Throwback Thursday Comedy Special: Woody Allen Standup Comedy - Vodka Ad and Las Vegas

In the early 1960s, before he started down the road of producing, directing, and acting in 65 films, Allen began performing as a stand-up comic, emphasizing monologues rather than traditional jokes. 

As a comic, he developed the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he maintains is quite different from his real-life personality. 

In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Allen in fourth place on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics, while a UK survey ranked Allen as the third greatest comedian.

For this Throwback Thursday, let's turn the calendar back to 1967 and see Woody in a standup routine on the Dean Martin Show talking about the time when he was offered a role in a vodka ad and when he performed in Las Vegas.
 
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 THEPLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO. 



#Throwback Thursday   #TBT

Comedy Showcase: Woody Allen Standup Comedy 50 Years Ago

Before Woody Allen started writing plays and making a new film every year, he started his career as a comedy writer and standup comic.

From 1960 to 1969, Allen performed as a stand-up comedian to supplement his comedy writing. His contemporaries during those years included Lenny Bruce, Shelley Berman, the team of Mike Nichols and Elaine May, and Mort Sahl, his personal favorite. 

Comedy historian Gerald Nachman notes that Allen, while not the first to do stand-up, would eventually have greater impact than all the others in the 1960s.

Here is Allen doing a standup comedy act on The Dean Martin Show 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.

The White Stuff: JTA's Andrew Silow-Carroll Analyzes a Woody Allen Joke

There's more to many Jewish jokes than meets the eye. Andrew Silow-Carroll, editor-in-chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency has started a series of short YouTube videos in which he walks you through a classic Jewish joke and explains what it's all about.

A few weeks ago we shared a video in which Andrew analyzed the jokes (actually stories) about the Wise Men of Chelm and another one about the Jewish woman who treks to India to visit a guru on a mountaintop. 

Today we're sharing another of Andy's analyses, this one of a sequence from Woody Allen's movie Hannah and Her Sisters.

We'll bring you more of these analyses of classic Jewish jokes from time to time. We hope there will be more of them soon.

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.

Conversations About Comedy: Woody Allen Talks About Mel Brooks

Great comedians appreciate other great comedians and frequently talk to interviewers about their unique talents. Here's an interview with Woody Allen in which he talks about the comedic talents and musical flair of Mel Brooks.

Enjoy!

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO IS NOT VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY.  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 Special: Woody Allen Dictates a Letter on Candid Camera

Candid Camera was an American hidden camera/practical joke reality television series created and produced by Allen Funt, which initially began on radio as The Candid Microphone on June 28, 1947. After a series of theatrical film shorts, also titled Candid Microphone, Funt's concept came to television on August 10, 1948, and continued into the 1970s. 

The show involved concealing cameras filming ordinary people being confronted with unusual situations, sometimes involving trick props, such as a desk with drawers that pop open when one is closed or a car with a hidden extra gas tank. When the joke was revealed, victims would be told the show's catchphrase, "Smile, you're on Candid Camera."

Before he made over 40 films and became one of the legends of all cinema, Woody Allen was a writer for the classic Candid Camera show, and in that time appeared in a some of the clips.

This clip is from 1963, and features Allen hiring a new secretary and having to take down the most non-business letter ever. It's a real comedy classic.

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   #TBT

Throwback Thursday Comedy Special: Woody Allen on the Moose, the Costume Party, and the Berkowitzes

One aspect of Woody Allen's comic genius is his persistence at building a character that audiences can recognize and sympathize with. 

Drawing on his own Jewish family, he builds an image with stereotypical Jewish characteristics.

His jokes, stressing his own weakness and neuroses, and those of his family, can appear to be intellectual and anti-intellectual at the same time.

Here is one of his classic standup routines about the time he was hunting in Upstate New York and shot a moose.  

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, #TBT

Throwback Thursday Comedy Special: Rare Standup by Woody Allen in 1964

Throwback Thursday has become a weekly social media posting trend to let readers and viewers look back fondly on some of their favorite memories -- hence the "throwback" theme. 

At Jewish Humor Central, last month we started posting a nostalgic video clip from a very old TV show or movie that brings back happy memories. Now that Passover is behind us, we're returning to this weekly feature with an old clip of Woody Allen early in his career when he spent a lot of time doing standup comedy.

In the early 1960s, before he started down the road of producing, directing, and acting in 65 films, Allen began performing as a stand-up comic, emphasizing monologues rather than traditional jokes. As a comic, he developed the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he maintains is quite different from his real-life personality. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Allen in fourth place on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics, while a UK survey ranked Allen as the third greatest comedian.

For this Throwback Thursday, let's turn the calendar back to 1964 and see Woody in a standup routine talking about his experiences surviving on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

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 #TBT

A Woody Allen Classic Clip: Being Jewish Among Gentiles

It's been 36 years since the release of Annie Hall, the Woody Allen film that won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director (Allen) and Best Actress (Diane Keaton.) But still the movie attracts viewers and stirs funny memories wherever it's shown.

