The Comedians

by Kliph Nesteroff

  “I remember helping him with his monologue the night before,” said Albert Brooks. “He went to the banquet and when he got up, he was as funny as could be, and they just roared. They just banged the table, so you hear the silverware jumping up and down. And he finished to this thunderous applause.”

  Milton Berle was seated directly beside Einstein. Roastmates encouraged Harry to stand and take another bow. “As he sat down for the third time, I looked at him and his face was turning colors,” said Berle. “He took a breath and went boom and hit my shoulder. I heard a lot of ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ from the audience. They guessed what had happened. I never saw so many pillboxes thrown out from an audience. So I said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, take it easy, just a little accident here.’” Art Linkletter tried to calm the audience, repeating, “He’s all right, he’s all right.”

  Ed Wynn rushed the stage yelling, “Put his head down! Put his head down!” Thelma Leeds ran to her husband and shoved nitroglycerine tablets—used to treat his arteriosclerosis—under his tongue. “Milton and I each took an arm of the chair and pulled him back,” said Friar Barry Mirkin. “I tried to get Lucy to unclamp her hands from the table, and she couldn’t do it.” Einstein was carried backstage. “Desi was crying,” said Berle. “He was beside himself, and so was Lucy, and so was everybody. Tony Martin was on the dais, so I told him to sing a song, and what do you think he sang? ‘There’s No Tomorrow.’”

  Dr. Alfred Goldman, chief surgeon from the City of Hope hospital, was in attendance. He cut open Einstein’s chest with a pocket scalpel. Electric shocks were administered to Einstein’s heart using a raw cord ripped from a nearby lamp. “When we saw the doctors come out, their shirt sleeves rolled up, glum, everyone knew,” said Mirkin. After they’d worked on him for eighty minutes, Einstein was pronounced dead of myocardial infarction.

  “If he had been eighty-five, it would have been a movie—a joy—a great thing,” says Bob Einstein. “This was not good. It was weird. Someone once said to me, ‘Well, at least your dad died doing what he loved.’ My dad was fifty-four! I said, ‘What does your mother do?’ He said, ‘Oh, she’s a housewife.’ I said, ‘Let’s go over to her house while she’s doing the laundry and I’ll blow her fucking head off. At least she will have died doing what she loved.’”

  “The interesting thing to me was that he finished,” said Albert Brooks. “He could have died in the middle, but he didn’t. He finished and he was as good as he’d ever been in his life.”

  Advertising agencies continued to control radio in the 1940s. The profits brought in during the 1930s made them only more powerful in the following decade. Radio gave the hard sell for Geritol “for tired blood” and evaporated milk “from contented cows” while “nine out of ten doctors” recommended Lucky Strike cigarettes. Few comedians dared defy this atmosphere. The two who did exemplified the great disconnect between comic cynicism and sponsor deceit.

  Fred Allen was a quiet subversive, an armchair intellectual and a beloved comedian. In an era when radio comedians were sold to the public as cheery good sports, Allen was the dour opposite. He once said, “I have high hopes I’ll be able to withdraw from the human race.” He objected to the rules and restrictions imposed by the sponsor, concluding, “Radio is a repugnant medium of entertainment.” His good friend Jack Benny said he was “a bitter, frustrated and unhappy man. He thought life was some sort of miserable trap.” His attitude was funneled into a unique persona that appealed to those listeners tired of radio hucksterism. As an insubordinate he thrived in the very environment he held in contempt, a voice for the cynical voiceless.

  Fred Allen was a network radio star from 1933 to 1949, fighting his superiors from the start. The concept of the studio audience was entrenched by 1935, but Allen fought against it. “The worst thing that ever happened to radio was the studio audience. Somebody like Eddie Cantor brought these hordes of cackling geese in because he couldn’t work without a bunch of imbeciles laughing at his jokes. Would anybody with a brain be caught dead in a studio audience? Would anybody with a sense of taste stand in line to watch a half dozen people in business suits standing around reading into microphones?”

