# Humor/satire of the 1950s and 1960s **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** comedian-jokes\ **Created:** [October 28, 2024, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348 "2024-10-28T13:33:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Q](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/898d66/32.png) [@Johnny\_Q](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Q)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2024, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348/41 "2024-10-29T03:48:16Z")
Flann O’Brien may be worth checking out. I like _The Best of Myles_, a compilation of his newspaper columns. The lengths a man will go to to set up a bad pun… ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2024, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348/42 "2024-10-29T04:32:00Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Jack Douglas - “The Jewish-Japanese Sex and Cookbook and How to Raise Wolves,” “My Brother Was an Only Child,” “Going Nuts in Brazil with Jack Douglas,” “Rubber Duck” and quite a few more, all sadly out of print. And don’t forget “Shut Up and Eat Your Snowshoes,” his telling of the time he and his family spent in northern Ontario. Thinking of Canada, you, **GGF** , might wish to see if you could find anything by Greg (sometimes styled as “Gregory”) Clark. Not all his items are humourous, but a lot of them are. He could take a perfectly ordinary everyday occurrence and find the funny in it. Titles that come to mind are “May Your First Love Be Your Last” and “Hi, There!” ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2024, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348/43 "2024-10-29T05:31:26Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > The UK version of _ **That Was the Week That Was** _ starred David Frost and featured performers like a very young Millicent Martin (Daphne’s mother on _ **Frasier** _). It had segments drawn from the news and could be really biting with its satire. (I know there was an American version of the show, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it—just the British version.) Tom Lehrer’s third album (well, fifth counting live and studio ones separately) was “That Was the Year that Was” with songs written for the American version. S J Perelman was still doing good stuff in the '50s. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2024, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348/44 "2024-10-29T08:35:35Z")
No discussion of humourists of that era would be complete with a mention of S.J. Perelman. As with many great writers, he’s notable for his humourous short stories published in the _New Yorker_ but was also a prolific screenwriter who wrote for the Marx Brothers and won an Oscar for one of his scripts. I greatly enjoyed the collection “The Most of S.J. Perelman”, originally published in 1957 or 1958 but I believe currently out of print, sadly. But still available from used book dealers. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2024, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348/45 "2024-10-29T09:08:31Z")
I don’t think anyone’s mentioned Charles Schulz. _ **Peanuts** _ started in 1950 and is still around today. It may have been “just a comic strip,” but it grew to be very influential around ten years later. Even today, people talk about the Great Pumpkin, the Red Baron, Security Blankets, Beethoven’s Birthday, and a lot of other things that are now part of our culture. The evolution of the strip is interesting too, in that it reflected things that were happening at the time, like skateboarding, the Space Program, and the Civil War centennial. About the only thing it _didn’t_ reflect was the war in Vietnam, for obvious reasons. However, Civil and Women’s rights got a nod when Franklin and Peppermint Patty were introduced. Can you say “It was a dark and stormy night” without thinking of Snoopy? You might just as well try not to think of the Lone Ranger when you hear the William Tell Overture. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2024, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348/46 "2024-10-29T11:31:39Z")
Ogden Nash [https://poetrysplash.tripod.com/ogdennash2.htm](https://poetrysplash.tripod.com/ogdennash2.htm) ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2024, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348/47 "2024-10-29T11:57:54Z")
Since the OP didn’t specify U. S. writers, I thought I’d mention [Stephen Potter](https://www.amazon.com/stores/Stephen-Potter/author/B001HQ4B0Q). Although his seminal work, _The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship: Or the Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating_, was published in 1947, the rest of his oeuvre falls within the OP’s 1950s-60s specification, including derivative works by others, such as the 1960 film, [_School for Scoundrels._](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054279/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2) > It was the first of his series of books purporting to teach ploys for manipulating one’s associates, making them feel inferior and thus gaining the status of being one-up on them. From this book, the term “Gamesmanship” entered the English language. Potter said that he was introduced to the technique by C. E. M. Joad during a game of tennis in which Joad and Potter were struggling against two fit young students. Joad politely requested the students to state clearly whether a ball had landed in or out (when in truth it was so obviously out that they had not thought it necessary to say so). This nonplussed the students, who wondered if their sportsmanship was in question; they became so edgy that they lost the match.[23] [Wikipedia.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Potter#Gamesmanship_and_freelance_writing) ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2024, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348/48 "2024-10-29T12:30:27Z")
