Throwback Thursday Comedy Showcase: Sophie Tucker and "Some of These Days"

Sophie Tucker (born Sofia Kalish) was a Russian-born American singer, comedian, actress, and radio personality. Known for her powerful delivery of comical and risqué songs, she was one of the most popular entertainers in the U.S. during the first half of the 20th century.

During the 1930s, Tucker brought elements of nostalgia for the early years of the 20th century into her show. She was billed as "The Last of the Red Hot Mamas" as her hearty sexual appetite was a frequent subject of her songs, unusual for female performers of the day after the decline of vaudeville.

In 1911 she introduced what would become her signature song, Some of These Days. She included this song in all of her performances until her last TV appearance in 1965 on the Ed Sullivan Show.

In her later years she waxed nostalgic about the song and often didn't sing the whole song but delivered emotional poems about the song and what it meant to her career. In this video clip from 1953 she pays tribute to the song and ends with singing a few bars.

Enjoy!

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   #Throwback Thursday     #TBT

Wacky Wednesday Comedy Showcase: Milton Berle in the World of Vaudeville

From the early 1880's until the early 1930's vaudeville was the most popular form of mass entertainment in America. Dandy Danno and Diva G have posted archive video footage of some of the stars of vaudeville who made the move to radio and television.

One of the greatest comedy stars of vaudeville, radio, and TV was Milton Berle. In this undated excerpt from one of his comedy sketches, Berle runs into and performs most of the sight gags that you'll ever see on stage.

Enjoy!

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Throwback Thursday Comedy Special: Eddie Cantor Sings '"By the Light of the Silvery Moon" in 1931

It's another Throwback Thursday and we're turning the clock back 89 years to 1931 when Eddie Cantor was featured in the Max Fleischer's Screen Songs for By The Light Of The Silvery Moon, My Baby Just Cares For Me and Show Me The Way To Go Home. 

Cantor, born Isidore Itzkowitz (1892–1964) was an American "illustrated song" performer, comedian, dancer, singer, actor, and songwriter. Familiar to Broadway, radio, movie, and early television audiences, this "Apostle of Pep" was regarded almost as a family member by millions because his top-rated radio shows revealed intimate stories and amusing anecdotes about his wife Ida and five daughters. 

In this video clip, Cantor sings, dances, plays the clarinet and tells a couple of jokes.

Enjoy!

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Old Time Yiddish Comedy with Henrietta Jacobson and Julius Adler

Henrietta Jacobson was one of the most venerable actresses and comedians of the Yiddish theater, which flourished on the Lower East Side during the first half of the century. The daughter, wife and mother of Yiddish actors, she made her stage debut at age 3 in Chicago, where she was born.

Her husband, Julius Adler, was almost always her co-star in New York and on the road. They produced and directed at the Downtown National Theater and other Lower East Side playhouses, with Henrietta often designing the sets and doing the choreography.

Their son, Bruce Adler, whom we profiled as a performer in Jewish humor and song in 2014, made a name for himself in the Yiddish theatre.

Here is a 1939 Yiddish comedy routine performed by Henrietta Jacobson and Julius Adler. Enjoy!

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Throwback Thursday Comedy Special: A Few Moments with Gallagher and Shean

Gallagher & Shean were a highly successful musical comedy double act in vaudeville and on Broadway in the 1920s, consisting of Edward Gallagher (1873 – March 28, 1929) & Al Shean (May 12, 1868 – August 12, 1949). 

Shean was the maternal uncle of the Marx Brothers, sister of Minnie Marx. Gallagher & Shean remain best known for their theme song “Mister Gallagher and Mister Shean”, which was a hit in the 1922 Ziegfeld Follies. The song endured in popularity and was regularly updated with additional verses; consequently, it exists in several different versions. 

The song was recorded by Gallagher and Shean as two sides of a ten inch 78rpm record in the Summer of 1922 for Victor Records. It would be recorded by others on other record labels. The song was extremely popular & well remembered. 