  Still, the live audience gave birth to an Allen trademark. Whenever a line didn’t go over he veered off script and referred to the lack of response. It showcased a quick wit, and the “savers” made him worth listening to when the script was lackluster.

  Allen believed he was more in line with New Yorker humorists than radio comedians. “I wonder what thoughts are rampant in the minds of the morons who bark the same jokes over the networks week after week,” said Allen. “The only way I can figure it out is that the listeners have the same mentality and do not discriminate.” Allen griped about radio writing in general, but stopped short of insulting his own writers. He lamented that an original comic didn’t have a chance against the bandits of the air. “Radio comedy is the most painful form of entertaining. This pressure for new ideas drives every comedian on the air into becoming a vulture. I don’t blame them. I blame their gag writers. You can’t copyright a joke. You can’t tell a new joke on the radio without hearing it in almost the same version on almost every other comedy show during the week.”

  The vitriol aside, he treated his writers well. “Fred was better, kinder, and more liberal and generous with writers than anyone else—even though publicly he used to complain about them,” said comedy writer Bob Weiskopf. Among those who got their start writing for Allen were The Caine Mutiny author Herman Wouk and the creator of The Phil Silvers Show, Nat Hiken.

  Allen was the first comedian to call out network executives, making jokes at the expense of NBC suits: “A conference of radio executives is just a meeting at which a group of men who can do nothing agree collectively that nothing can be done.” Allen was censored live on the air when he spoke of “gray flannel junior executives who wear tight suits so they can’t make a move without a conference.” NBC told Fred Allen to cut this line out of the script. When he delivered the line anyway, the NBC chimes cut him off mid-joke. The following week he addressed it on air while bantering with his costar and wife, Portland Hoffa. “Why were you cut off last Sunday?” asked Portland. “Who knows?” said Allen. “The main thing in radio is to come out on time. If people laugh, the program is longer. The thing to do is to get a nice dull half-hour. Nobody will laugh or applaud. Then, you’ll always be right on time, and all of the little emaciated radio executives can dance around their desks in interoffice abandon.”

  Radio critic Jack Graver observed in 1945, “More and more things have become taboo in the last half-dozen years until it is almost useless to think of making satirical comment along these lines on radio. The networks are taking no chances . . . All of which is a sad blow to a person of Allen’s penetrating wit. The advertising people are also the bane of Allen’s existence.”

  Allen reflected on corporate influence in radio. “Men who ran oil companies, drug, food, and tobacco corporations, were attending auditions, engaging talent and in too many instances their untutored opinions adversely influenced the destinies of artists.”Allen said that if radio comedy was lousy, it was because the sponsor wanted it that way. “Practically everything is taboo. We end up with ersatz subject matter and ditto humor.” He told the story of one network censor who marked up every page of his script, crossing out the transitional instruction “segue.” The censor in question was under the illusion that the word “segue” had “immoral overtones.”

  In the fall of 1948 the ratings for The Fred Allen Show took a nosedive due to the rising popularity of quiz shows. Programs like Break the Bank and Stop the Music eviscerated their competition by promising listeners cash prizes. Allen said, “Radio’s slogan is, ‘If you can’t entertain people, give them something.’”

  On June 26, 1949, The Fred Allen Show was thrown off the air. “Fred Allen, hardest hit program because of the direct competition opposite Stop the Music, led radio stars in
ganging up in a campaign to laugh the giveaway shows off the air—and failed,” wrote Variety. “Their gags were more than good-natured humor; they had a sarcastic, always frustrated bite. Allen’s insurance policy, purporting to compensate any lucky listener who called while tuned in to his show, had a reflex effect—in that it focused even more attention on the jackpot program.”

  Radio comedy of the 1940s was mostly hokum. With the sponsor dictating the tone, the least likely to offend was most likely to air—even if it was least likely to make you laugh. “Rabid radio fans have begun to display an apathy toward the high-priced comedy program, and even a sporadic listener can detect a certain shabbiness creeping into the top-ranking shows,” said radio writer Philip Rapp. “Little or no regard is given to originality, imagination in most cases has been entirely dispensed with, and the theory seems to be that if the studio audience laughs, the program is a success.” Fred Allen had been the antidote to the creeping shabbiness, but now he was gone.

