Research Paper

HOW COMEDY CHANGED IN THE MID 20TH CENTURY


In the early 1900's comedy was just starting to enter the public eye. With the rise of television radio, and films, a good laugh was becoming readily available. But though people like Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton were funny, there was still something missing from there comedy.

The comedy of the early 20th century was very basic. There was rarely any wit to it, and it was mostly slapstick. Slip on a banana peel, pie in the face humor. But in the mid 20th centurycomedy began to change in it’s form, venue, and inclusion of topics.

The form of comedy was the first thing to change when stand up comedy began to grow in prominence. Stand up comedy can take many forms in and of itself, and depending on your definition, stand up can go back hundreds of years. But for this we will just be focused the stand up that started in the 40's and 50's.

There were many stand ups at this time, the most famous of which probably being Bob Hope but one comedian stuck out above the rest. Lenny Bruce, though not the first or most famous, was certainly one of the most influential.

Lenny Bruce was born Leonard Schneider in 1925. His father and mother split up when he was five years old and his mother raised him until he was eight. Bruce’s mother was a dancer and occasional stand up herself which was a huge influence on young Lenny. She would take him to comedy clubs when he was as young as four where he was surrounded by showbiz culture.

When Lenny was eight his father gained custody and raised him from there. He began working on a farm at fourteen and joined the navy at seventeen. But three years later, in 1945, he was discharged for admitting to having homosexual urges (to this day no one knows what Bruce’s sexual orientation was but most lean towards bi-sexual). A few years after he got out of the navy he changed his last name to Bruce and moved to New York to pursue stand up comedy full time.

He was given twelve dollars and a spaghetti dinner for his first paying gig and he did a radio program, called “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts”, a few days later. He started doing stand up regularly and even tried his hand at movies with several Grindhouse films and even his own short film but ultimately his movie career failed to take off.

His comedy began to change and he started to include topics like race and drugs. Because of his act he was rarely allowed on tv, making it hard to appeal to a nation wide audience. As he gained fans he also gained enemies. Bruce was labeled by many as “sic comic”, “the man from outer taste” and, “Americas number one vomic”.

He was eventually arrested in Chicago for obscenity, and though the charges were dropped it was still very hard for him. He was arrested several more times over the years and though the charges were always dropped it became very hard to find a gig. No one would hire him because it was to dangerous. Police would wait in the audience for him to slip up so they could arrest him.

Not being able to perform was hard on Lenny and by his mid thirties he looked to be in his mid fifties.

His last few stand up performances are nothing more than ramblings about his legal troubles and in 1966 Lenny Bruce was found dead on his bathroom floor of a morphine overdose.

Lenny Bruce has become somewhat of a legend because of multiple documentaries, biographies, and even a feature length film starring Dustin Hoffman as Lenny Bruce. But no matter what Hollywood does to him, his influence on comedy will remain the same. He kept underground, club only, stand up alive in a time when the only way to do stand up was in front of half a million people on tv.

While Lenny Bruce was showing that stand up comedy was a viable way to be funny, comedy as blossoming in another area: Television.

It can be hard to count the number of influential shows that had a hand in shaping modern comedy. From “Saturday Night Live” to “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson”, there were a lot of great shows. But one show sticks out head and shoulders above the rest.

In 1967 the western show “Bonanza” was dominating television. Multiple shows had been pitted against it but too many people were watching “Bonanza” so most did not even make it through their first season. But in the September of 1967 that would all change.

“The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” went on air for the first time on September 15th 1967. Tom and Dick Smothers had garnered a moderate amount of fame through several albums where they did covers of old folk songs, some songs of there own, and a few comedy songs thrown in for good measure.

After the first few episodes of “Comedy Hour had aired it had already become one of the most popular shows on television. Bonanza was still on top but Tom and Dick were holding their own quite nicely. For eight episodes everything went smoothly and then they started encountering their first problems with the censors.

On the outside Tom and Dick looked very family friendly and PG. They wore suits, had short hair, and played nice folk songs on their acoustic guitars. But underneath they were just like every other young person in America at the time. They cussed, listened to rock and roll music, smoked pot and, identified with the political movements of the day.

By the end of the first season they had done battle with the censors many a time. In the first season it was small stuff, mostly drug jokes and political humor. The second season was when they really opened fire.

They got the very controversial Pete Seager on to sing, for the first time, “Waste Deep in the Big Muddy”. Which only barely scraped through to air. They also had Harry Belefonte on to sing “Don’t Stop the Carnival”. Which on it’s own is a very mundane song but on “Comedy Hour” it was coupled with scenes of protest and police brutality at the Democratic National Convention making it’s message very clear.

At the closing of what was to be the opening episode for season three, Tom (who had been hosting alone because Dick was out of town) looked at the camera and said: “Ladies and Gentlemen I’ve got something rather serious to say. We live in a time with it’s own troubles, but history has proven that difficult times breed great men, and our time has it’s own great men. Tonight in a moment of seriousness we would like to take this moment to remember a man who had a dream. Dr. Martin Luther King. Let us all hope that his dream will someday come true. Goodnight.” Dr. King had been assassinated exactly one year before, and the Smothers Brothers would have been the only show to remember his death but CBS did not air the episode.