Capitalizing on the post-King Tut craze for everything Egyptian, Gallagher & Shean appeared in Egyptian dress (Gallagher in the pith helmet & white suit of the tourist, Shean in the fez & oddly skirted jacket of a “native” Egyptian colonial). 

Our thanks to Patrix Springer who posted this great throwback video clip on YouTube. 

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#Throwback Thursday     #TBT

Throwback Thursday Comedy Special: Rare 1929 George Burns and Gracie Allen Skit - "Lambchops"

George Burns and Gracie Allen worked together as a successful comedy team that entertained vaudeville, film, radio, and television audiences for over 40 years. 

The duo met in 1922 and married in 1926. Burns was the straight man and Allen was a silly, addle-headed woman. 

Their 30-minute radio show debuted in September 1934 as The Adventures of Gracie, whose title changed to The Burns and Allen Show in 1936; the series ran, moving back and forth between NBC and CBS, until May 1950. 

After their radio show's cancellation, Burns and Allen reemerged on television with a popular situation comedy, which ran from 1950 to 1958.

We found an old short movie skit called Lambchops that Burns and Allen made in 1929.

Enjoy!

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Throwback Thursday: A Look Back at The Good Old Days with British Comedian Bernard Spears

The Good Old Days was a BBC television light entertainment program which ran from 1953 to 1983 in the United Kingdom.

It was performed at the Leeds City Varieties and recreated an authentic atmosphere of the Victorian–Edwardian music hall with songs and sketches of the era performed by present-day performers in the style of the original artists.  

British music hall was similar to American vaudeville, featuring rousing songs and comic acts, while in the United Kingdom the term "vaudeville"' referred to more working-class types of entertainment that would have been termed "burlesque" in America.

The audience dressed in period costume and joined in the singing. In the course of its run it featured about 2,000 performers. Each show was up to an hour long. All acts were in the style of late Victorian/Edwardian stage acts.

One of the stars of The Good Old Days was Jewish comedian Bernard Spear. Here is one of his performances from 1980. Spear tells a few jokes and sings You Gotta Have a Little Mazel. Notice the elaborate Victorian hats and fancy dresses worn by the women attending the show.

Enjoy!

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#Throwback Thursday   #TBT

The Great Jewish Comedians: Al Shaw and Sam Lee

Do you remember going to a vaudeville show? Neither do we. But it was especially popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, when radio, and later television made vaudeville obsolete.

But during the 50 years of its existence, people flocked to the more than 5,000 vaudeville theaters all over the USA.What they saw was a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Typical shows included popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, strongmen, female and male impersonators, acrobats, and jugglers. Vaudeville served as the model for TV variety shows, like The Ed Sullivan Show.

Comedians were central to vaudeville and TV variety shows. And many, if not most of them, were Jewish. In our series on the great Jewish comedians, we previously profiled Al Shean of the team of Gallagher and Shean, and Smith and Dale as popular comedy duos in the 1920s. 

Another example of this genre were Al Shaw and Sam Lee (born Albert Schultzman and Samuel Levy). Here's a video of Shaw and Lee doing their vaudeville shtick in the fading days of vaudeville as TV variety shows were just getting started. The singer introducing them is Robert Alda, father of Alan Alda.

Enjoy!

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Throwback Thursday Comedy Special: "Slowly I Turned..." (The History of the Niagara Falls Joke)

"Slowly I turned" (The Niagara Falls joke) has been made famous by Abbott and Costello, The Three Stooges, Lucille Ball and Phil Silvers, Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, and countless other comedy teams. It's such a renowned comedy classic that it has its own listing in Wikipedia that reveals its historical origins.

The listing states that it was not created by any of the above comedy teams, but started out as  a popular vaudeville sketch that has also been performed in cinema and on television. Comedians Harry Steppe, Joey Faye, and Samuel Goldman each laid claim to this routine, also referred to as "The Stranger with a Kind Face" by clowns and clowning aficionados, "Niagara Falls" by fans of The Three Stooges and Abbott and Costello, "Martha" by fans of I Love Lucy, "Pokomoko", and "Bagel Street".

