums. If enough DJs across the country fell in love with an unknown comic’s LP and played it for their audiences he could go from unknown to well known. Radio audiences would visit their local records stores requesting to buy a copy, clubs across America would offer the comic bookings and TV shows would ask him to make an appearance performing material from the LP.

So why not give a listen to the comics of the ’50 and ‘60s if you’ve never heard their stand up before … and if you have heard them before give them a listen once again today on CD. Or better still … if you have a phonograph player around the house, why not make a trip to your local used record store and see what 50s comedy greats they have there on vinyl LP. Then step back in time and experience 50s comedy the way it was intended to be listened to. Lower the needle to the vinyl and have a laugh with these great comedy crafters of a bygone era. An era author Gerald Nachman considers the Golden Age of Comedy. And when the laughter has died down, and you’ve put all the comedy albums back in their cardboard sleeves, you can pick up a book. Something else that was a more commonplace activity in the 50s, and read all about the laugh makers you were just listening to … in author Gerald Nachman’s Seriously Funny.

Gerald Nachman's ‘Seriously Funny : The Rebel Comics of the 1950s and 1960s’ is available from you local book store or from the publisher Back Stage Books (www.watsonguptill.com).

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