We were reminded of Annie Hall by an article yesterday in the online edition of The Jewish Daily Forward by Lenore Skenasi. It will appear in the Friday print edition. 

She wrote about the film as a metaphor for feeling out of place in environments where you are not surrounded by members of your own tribe. We think of it as Jews among Gentiles, but it's probably felt by other ethnic groups living in small numbers among a majority population. It's a very interesting piece that can be read in full here.

In the opening paragraphs, Skenasi writes:

You call that a Kiddush?” whispered my husband, referring to the spread that synagogues offer after services.

Except we were in a Catholic church.

Congregants were receiving their communion wafers — a fact not lost on my darling. But there was just something about being in a church and watching the wedding of a distant, half-Jewish cousin that made my husband and me keenly, almost aggressively, aware of just how Jewish with a capital J that rhymes with K as in Koufax and kosher and knaidlach we are. And so the jokes kept coming, sotto voce, almost compulsively:

“Where’s the rebbetzin?” “Who’s the guy above the bimah?” “I forgot my tallis!” — yada, yada, yada (an expression, you’ll note, popularized by Jerry Seinfeld, who’s a — well, no need to beat you over the head with an all-beef salami). What is it about being in an un-Jewish place that brings out every Jewish instinct, impulse and, sometimes, wisecrack?

“It’s the same way you feel very American when you’re abroad,” said Ruth Nemzoff, resident scholar at Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center, and author of the 2012 book “Don’t Roll Your Eyes: Making In-Laws Into Family.” When you’re among your own kind, you generally don’t notice the way you talk, or think, or even your core beliefs. But when you’re apart from your base, you can’t help but keep comparing what’s normal for you versus those other folks. And suddenly, everything you once took for granted (or even scorned) is very precious.

Here's the famous Easter dinner scene at the home of Annie's parents. Her grandmother can't take her eyes off Alvy Singer (Woody Allen), imagining him to be a bearded Hasid. In an aside to the audience, Alvy contrasts the dinner conversation among Annie's straitlaced family about treif foods, swap meets and boat basins with the boisterous talk at his family's table.

It's a classic. 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.)}   

L.A. Jewish Journal Launches Campaign for Woody Allen to Film in Israel

Actor/Director/Comedian Woody Allen has been making a film every year, most recently in London, Barcelona, Paris, and this year in Rome. When he's asked in his interviews why he picked those cities, the answer is always the same: they give him money to make the films.

So Rob Eshman, Editor and Publisher of the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, came up with an idea. Why not start a campaign and collect funds for Allen to make his next film in Israel?

The Woody Allen Israel Project was launched on July 4 with an editorial written by Eshman in the Jewish Journal and a YouTube video featuring Israeli actress/director Noa Tishby making a direct appeal to Allen to visit Israel and make his next film there.

As Eshman put it in his editorial,

A few weeks ago, Julie and Steve Bram hosted a dinner in their living room for 35 Hollywood movers and shakers and the mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat. Between the salad and the salmon, the marketing maven Gary Wexler led a very frank discussion on what it would take to get more American movie production in Jerusalem and, more generally, in Israel.

The discussion dove deep into the intricacies of tax breaks, production incentives, post-production facilities.

“This is very competitive,” one entertainment lawyer said. “You have to be very sophisticated about it.”

It’s competitive because movie production means revenue, jobs and, most important, image. A successful movie shot in your country shapes the way people around the world see that country. “Imagination rules the world,” Napoleon said — and he would know; he tried to rule with cannons and carbines.

But it’s true: There is something powerful and indelible about movies that transcends news and politics.

The New York Times Hollywood reporter Aljean Harmetz once told a story of the time Paul Newman was in Israel filming “Exodus.” Newman was being driven through an Arab town, the site of anti-Israel protests. A barrage of stones hit his car, and angry villagers soon surrounded it. Newman’s minders told the driver to race away, but the actor ordered him to stop. Newman got out of the car. And instantly, the angry mob clamored for photos and autographs of Hollywood’s leading star.

That kind of power is what prompted Israeli President Shimon Peres to meet, on his last visit to Los Angeles, with film industry titans to encourage them to make movies in Israel.

The project is soliciting funds through the crowdsourcing website jewcer.com. Jewcer is a platform that allows project managers (innovators) to finance their ideas through small pledges collected from many funders (jewcers). A project on Jewcer must meet its monetary goal by the deadline set forth by the project innovator, otherwise the project does not get funded. This all-or-nothing funding model reduces risks for all parties involved (project innovator and jewcers) and helps to insure that the project will be able to be completed by the project innovator.

With a goal of raising 9 million dollars by August 23, so far they have pledges for $16,000. Will they reach their goal in time? Stay tuned. In the meantime, enjoy the Noa Tishby video.

(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.)

(A tip of the kippah to Esther Kustanowitz for bringing this story to our attention.)