Our favorite version is the one performed by Moses Harry Horwitz, Louis Feinberg, and Jerome Horwitz. You never heard of them? Sure you did, but you know them as Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curly Howard, or the Three Stooges.

Enjoy!

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#Throwback Thursday, #TBT

The Great Jewish Comedians: Al Shean (Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean)

Al Shean (born Abraham Elieser Adolph Schonberg) was half of the vaudeville comedy team Gallagher and Shean with Edward Gallagher. Both comedians were relatively obscure vaudeville performers before they teamed up. 

Gallagher and Shean first joined forces during the tour of The Rose Maid in 1912, but they quarreled and split up two years later. They next appeared together in 1920, through the efforts of Shean's sister, Minnie Marx (mother of the Marx Brothers). This pairing lasted until 1925 and led to their fame.

Gallagher and Shean remain best known for their theme song Mister Gallagher and Mister Shean, which was a hit in the 1922 Ziegfeld Follies. In 1941 the song was featured in the movie Ziegfeld Girl starring James Stewart, Judy Garland, and Hedy Lamarr. Since Gallagher died in 1929, his role was played by Charles Winninger.

Enjoy!

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The Great Jewish Comedians: Smith and Dale - "Doctor Kronkheit"

Joe Smith (originally Joseph Seltzer) and Charlie Dale (originally Charles Marks) grew up in the Jewish ghettos of New York City. Many of the famous comic performers of vaudeville, radio and movies came from the same place and the same era, including Gallagher and Shean, George Burns, Eddie Cantor, George Jessel and The Marx Brothers. 

Seltzer and Marks met as teenagers in 1898 and formed a partnership. They named their act "Smith and Dale" because a local printer gave them a good deal on business cards reading "Smith and Dale" (intended for a vaudeville team that had dissolved). Joe Seltzer became Joe Smith, and Charlie Marks became Charlie Dale.

By 1902 they joined two singing comedians, Irving Kaufman (later a popular singer) and Harry Godwin in a team known as The Avon Comedy Four. 

By 1919, the act had run its course, and the Avon Comedy Four broke up. Smith and Dale took up where the foursome left off, playing Broadway and vaudeville (including the Palace Theatre, considered the pinnacle of stage venues). Both used a heavy Jewish dialect, with Smith speaking in a deep, pessimistic voice and Dale in a high, wheedling tenor.

During the 1920s, they became famous for their signature sketch "Doctor Kronkheit and His Only Living Patient," which like "Who's on First?" for Abbott and Costello, became one of the famous comedy sketches of the 20th century. The name of the doctor is an inside joke: Smith and Dale, both being Jewish, named the physician Kronkheit, which is Yiddish and German for "sickness". Thus we have a doctor named "Dr. Sickness". Indeed a hospital in German is called a Krankenhaus, or literally "sick house".

Enjoy!

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The Great Jewish Comedians: Eddie Cantor in a 1923 Vaudeville Act

Eddie Cantor (1892-1964), born Edward Israel Iskowitz, was an American "illustrated song" performer, comedian, dancer, singer, actor, and songwriter. 

Familiar to Broadway, radio, movie, and early television audiences, he was regarded almost as a family member by millions because his top-rated radio shows revealed intimate stories and amusing anecdotes about his wife Ida and five daughters. 

Some of his hits include "Makin' Whoopee", "Ida", "Yes! We Have No Bananas", "If You Knew Susie", "Ma! He's Makin' Eyes at Me", "Baby", "Margie", and "How Ya Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree)?" He also wrote a few songs, including "Merrily We Roll Along", the Merrie Melodies Warner Bros. cartoon theme.

In one of the earliest experiments with synchronized sound, Eddie Cantor does his vaudeville act (stand-up comedy and songs) against a plain backdrop.

If you'd like to get a taste of what old-time Vaudeville was like, take a look at this fascinating and amusing talkie short. Headliner Eddie Cantor delivers a six-minute routine consisting of several jokes, two songs, and one comic poem, performed before a black backdrop in an empty studio. 

