Back when I was in college, there was a sort of burgeoning popularity of Jewish humor that took place in American entertainment. “The Ed Sullivan Show” often featured comedians such as Alan King and Shelly Berman. Jack Benny and George Burns were already popular from their own TV and radio shows.
Buddy Hackett, Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Mel Brooks, Joan Rivers, Alan Sherman, Don Rickles, Sid Caeser, Milton Berle, Carl Reiner, Woody Allen. There was a seemingly endless parade of Jewish comedians who were guests on late night TV talk shows.
The vaudeville stars and the standup comics of the “borscht belt” lovingly poked fun at their Yiddish heritage and paved the way for the Jewish comedians and humorists of today such as Billy Crystal, Jerry Seinfeld, Rita Rudner, Elayne Boosler, John Stewart, Larry David … and “yada-yada-yada,” as Seinfeld would say.
I was reminded of this trend from the late ’50s when I recently found an old notebook from my college days that featured on its cover some cartoons by Herb Gardner. The characters in the cartoons are “nebbishes,” and they were very popular back then. I looked it up, and “nebbish” is an adopted Yiddish word that at one time held a place in comedic vernacular now roughly reserved for “nerd,” only there was no suggestion of unpleasant or obsessive behavior like there is with nerd.
Nebbishes were usually endearingly out of place and always slightly helpless, appealing figures that suggested alienation without embodying it.
Gardner’s characters were white blob-like creatures who expressed their attitudes toward existence in mottoes and quotes on greeting cards and statuettes. In the comic strip they engaged in dialogue in balloons in the standard comic strip format. Gardner’s most famous joke and oft-used template in merchandising was a portrait of two men slackly lounging in chairs, one saying to the other, “Next week we’ve GOT to get organized.”
The cover of my old notebook shows a nebbish sitting at a table saying, “I’m so smart I make myself sick.” I did a little cartooning for a while back then. I have to confess that my own earliest cartoons, a few of which made their way into the college newspaper, were in the style of Herb Gardner’s nebbishes, only softer, rounder and cuter. The bulk of my cartoons were saved for a series of silly cards whose only audience was the love of my life. Marilyn may even still have some of them somewhere.
All of this led me to a reminiscence of a play by the creator of the nebbishes, Herb Gardner. It was a wonderfully funny play called “A Thousand Clowns,” and I had the good fortune of playing the protagonist, Murray Burns, in the show when Beaver Dam Area Community Theatre did it in 1971.
“A Thousand Clowns” tells the story of an eccentric, unemployed television comedy writer (that was me) who is forced to conform to society to retain legal custody of his orphaned nephew. His last job had been writing jokes for a children’s television show called “Chuckles the Chipmunk.”
I have several great memories from that show, the most endearing of which is my late great friend Bob Hanson as Leo Herman (Chuckles the Chipmunk). Bob was flat-out hilarious in the role and broke me up often in rehearsals. He had the most outrageous plaid sport coat, which his wife, Carmen, had created for him for the part.
Marilyn wrote a very cute and funny special “Chuckles the Chipmunk” theme song for the show and directed a chorus of kids in singing it. Our son TJ and late daughter Jill, and Bob and Carmen’s kids, John, Robin and Kristen, were joined by a small group of other kids.
So many good memories! And all set off by an old notebook! Amazing!
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