  Heavily influenced by Fred Allen was the new satirical curmudgeon Henry Morgan. He was far crankier than Allen could ever dream of being, and The Henry Morgan Show had a successful run on NBC as a “sustaining” program, meaning it aired without a commercial sponsor. Morgan was different from his contemporaries in the sense that he was willing to offend—and likely to do so. But he had a healthy run thanks to a fervent cult of listeners and Fred Allen’s support. Members of comedy’s next generation—Sid Caesar and Mort Sahl among them—considered Henry Morgan a hero.

  Morgan’s whole persona was born of insubordination. Working as a weatherman in Chicago, he was given his own show to stop him from sabotaging the weather report with his sarcastic comments. He moved to the New York market in 1940 and WOR implemented the same strategy of appeasement. Morgan was as much a saboteur as he was a talent; it was better to give him his own show than have him ruin someone else’s.

  Williamson Candy, makers of Oh Henry!, sponsored his first program, a daily fifteen-minute show called Meet Mr. Morgan. The sponsor thought they had a clever gimmick by sponsoring a comedian named Henry. Instead they were disturbed when Morgan said, “If children eat enough Oh Henry bars they’ll get sick and die.”

  Morgan buried himself in his show, creating a world of his own. He ranted as a cast of one—complaining about the world. “Morgan is likely to ramble on about anything in his fifteen minutes,” said an early Variety review. “[He] did a goofy yarn about the code used by lunch counter waiters, meandered through a ludicrous piece about barrooms and football predictions, answered a couple of letters from outraged listeners.” He burned through his sponsors, refusing to read ad copy without editorial. A cough remedy sponsored his show for six weeks. Morgan announced on the company’s last segment, “Thank goodness the contract for this is concluded so we won’t have to hear that announcement anymore.”

  Despite his cult following, Mutual Radio decided to cancel Morgan after many regional complaints. Morgan regrouped with the national Here’s Morgan in 1942, sponsored by Adler Shoes. He promoted its line of footwear, which helped small men look taller. Morgan again defamed the product, but president Jesse Adler saw sales soar in remarkable fashion. Morgan even wrote a new slogan, which bugged Adler but moved his product: “Wake up your lazy liver bile with a pair of Adler Elevators.”

  Edward Noble, president of Life Savers candies, owned ABC. He made Here’s Morgan one of its flagship programs in the postwar years, Wednesday nights at 10:30. Morgan told his listeners not to buy Life Savers because the candies were missing their middle. Despite the insults ABC stuck with him, since the three other network ­comedies—starring James Gleason, Bill Thompson and the forgotten Ray Wencil, respectively—were abysmal failures. ABC increased Morgan’s budget and gave him a full orchestra, a stooge named Arnold Stang, a Bing Crosby lead-in and a new sponsor—the Schick razor company. It was the most successful run of his career.

  A full writing staff was hired for the new season, including Joe Stein, who later wrote Fiddler on the Roof. He specialized in the fast banter between Morgan and Stang:

  Arnold Stang: Say, Henry, I heard your show last night.

  Henry Morgan: How’d you like it?

  AS: Great, great. It was all I could do to keep from laughing.

  HM: Thanks a lot, I guess. By the way, I heard your show last week . . .

  AS: Oh yeah? I’m glad you caught it . . .

  HM: Yeah, I was at a party. You know how it is . . . everybody drinking . . . some drunk turned it on . . .

  AS: Well, what did you think of it?

  HM: Well, there was a lot of noise. It didn’t come in very well . . .

  AS: What kind of noise?

  HM: I was talking.

  AS: Oh.

  HM: But, say, that was a good joke you had there about Sinatra and the pipe cleaner.

  AS: Sinatra and the pipe cleaner? That’s Bob Hope’s . . .

  HM: Yeah, that’s right, but I like the way you told it. By the way, how’s your Hooper rating?

  AS: Well, it’s uh . . . ah, that rating doesn’t mean a thing.