And his Danish counterpart, Piet Hein: [https://www.phys.ufl.edu/~thorn/grooks.html](https://www.phys.ufl.edu/~thorn/grooks.html) ---
**Author:** ![ggf.nyc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ggf.nyc/32/17864_2.png) [@ggf.nyc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ggf.nyc)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2024, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348/49 "2024-10-29T12:36:22Z")
I love Flann O’Brien, his novels are amazing! Even the lesser-known ones like The Poor Mouth. ---
**Author:** ![ggf.nyc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ggf.nyc/32/17864_2.png) [@ggf.nyc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ggf.nyc)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2024, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348/50 "2024-10-29T12:38:29Z")
Yes, Perelman is great (as is Robert Benchley)! ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2024, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348/51 "2024-10-29T19:24:00Z")
Rene Goscinny should probably be added to the list of non-American authors just for creating _ **Asterix** _ in 1960. The quality of the books was never the same after he passed away. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2024, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348/52 "2024-10-29T19:57:40Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > No discussion of humourists of that era would be complete with a mention of S.J. Perelman. As with many great writers, he’s notable for his humourous short stories published in the _New Yorker_ but was also a prolific screenwriter who wrote for the Marx Brothers and won an Oscar for one of his scripts. I greatly enjoyed the collection “The Most of S.J. Perelman”, originally published in 1957 or 1958 but I believe currently out of print, sadly. But still available from used book dealers. I have his collected letters, and it was fascinating to read how much work it took to be humorous. In the sequel to Westward Ha, Swiss Family Pereleman, he visited Indonesia, then ruled by the Dutch. He wrote about how hard it was to create humor about a humorless situation. Now we should all let Roth wax the Dean for a while. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2024, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348/53 "2024-10-29T20:15:17Z")
At his peak Perelman was the funniest of them all. But he was a sour guy. He hated being known more for writing a Marx Brothers script than for his own work and turned virulently against them. Eric Lister titled a biography _Don’t Mention the Marx Brothers: Reminiscences of S.J. Perelman_ He got worse with age. He had a tremendously long career, with books published from 1929 to 1981, but if you aren’t familiar with him don’t try anything from the last twenty years or so. But that’s a pretty good general rule. No writer of humor has fifty years of good work. The last years always tail off, sometimes severely. Since _Peanuts_ just got mentioned, look at Charles Schulz. He wrote the strip for 50 years. Every character associated with him was introduced in the first 25 years. Every Snoopy persona came from the first 25 years. He just climbed on his pile of moneybags every day after that and coasted. Not to knock making millions or tens of millions a year, but it takes a toll on one’s drive and ambition and creativity. You can find this everywhere. Terry Pratchett’s last Discworld books don’t bear comparison to his peak works. Donald Westlake’s comic caper novels grew formulaic a few decades in. Dave Barry wisely stopped writing his column 20 years ago and turned to fiction and children’s books. You’d think experience would give older writers the edge, but in practice humor is a young man’s game. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2024, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348/54 "2024-10-29T20:23:01Z")
I didn’t know there was an S.J. Perelman letters collection. P.G. Wodehouse was also a prolific letter-writer, and though he wrote to many people both famous and not, the majority were to his old school chum Bill Townend. They are a fascinating read. Come to think of it, P.G. Wodehouse should also be nominated as a great humourist of the 50s and 60s, although his writing goes back to the beginning of the 20th century and continued until his death in 1975. But the 50s and 60s were arguably two decades when he was at the peak of his skill and fame. LIke Perelman, Wodehouse was also a scriptwriter but his major accomplishments were in Broadway musicals in collaboration with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton. He did have a fling with Hollywood for a few years but, as he reported in a famous interview with the _Los Angeles Times_, he was paid an extravagant salary for doing almost nothing and very little of what he did write was used. ---
