Stand-Up

Seriously Funny

The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s

by Gerald Nachman

Pantheon, 659 pp., $29.95

IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND, writes Adam Nicolson in "God's Secretaries," his book about the making of the King James Bible, "'renaissance' was not a word that was known or used." "Renaissance" is not a word I would have thought of, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, to describe the comedians I saw on television and, occasionally, in nightclubs, but it is the word Gerald Nachman uses throughout "Seriously Funny." As he chronicles the efflorescence of comedy during this period, one begins to believe he does not use it imprecisely: A genuine rebirth was underway. For myself, I'm pleased to learn that I have lived through at least one renaissance before pegging out.

I have, for as long as I can recall, been amazed by stand-up comics--chiefly by their courage, though effrontery may be closer to the exact word. They stand there alone (though some have had companions: Costello had Abbott, Allen had Burns, May had Nichols) and propose to make an audience of strangers forget their personal troubles, not to mention the world's endless supply of suffering, and laugh. The announcing of it beforehand is where the nerve comes in. Wit, says Paul Valéry, entails defying anticipation. Professional comics, humorists, by their very presence, begin by establishing an anticipation--you will laugh at what I am about to say or do--and then set out not to defy but to fulfill it. That is why, as a writer, you never want to be known as a humorist; the only thing worse, in my opinion, is to be known as a national treasure.

Before the comedy renaissance, most comedians in America were known through radio, and a few through the movies. They did rather standard things: developed a set comic persona (Jack Benny's cheapness, Bob Hope's wiseguy patter), or, if in duos, ignorant figure (Lou Costello, Gracie Allen) played off commonsensical straightman (Bud Abbott, George Burns). An occasional wildly talented comedian--Danny Kaye comes to mind--could do both physical and verbal humor and toss in a few songs at no extra charge. Jackie Gleason, through great acting skill, could be poignant as a permanent underdog with pretensions to mastery over his world, as in his Ralph Kramden character on the television program "The Honeymooners."

But about all this comedy there was a safeness. You could turn on the "Ed Sullivan Show," or Milton Berle's "Texaco Star Theater," or the "Jackie Gleason Show," and a number of others and not worry about having your politics, religion, little snobberies in the least ruffled. The great god Show Biz set strict boundaries, with lines that could only be crossed on pain of ending one's career.

Then, poof and shazam, everything changed. Late one night--I wish I could recall the year--I was watching the "Tonight Show," then run by a lachrymose man named Jack Paar, who introduced the comedian Mort Sahl. Seated upon the guest's couch, Sahl proceeded to report that he had just had a disarming letter from the NAACP, informing him that, liberal and man of the left though he was, he, Sahl, had no Negro (as the word then was) in his act. With an expression of chagrin Sahl allowed that this was so, but then, bucked up now, he added that he had hired a brilliant young Negro comedian and incorporated him smoothly into his act. Pause: allow two beats. Then Sahl, looking down at his wristwatch, announced, with a gritting of teeth, a slight shake of the head, "He should have been here by now."

THE TELEVISION AUDIENCE in New York didn't know what to do with this complicated but superior joke. Is Sahl, a man of the left, playing off the old stereotype about blacks' being tardy, also known as CPT (Colored People's Time)? Or is he skewering those who believe in the stereotype? Rather different, this kind of humor, than watching Milton Berle get hit in the face with a huge powder puff.

The argument of "Seriously Funny" is that the 1950s laid the groundwork for the loosening up of American culture that took place in the notorious 1960s, with comedians often serving as, in Gerald Nachman's phrase, "cultural harbingers":