60s US comics
Posted Mon Jul 24 01:02:05 BST 2000 by Mogwai
(A spin-off from the "Worst stand-up ever" thread. Join us. Pull up a chair and a pipe.)
I don't know enough about Mort Sahl - I only have the one album (Live At The Hungry I), but I gather it's pretty representative. What I do know is that he was regarded as the godfather of topical satire in the States, cited by Lenny Bruce and George Carlin as their main influence. (I *think* I read that Richard Pryor was a fan, too, although I may have got that a little garbled. Certainly he and Carlin came to prominence at much the same time, and played to much the same crowd.)
(Incidentally, it was Carlin who noticed that where he grew up in Harlem, all the white kids ended up walking and talking like the black kids - never the other way round. Odd thing is, it's still exactly the same here in London over forty years later...)
Sahl's material seems pretty tame now, though still pretty funny (although, as with all topical comedy past its sell-by date, you sometimes need footnotes). Those who saw him as 'scurrilous' or 'subversive' at the time were probably worried by his ability to satirise issues by belittling them - it didn't take a great deal to rock the boat in post-war America. Just after relations between the States and the Soviet Union had plummeted to a new low after the Russians had shot down an American U-2 spy plane over Russian territory, and the President had denied any knowledge of any spying missions and guaranteed that all U-2s would be grounded from then on, a good patriotic American would not have been too amused by Sahl musing on what the suddenly redundant spyplanes could now be used for: "You'll be walking around Los Angeles and these leaflets will drop down from the sky and they'll say 'Your picture has just been taken and is available from...'"
Actually, 'topical satire' is too limiting a term; something like "social commentator" is probably nearer the mark - except that sounds even more dull and makes him sound like he used to write for Living Marxism or something. But, like those he inspired, that's really what he was, which is what makes it so upsetting that he, like so many other male comics do, had a real problem with women: "A woman's place is in the stove". (He follows up that poorly-received belter by complaining that "there are a lot of anti-male jokes that never get a reaction in this club" and proceeds to tell a lame gag about men only getting sexual satisfaction from sports cars - needless to say this does nothing to negate it. Luckily he was smart enough to save this dubious material for the end of his act, by which point the audience seem to like him enough to overlook an occasional lapse.)
What I've heard of him definitely made me want to seek out more, although he's not easy to find. But as soon as you hear him you can see why a generation of aspiring performers raised him to icon status: gently saying the unsayable, or at least the unsayable-without-a-bloody-good-lawyer-present (though without profanity - that was to be Lenny's battle), he was engaging AND thought-provoking AND funny - the comedy Holy Trinity.
Anyway, that's what I think.
Subject: Re: 60s US comics
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Posted By Mogwai on Mon Jul 24 09:24:47 BST 2000:
My ignorance knows no bounds - I had no idea that Sam Kinison (not actually a *60s* US comic, but what the hell) had previously been an evangelical preacher (!). Apparently there's a US documentary called "Sam Kinison - Why Did We Laugh?" which includes rare footage of him preaching the Lord's word - this I HAVE to see...
Subject: Re: 60s US comics
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Posted By Jon on Mon Jul 24 09:44:47 BST 2000:
Yeah, I heard a clip of Kinison doing a routine in which Joseph tells Mary "he'd BETTER be the Son of God" (referring to Jesus). So I imagine he lost his faith as a prelude to his stand-up career.
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