**Author:** ![ggf.nyc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ggf.nyc/32/17864_2.png) [@ggf.nyc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ggf.nyc)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2024, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348/55 "2024-10-29T20:32:49Z")
James Thurber also turned into a bitter pain in the ass in his old age, though he did manage to write “My Years With Ross,” which was pretty damn funny. And I recently took a peek at a late Steve Allen book (the ironically titled “How to Be Funny”) and it just sounds like a bore pontificating at a party. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2024, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348/56 "2024-10-29T21:15:31Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > But he was a sour guy. He was also reportedly terrible to his family. For years I idolized him as probably the funniest of the humorists in his day, better than Thurber and my other idol, Benchley. So I was quite dismayed to read a biography of Perelman and learn that he mistreated his wife and children, at least one of whom suffered from mental illness. (Perelman’s son-in-law was on the faculty of my college, but I didn’t know him well, and never asked him about Sid, nor would I have.) > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > look at Charles Schulz. He wrote the strip for 50 years. I just recently re-read some of the collected first years of the strip. They’re mostly terrible: not very funny, inconsistent, dull. With few exceptions, I have a hard time seeing what everyone thought was so great about them at the time. And let me be clear, although I hadn’t seen them in years, I grew up with all of the paperback Peanuts collections, and knew every strip intimately, from day one through the late 1960s. In our family it was a special treat when dad brought home the latest Peanuts book. So this is not some clueless noob looking back 70 years and unable to get into the mindset of that era. I was born in 1955 and for most of my adult life have considered Peanuts to be one of the 20th century’s top comic strips. I think that peak Peanuts, 1960-66 or so, is probably pretty good; I haven’t re-read them recently. As @Exapno_Mapcase points out, as was pretty obvious all along, the last decade (at least) of Peanuts was pretty bad. But my recent review makes it clear to me that the first decade wasn’t all that great, either. Schulz has gone down a couple of notches in my personal pantheon. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2024, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348/57 "2024-10-29T21:39:56Z")
> [@commasense](#): > > I just recently re-read some of the collected first years of the strip. They’re mostly terrible: not very funny, inconsistent, dull. With few exceptions, I have a hard time seeing what everyone thought was so great about them at the time. During its first four years, Peanuts was mostly a “cute kids” comic strip that was still in its early stage of development. Things didn’t really take off until around 1955 when Charlie Brown changed from an annoying wise guy to a put-upon schlimazel and Snoopy stopped acting like a real dog and began drifting off into flights of fancy. That’s why collections of the strip during its first few years are mostly skippable unless you’re a Peanuts completist. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2024, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348/58 "2024-10-29T21:44:48Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > But the 50s and 60s were arguably two decades when he was at the peak of his skill and fame. I don’t think I’d agree. Like Charles Schulz, all of his great characters appeared early in his career and then he spent decades revisiting them over and over. But there’s simply too much of his stuff to absorb, some 70 novels and 300 short stories. Jeeves, e.g., appeared in short stories for two decades before he was in a novel. I was browsing a bookstore one day and found a whole shelf of Wodehouse biographies, one of which contained letters between two of the authors putting down a third book. I grabbed them all to make sure they got preserved. > [@ggf.nyc](#): > > And I recently took a peek at a late Steve Allen book (the ironically titled “How to Be Funny”) and it just sounds like a bore pontificating at a party. _Meetings of Minds_ was a great PBS series, but Allen definitely turned into a preachy scold at the end. And don’t bother with the Steve Allen mystery novels. They were all ghostwritten. His early short stories are not bad though not great. _Bop Fables_ - fables retold in jazz slang - work in small doses. They are a direct descendant of George Ade’s _Fable in Slang_ from the turn of the 20th century. Good ideas always get rediscovered. Allen’s three books of short biographies of comedians - _Funny Men_, _Funny People_ (Aha! women can be funny!), and _More Funny People_ - are important because he knew almost everyone he wrote about. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2024, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348/59 "2024-10-29T22:08:28Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > No writer of humor has fifty years of good work. The last years always tail off, sometimes severely. Somewhere, Fran Lebowitz is nodding… ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2024, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348/60 "2024-10-29T22:22:37Z")
Regarding the length of Wodehouse’s writing career, I’ll remind people of this thread I started more than 20 years ago (!) that establishes that he wrote about Jeeves and Wooster over a span of 58 years and Lord Emsworth over 60! > [@Who is the longest "lived" fictional character](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587): > > I’ve just gotten back into P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster stories, and I noticed with some surprise that the first Jeeves story appeared in 1916 and the last was written (or at least begun) in 1974, for a “lifespan” of 58 years. I think this is a record. Does anyone know of another fictional character who was written about by the original author over a longer period? I think we can rule out most, if not all, of the juvenile series like Tom Swift, Nancy Drew, etc., since I believe they wer… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-satire-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/1009348.md?page=4)