By the end of the third season CBS had had it. It had gotten to the point where Tom and Dick would purposefully put things in the script that they knew would never get past the censors just to bother them. CBS cancelled the show using the excuse that Tom and Dick had not turned in the tape on time for editing and censoring. The influence that “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” had on television can be seen
everywhere. From “Saturday Night Live” six years later to the more recent “South Park”. Bill Maher of “Politically Incorrect” and HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” admitted to being directly influenced by them. Tom and Dick Smothers showed that comedy could exist on television and speak to not just adults but teenagers too.

By the late sixties comedy had invaded almost every form of media and it was relentless. Whether it was the Smothers Brothers political humor, Richard Pryor showing that black people could be funny too, or Lenny Bruce fighting the censors to the very end, comedy was becoming a very serious business. But one area that had not been hit yet was movies. Sure there had been many comedy movies but they were all the same Charlie Chaplin, Marx Brothers esque slapstick humor. But (as I have said about ten times now) that was all about to change.

Mel Brooks’ movies showed that one could be silly and appeal to children, while still being witty and appealing to adults.

Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky in 1926, in Brooklyn. His family was very poor but, being the youngest, little Melvin was always doted upon. When Mel started going to school he could not stand not being the center of attention anymore, so he turned to jokes as a way to get people to look at him.

He was never particularly good at school so he would apply himself to making everyone laugh instead of homework. In his teenage years he would spend his summers working as a pool tummler in the Catskill Mountain’s many Jewish resorts. After highschool Melvin Kaminsky changed his name to Melvin Brooks and joined the army where he served as a combat engineer.

But he quickly realized he was not cut out for the army. Brooks himself summed it up best when he said, “I was a little kid from Brooklyn getting his hair combed every morning by his mother and suddenly I’m doing forty mile hikes and being expected to eat grass and trees.” Suffice to say, he was soon back in America.

After the war Brooks started doing small behind the scenes stuff in plays around New York and even directed one. Then he met tv star Sid Caeser and started writing for Caesers show “The Admiral Broadway Revue”. He then followed Caeser around to “Your Show of Shows”and, “Caesers Hour”, until it’s cancellation in 1957.

After “Caesers Hour” was cancelled Brooks’ income dropped from 1,000 dollars a week to absolutely nothing. Then he and old writing pal Carl Reiner (who had already worked on the very successful “The Dick Van Dyke Show”) struck comedy gold with “The 2,000 Year Old Man”.

The album was a huge success and spawned several more successful albums, which helped Brooks through his financial troubles and helped him start a career in directing.

He made his directorial debut with “The Critic” which was nominated for an Oscar. He then made the Emmy nominated and very successful tv sitcom “Get Smart”. Brooks then won an Oscar for best original screenplay with “The Producers”.

Over the next few years Brooks would write (with Richard Pryor) and direct “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein” which were back to back successes. He did not stop there though and also directed “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” and “Spaceballs” which both did well in their own right. Now he occasionally writes for television and film and in 2010 was awarded a star on the Hollywood walk of fame.

Content was the biggest way that comedy changed. Topics that were once taboo could be spoke of openly in comedy. All the people I have talked about thus far can be put under this subject as well as the ones their already under. There are also many people whom I have left out that can also be put under here, like George Carlin, but there is one man that can not be left out when talking about how comedy changed.

Richard Pryor was born in 1940 in Peoria, Illinois. His childhood was one of the worst imaginable. As his friend, and fellow stand up, Paul Mooney would say “Richard saw things and heard things that no child should ever see or hear.”

Pryors dear old grandmother did not sew or bake cookies, she ran brothels around the Peoria. His mother was a prostitute in these brothels and his father was a pimp. From a young age Richard remembers looking through key holes and hiding in closets and seeing his mother having sex with many different men. Pryor was abused and remembers being raped and touched multiple times by a pedophile in an alleyway.

When he was fourteen he was expelled from school and never went back. His parents operated under the logic that he was done with school, therefore he was an adult, and adults had to get a job. So he did odd jobs around Peoria for several years and at eighteen he joined the army without hesitation. He was put in prison after stabbing a white soldier in the back over some racist remarks. He was discharged ad returned to the states, where he jumped right into stand up comedy.

He quicky moved to New York where he began gaining popularity and doing talk shows and small films.

By 1975 he was doing extremely well and had put out several successful albums. But underneath he was battling a serious cocaine addiction. He started freebasing cocaine and in 1980 after a long day home alone doing coke and drinking heavily he came to the conclusion that he could not go on. He dumped alcohol all over his body and lit a match.

He woke up in a hospital bed covered in third degree burns. When he was finally able to perform again he started doing some of the best material of his career. He talked more openly about race and though it was not especially deep at least he was talking about it. Most comics were not.

He continued doing stand up and film until 1990 when he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which he battled for fifteen years before his death in 2005.

Richard Pryor was a huge influence on many (Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock to name a few) in his lifetime. Because of him comedy will never be the same. Lenny Bruce showed us you could use comedy to talk about hard times, but Richard Pryor showed us you could be loved while doing it.

Comedy went through the grinder of the 60's, 70's, and 80's and came out polished and well rounded. With the addition of the internet in the 90's comedy has become very easily accessible and can now cater to any taste. Whether one wants political and social commentary or simply something silly one can find it all thanks to the great comedians who changed comedy in the mid 20th century.