It's too bad the filmmakers couldn't have captured him in front of a live audience-- as it is, Eddie's jokes are met with eerie silence --but at least George Olsen's terrific dance band was present (off-camera) to provide jaunty jazz accompaniment. This short captures Cantor's act at the point when his career was really taking off, when he was starring in the Broadway musical comedy "Kid Boots," produced by legendary showman Flo Ziegfeld. 

The film was made at the midtown Manhattan studio of Lee De Forest, pioneer of the sound-on-film process known as 'Phonofilm.' Between 1922 and 1926 De Forest made dozens of talkie shorts featuring prominent performers such as Cantor, DeWolf Hopper, Weber & Fields, Eubie Blake, etc., films that are invaluable records of the great stage stars of the day.

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.) 




(Our thanks to Braden Scott for posting this video and info on YouTube.)

The Great Jewish Comedians: Irving Benson, Milton Berle's Heckler-in-Residence

Irving Benson is an American actor and comedian. He is one of the last survivors of the vaudeville era and just celebrated his 102nd birthday.

Benson gained national exposure during the 1960s, when fellow vaudevillian Milton Berle hired him to play a faux heckler named Sidney Spritzer. 

The character would turn up in the balcony overlooking the stage of Berle's variety show (where the studio audience could see him) and banter with Berle about the host's alleged lack of talent and originality. 

Benson became Johnny Carson's favorite comic and appeared frequently on the Johnny Carson-hosted Tonight Show. He was honored for Best Documentary at the 2011 Backlot Film Festival for "The Last First Comic" uncovering the roots of American comedy also going inside the colorful world of the Burlesque show. He turned 100 in January 2014.

Here's one of the Benson-Berle heckling skits from Berle's show. Enjoy!

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The Great Jewish Comedians: Morey Amsterdam in a Vaudeville Routine

Morey Amsterdam was a great stand-up comedian in the days when political correctness was unheard of. His ability to come up with a joke on any subject earned him the name of The Human Joke Machine. 

Amsterdam had his own TV shows from 1948 to 1950. Among his regular guests was song-and-dance man Art Carney. In 1950 he hosted the comedy-variety show Broadway Open House, TV's first late-night entertainment show, on NBC. It demonstrated the potential for late-night programming and led to the later development of The Tonight Show.

This eight-minute video clip will have you laughing as Amsterdam hits women's lib, tells Polish jokes, doctor jokes, and golf jokes.

Enjoy!

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Jewish Jokes from Second Avenue Embedded in Song by Bruce Adler

We hear a lot about how even before the Catskills, Jewish humor was born on Second Avenue in New York City. The era of Jewish theatre on Second Avenue came to an end before most of us were born and we missed out on a vibrant and funny entertainment form. 

Sometimes a search for Jewish humor on the internet yields an unexpected surprise, and we have a Second Avenue experience to share with you today.

Bruce Adler (1944-2008) was an American Broadway actor. He made his stage debut at an early age, appearing with his parents, Henrietta Jacobson and Julius Adler. The three Adlers played the London Palladium with Sophie Tucker in the 1950s. He continued to appear in Yiddish theatre throughout his teens, also appearing in mainstream American theatre as his parents made a similar "crossover," most notably appearing in productions of Neil Simon's Come Blow Your Horn.

After debuting on the Broadway stage as Ali Hakim, the peddler, in the 1979 revival of Oklahoma!, he went on to a career that saw him nominated for Tony Awards as Best Featured Actor in a Musical for Those Were the Days (1991) and Crazy For You (1992). His film work was limited to voice work in animated films, notably providing the singing voice for the narrator of the 1992 Disney film Aladdin and 1996 film Aladdin and the King of Thieves.


In this video gem, Adler bursts onto the stage with Hootsasa, a classic song from Second Avenue. Back in the day, he sang it in Yiddish, but this version is in English, "for the Yiddish-impaired." There's not much to the song itself, but it serves as a vehicle for a barrage of old Jewish jokes, most of which you've probably heard, but he tells them nonstop, and you can't help laughing out loud.

Enjoy!

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