  HM: Mine is not so good either. As a matter of fact, you see, the trouble with me is . . . I’ve got a terrific listening audience that can’t get phones . . .

  AS: Sure. Say, Henry, did you have a studio audience last night?

  HM: Why, certainly!

  AS: I knew it! I could swear I heard breathing . . . but my wife read somewhere you got asthma.

  Schick lost patience with Morgan during the season when he said of their razors, “They’re educational. Try one. That’ll teach you.” A Life magazine profile showed Morgan’s face covered in bandages, praying to a razor. Despite strong ratings, Schick dropped Morgan, and his season was aborted.

  Morgan was one of the first to remark on the insipidity of radio commercials, and his success made ridicule of corporate deceit marketable. His niche as the anti-advertising iconoclast was copied by others. Radio WINS hired Dayton Allen as its version of Henry Morgan and Radio WCAE hired Irene Cowan to be “a female Henry Morgan.” Future Tonight Show hosts Steve Allen and Jack Paar modeled their radio shows “in the Henry Morgan fashion.” When future Match Game host Gene Rayburn entered radio he was criticized as the poor man’s Henry Morgan. It was a testament to Morgan’s popularity, but overall it didn’t cool corporate apprehension.

  Luster-Creme Shampoo put him back on the air in February 1948, but by then the quiz craze had exploded and Morgan suffered the same fate as Fred Allen. The Henry Morgan Show indicted quiz programs with the sketch “Take It, for Heaven’s Sake, Take It,” in which the studio audience applauded maniacally whenever the name of a city was mentioned. The bitterness was real. Morgan’s own sponsor ditched him for a game show. While sponsors and listeners fled, Allen and Morgan supported each other. Starting in March 1949 each episode opened: “The Henry Morgan Show! Brought to you by . . . The Fred Allen Show!”

  Morgan did not have much success in subsequent decades. His show canceled by the end of 1949, Morgan returned only sporadically to radio, usually regionally and often playing novelty records with surly commentary. Just like Fred Allen, he complained that he wasn’t getting a fair shake, but at the same time he did nothing to ingratiate himself to those who could help. “He was ahead of his time, but he was also hurt by his own disposition,” said radio announcer Ed Herlihy. “He was very difficult. He was so brilliant that he’d get exasperated and he’d sulk. He was a great mind who never achieved the success he should have.” His sidekick Arnold Stang said, “He was a masochist, a neurotic man. When things were going well for him, he would do something to destroy himself. He just couldn’t deal with success.” Morgan was one of the first to lash out against corporate advertising, but in the end it did him in. “I grew up thinking it was American to be outspoken. I’ve since learned it’s un-American.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Nightclubs

  If Fred
Allen or Henry Morgan criticized their overlords, the worst that happened was cancellation. While cancellation was indeed awful for a comic, it did not compare with the perils facing comedians who performed in nightclubs on a regular basis.

  Organized crime and nightclub comedy coexisted. Mob-run speakeasies employed entertainment during the days of Prohibition. When Prohibition was repealed in 1933, vaudeville was dead and the speakeasies turned into legitimate nightclubs and became the primary venues for comedians. If you were a stand-up comedian, you worked for the Mob.

  The Mob essentially created the term “stand-up comic”—according to eighty-six-year-old comedian Dick Curtis. “The Outfit used to manage fighters. A stand-up fighter is a guy that is a puncher. A stand-up guy was a guy who was tough and you could depend on. The Outfit managed fighters and they managed clubs that booked comics, so the term found its way into the lexicon of nightclubs. A guy who just stood there and punched jokes—joke, joke, joke—he was a stand-up comic.”

  Comedians playing Chicago during the dying days of vaudeville found themselves victims of Mob shakedowns. “Lou Holtz, Georgie Price, Ted Healy, all paid off for this so-called protection,” said George Jessel. “If they didn’t, they were told, they would get hurt. ‘Remember Joe E. Lewis?’ was the usual admonition.” That admonition would never work today, as nobody remembers Joe E. Lewis.