Comedy Showcase Nostalgia: The Stand-up Comedy Stylings of Lee Tully

Lee Tully was a Chicago born performer who found fame in the Catskills, the Jewish Alps in the late 1940s. As he wrote so evocatively in his record album liner notes “It was in this scene of minks, wolves, canasta, chopped liver, borscht, and sour cream that he discovered heartburn which led him to write his first record hit “Essen” which became the number one Yiddish seller in the country.”

Tully began doing "kosher comedy." Yiddish Eli Basse songs such as "Oomglick Blues" and "Litvak and Galitz" turn up on his first album, "Seltzer on the Rocks." He expanded for more mainstream comedy for his two-record contract with Jubilee, which coincided with his expanded touring all over America.

Here's a video of Lee Tully performing on The Hollywood Palace hosted by Sammy Davis Jr. in 1967.

Enjoy!

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.

Throwback Thursday Comedy Showcase: Sammy Davis Jr.'s Visit to Archie Bunker

 

One of the most celebrated episodes of All in the Family aired in 1972. It's the classic tale about the time Sammy Davis Jr. stopped by to visit the Bunkers.

It begins with a briefcase he left in Archie's cab and ends with the kiss of infamy. 

Very few people are aware that the writer of this episode was Bill Dana, who we all know as Jose Jimenez. Dana's appearances with Ed Sullivan and Milton Berle as an astronaut, karate expert, and Santa Claus instructor were legendary.

Last year we profiled Bill Dana as one of the great Jewish comedians. In the interview below he recounts the backstory of how he came to write the episode with producer Norman Lear. 

Just in case you're yearning to see the full 25 minute long Sammy's Visit episode that Dana and Lear wrote, you'll find it right below the Bill Dana interview.

Enjoy!





#Throwback Thursday, #TBT

Sammy Davis Jr. Sings "If I Were a Rich Man" from "Fiddler on the Roof"

Last week Matthue Roth wrote in Jewniverse about the discovery of a rare video of Sammy Davis Jr. (1925-1990) singing If I Were a Rich Man, from Fiddler on the Roof. 

As Roth reported, 

The singer, tap-dancer, and entertainer, converted to Judaism in 1961, at the age of 36. He was passionate about his adopted religion, and remained so his entire life.

Nevertheless, he always had a sense of humor about his conversion, too. While hosting the Academy Awards in 1971, he told the crowd, “Tonight, the Academy honors both my peoples–with Fiddler on the Roof and Shaft.” It wasn’t just empty boasting–Davis has also performed, in full shtetl drag, the song “If I Were a Rich Man.”

How did Sammy Davis Jr. come to embrace Judaism in the first place? According to the Jewish Virtual Library,

In 1954 he almost died in a car accident where he lost his left eye. While in the hospital, his friend Eddie Cantor enlightened him on the similarities between the Jewish and black cultures. Davis converted to Judaism after reading Paul Johnson's A History of the Jews in the hospital. One paragraph about the ultimate endurance of the Jewish people intrigued him in particular: "The Jews would not die. Three centuries of prophetic teaching had given them an unwavering spirit of resignation and had created in them a will to live which no disaster could crush."

Roth's Jewniverse article ends with this anecdote:

In his 1965 autobiography Yes I Can, Davis devotes several meaty chapters to talking about the philosophical role of Judaism in his life. And as much as his religion inspired him, it also caused him even more tzuris than he’d already encountered: he was fond of telling how, once, he took a public bus in the South and was told that Black people had to sit in the back. “But I’m Jewish,” he told the driver, who replied: “Then get off!”

Enjoy!

(A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.)